FORT WORTH, Texas — Amid his players, Brent Venables walked off the field for the last time this season, the OU football coach’s face showing no emotion.
No frustration.
No fury.
Perhaps that’s what happens when your team finishes a bleh year with a bleh bowl performance.
On a day Venables and his Sooners had a chance to salvage a winning record out of a mess of a season, they instead fell short. They gave up a two-touchdown lead. Dropped too many passes. Missed too many defensive assignments. Squandered a prime opportunity.
The result: another losing season.
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Venables said on the eve of the Armed Forces Bowl that he wasn’t thinking about the importance of winning the game in terms of having a winning season vs. a losing one.
But Friday, he acknowledged the totality of the season was unacceptable.
“Just disappointed,” Venables said. “Obviously, everything falls on me. If we’re dropping it or not converting fourth down, we’re missing field goals or we’re giving up explosive runs, everything falls at my feet.
“So, really disappointed in myself.”
He lowered his head.
“I need to be a lot better. I think that goes without saying.”
Venables seems all too aware that he’s wandered onto thin ice, joining a small group of Sooner head coaches that no one wants to be part of. He has now become one of only three head coaches in the history of Sooner football to have more than one losing season.
The other two: Bennie Owen and John Blake.
Owen, of course, is Sooner coaching royalty. OU’s field is named after the man who coached 17 seasons of early Sooner football. Yes, he had three consecutive losing seasons from 1922-24, but those were different days.
Plus, he had banked a decade of Sooner success before having those struggles.
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Blake, on the other hand, is the OU head coach to whom no one wants to be compared. At least not where success is concerned. He coached the Sooners for three seasons, and not once did he have a winning record.
It got him fired.
His replacement, Bob Stoops, never had a losing season.
Ditto for Stoops’ replacement, Lincoln Riley.
But with Venables at the helm, OU has now had two losing records in three years.
No chance he’ll ever do what Blake did, having back-to-back-to-back losing records. That’s because if Venables doesn’t have a winning record next season, he’ll be gone. No way Joe Castiglione and the rest of the Sooner brass will allow that to continue beyond next season.
Now, had the Sooners won Friday and finished with a winning record, that wouldn’t have guaranteed Venables more than one more season. OU needs to turn a big corner next year, and that’s the expectation with new offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle and high-dollar transfer quarterback John Mateer.
If the Sooners fail to win more than they lose next season, Venables might not survive regardless of what happened Friday.
But another losing record doesn’t reflect well on him.
“You don’t go 6-7 and you did all these things right,” Venables said. “Just got to be a lot better.”
He believes the Sooners will be.
“We’ve got a lot of experience coming back,” he said. “We had a lot of guys that had an opportunity this year that happened because of guys not being available.”
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Injuries forced numerous players into duty, especially on the offensive side of the ball. Numerous receivers and offensive linemen saw playing time that would never have happened if everyone had stayed healthy.
In the end, the offensive line seemed to take advantage of that — it improved a bunch over the second half of the season — but the receivers still look like a suspect bunch. On Friday, they dropped at least seven passes. Even though Ivan Carreon and Jacob Jordan seem sure-handed, you can’t depend on two pass catchers next season.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Venables acknowledged.
He praised the fight and the commitment, the work and the sacrifice of the players. The coaches and the support staff, too.
But he acknowledges the bottom line is the bottom line.
So the lack of emotion that Venables showed leaving the field after the game wasn’t indicative of how he felt. He senses the weight on his shoulders. He sees the anvil over his head.
“This is a game of performance,” he said. “This is a game of doing.
“And we fell well short of that this year.”
The Sooners did, and the losing record is theirs. But the name associated with it is Venables’.
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Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 405-475-4125 or [email protected]. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at @jennicarlsonok.bsky.social and twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
