New Oklahoma coach Brent Venables made his first appearance at Big 12 media days on Thursday, but he couldn’t resist drawing parallels to the first time he arrived in Norman as an assistant to Bob Stoops in 1999.
The Sooners were able to jump-start their success by taking left-handed quarterback Josh Heupel as a transfer from Snow College in Utah.
While the circumstances are different this time around with Caleb Williams and Spencer Rattler both transferring from the OU program, Venables said he’s very comfortable with UCF transfer Dillon Gabriel at the helm.
“Dillon Gabriel’s a winner,” Venables said. “You can’t say it any better than that. I can lay my head down at night knowing not just what [Gabriel] has done on the football field, but the quality of the person he is. He’s about all the right stuff. He’s dependable, he’s reliable, he’s accountable, he’s humble.”
Gabriel threw for 8,037 yards and scored 79 total touchdowns in his three seasons at UCF, which is why Venables feels confident heading into his first season, despite a season of change for the Sooners.
“As you all can imagine, the last seven and a half months, there’s been a lot going on in Norman, Oklahoma,” Venables said. “You only get one opportunity, one chance, to be a first-time head coach and to do things the right the first time.”
Venables said there are 33 scholarship players and 15 walk-ons — “40% of our roster” — who have never put on an OU jersey in a game. Still, those who remain have become accustomed to high standards, he said.
“You’re dealing with a locker room that has won 78 games the last seven years that have played a bunch of playoffs and a bunch of championship games,” Venables said. “This is a group and this is a locker room that is used to winning.”
Venables said he feels he has the right plan in place to continue that legacy of success.
“I think that our issues are first-world problems in the landscape of college football, but I’m not naive,” he said. “I recognize better than anybody where we’re at and what we got to do to improve.”