Brent Venables now college football’s highest-paid assistant coach
By Chip Rouse
This is a story that might anger some Oklahoma football fans, but it’s really a good-news story about a former member of the OU football family.
It wasn’t that many seasons ago that Sooner fans were lamenting the fact that Oklahoma had let former defensive coordinator Brent Venables walk.
In retrospect, it turned out to be a giant mistake, especially since Venables landed on his feet at Clemson and hit the ground running. When Venables took over as the Clemson defensive coordinator in 2012, the Tigers ranked 64th in the nation in total defense, ironically just one spot ahead of Oklahoma.
Within two seasons, the Venables-led Clemson defense ranked No. 1 in the country, and they’ve been a perennial top-10 defense ever since.
Earlier this summer, the former Oklahoma defensive coordinator and linebackers coach was rewarded for his defensive mastery, becoming the highest paid assistant coach in college football. Venables was given a contract extension that will pay him $2.5 million per year through 2026. This coming season will be his 10th season at Clemson
Although he has been a candidate for several head-coach openings (Kansas State, Kansas, Miami in Florida, Auburn and Texas Tech), Venables obviously is very content where he is and doing what he’s doing.
Venables was one of the coaches on the Kansas State staff that Bob Stoops took with him when he accepted the head coaching job at Oklahoma. Also on that K-State staff was Stoops’ brother, Mike, who led the defense for Kansas State and assumed the same duties on brother Bob’s staff at OU.
At the end of the 2003 season, Mike Stoops was named the head coach at Arizona, and Venables was elevated from the co-defensive coordinator role. When the younger Stoops brother was fired at Arizona after the 2011 season, his older brother brought him back to Oklahoma. Mike and Venables were again supposed the share the DC duties. You can imagine how that decision set with Venables. It was only a matter of days after it was announced Mike Stoops was returning to OU that Venables accepted the Clemson job.
The Oklahoma defense did all right, but unlike it once was, in Mike’s first few years back, but eventually sputtered out. Most Sooner fans are well aware how that saga played out.
The Sooner defense, under DC Alex Grinch, has finally worked its way back to relevancy. This year’s defensive unit could be OU’s best since the early 2000s. Meanwhile, Venables has rightfully earned the acclaim as the best active defensive coordinator in the college game…and the highest paid.