Brent Venables opened his first spring practice press conference by noting a strong coincidence.
The Sooners’ spring game, set for 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 23rd, is Venables’ first as the 23rd head coach in school history, coinciding with the number of the date. Synchronously, 23 was worn by famous basketball player Michael Jordan, the namesake of the brand that sponsors OU. Twenty-three is also the number of seniors without remaining eligibility the team has this season.
But Venables, who said he can feel something good about the number, has to shift his focus to a different one.
The first-year coach has just 34 days — the shortest since his time at Kansas State, he said — to prepare for Oklahoma’s spring game. With the addition of almost an entirely new assistant coaching staff and 21 combined early-enrolled freshmen and transfers, Venables has his hands full assessing the roster, which he has only seen in offseason conditioning since taking the job on Dec. 5.
Venables said the team has started to install the offensive and defensive schemes for next season, but he’s more focused on holistic development. Heading into spring camp, his players have made key improvements in the weight room, but more importantly, learned his foundational values for a program.
“I’ve been just incredibly impressed with the mindset and the attitude and the buy-in of our players,” Venables said on Tuesday. “They’ve had a ‘get-to', opposed to a 'got-to' mentality. There’s just a very refreshing, innocent thing to be around and they’re eating out of the cup of our hands right now. And I say that will all due respect to them, just really soaking up everything that they can.”
Last spring OU was coached by Lincoln Riley, before he departed for the head gig at Southern California on Nov. 28. The spring game — more or less a practice, as the offense faced the defense rapidly and repeatedly, rather than a traditional intrasquad scrimmage — featured just 25-percent capacity due to COVID-19.
Now, with in-person press conferences back, and the recent decline of COVID-19 infection rates, Venables hopes the virus’ relative reduction can result in a “normal spring” to advance the growth of his roster.
“From a development standpoint, it’s critical,” Venables said of the virus’s decrease. “...This is a developmental game. Whether that’s the weight room, whether that’s the mindset, whether that’s being committed to something, teaching our guys what those standards are, all of those things programmatically (and) foundationally and in the physical place, in the grass and in the weeds on the field, and the execution and the precision. Everything was affected.”
Oklahoma’s opposite sides of the ball will likely look vastly different with offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby and defensive coordinator Ted Roof signing on for the 2022 season. With the arrival of spring practices, the NCAA allows coaches to spend 20 hours with players instead of eight during the offseason.
However, during the eight-week winter conditioning program under director of sports performance Jerry Schmidt, players were given a brief introduction to the new playbooks to enhance their familiarity on their own time. Either way, Venables said he understands the challenges of learning new systems.
“I think they’re straining it no matter what,” Venables said of the players’ acclimation process. “Obviously, the first hurdle is just learning a new language. …I think it’s hard no matter what. I think there’s real strain and stress whether you’ve been here for 10 straight years, or it’s your first year. But I think being an effective teacher minimizes how difficult it is.”
Venables added that inspiring his team to be students of the game is a key aspect in preparation. He even referenced a famous quote from Sun Tzu — the author of “The Art of War” — who says, “every battle is won before it's fought.”
Venables’ first battle before winning the ultimate fight, the 2022 football season, is a simple walkthrough for Tuesday’s opening spring practice inside the Everest Training Center. While he’ll of course evaluate the team’s performance throughout the spring session, perhaps more importantly, he will be rehearsing the team’s values for the first time in a pure football format.
Even Venables is still learning how to approach the process of fielding a practice as a head coach. The practice schedule is “dummy proof” for the assistants, with bullet points on what drills will happen on what field with aerial pictures and maps included.
Venables hopes his group doesn’t slip up on Tuesday but said with a laugh that errors could be made as the coaching staff learns to work together.
“That’ll be our first time as a staff being on the practice field together,” Venables said. “I’ve tried to get our coaches to understand for eight weeks of drills and workouts and what the standard looks like to me.
“...The cohesion for us on the field is an incredibly important aspect to having a good practice. And so, we’re going to do that.”
