Oklahoma Is Reportedly Set to Hire Clemson DC Brent Venables as Its Next Head Coach

A week after losing Lincoln Riley to USC, it appears Oklahoma might have it next head coach in Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables.

Venables has been in charge of the Tigers' defense since 2012, but coached at OU for the 13 seasons before that under Bob Stoops. He's had plenty of opportunities to leave Clemson for head coaching opportunities, but this was apparently the one he was waiting for.

I don't know that you can necessarily call this hire a home run, given the fact Venables is taking on his first head coaching job, but there have been more than a handful of programs who have tried to pry him away from Clemson for many years and nobody has been able to do it until now. Short of hiring away a Power Five head coach — and I'm not sure how many there are who would even be interested in leaving their current jobs who haven't already done so — this was about as good as you could expect for the Sooners.

There's another report which says Venables will try to bring Ole Miss offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby with him to Norman to call the offense, which would be an absolute coup. Ole Miss scored 36 points per game and averaged more than 500 yards of offense per game in 2021. Getting Lebby as OC would be massive for Venables.

On the whole, this is a very solid hire for OU with the potential to be great. After getting left in the dead of night by Riley, the Sooners could have done much, much worse than Venables.