OU President Joseph Harroz Jr. and athletic director Joe Castiglione reaffirmed their support for OU football head coach Brent Venables during Tuesday's Board of Regents meeting.
"Obviously, the season thus far has not gone as we hoped or planned," Castiglione said. "That's disappointing to a lot of people, including us, even considering the significant challenges we've had, which is an unusually high number of injuries.
"We're real mindful that we haven't met the Oklahoma standard for 2024. That said, we truly believe in Coach Venables and our team, and are completely focused on both supporting them and looking at all of the ways to address needed improvements as soon as possible, as well as in preparation for next year."
Oklahoma sits at 5-5 in Venables' third season and needs to win one of its remaining two games against No. 11 Alabama at home and on the road against No. 15 LSU to become eligible for a bowl game. The Sooners have not missed out on bowl eligibility since 1998, one year before Bob Stoops took over as head coach.
OU also has a record of 1-5 in SEC play during its first season in the conference. Harroz also expressed his belief in Venables to lead the program in the future.
"We have the right coach," Harroz said of Venables. "This is our coach. We knew it was going to be a tough year going into the SEC, you add that with all of the things that are taking place around the shifting NIL landscape ... We knew there was going to be some turbulence.
"Obviously, we'd love to have more wins. But our confidence in the coach, it's as steady as it's ever been."
When asked if Venables will be head coach next season, Castiglione did not give a direct "yes" or "no", but reaffirmed his goal to help Venables improve the team for both the remainder of this season and next year.
"We're focusing on all of the areas that are necessary for now and for next year," Castiglione said when asked whether Venables will return in 2025.
After leading the Sooners to a 10-3 record and on the cusp of making a New Year's Six bowl in 2023, Venables was giving a contract extension through 2029, which included a raise.
"The university understood the transition we were making and the importance of creating stability throughout our program," Castiglione said. "As you know, this is a very unique time in college athletics, and there are disruptions and chaos around building and sustaining rosters.
"Stability and strength (is what we saw) as an important characteristic we wanted to embrace across many other areas, not just this contract, but fortifying the people (at the top) so we can be successful."
If OU were to fire Venables after the 2024 season, his buyout would be $44.8 million. That number decreases to $34.9 million after 2025 and $26.2 million after 2026.
"We just wanted to be able to address the growth of the program going forward," Castiglione added of the reasoning behind Venables' contract extension. "We had a very positive, tentative season last year and believed that stability would be important for our staff in how we recruit and retain players, even in this new and unique environment."
After former offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby took a head coaching job at Mississippi State following the 2023 season, Venables hired then-offensive analyst Seth Littrell and tight ends coach Joe Jon Finley as co-offensive coordinators.
After seven weeks of poor offensive play, capped off by a pair of blowout losses to Texas and at home against South Carolina, Littrell, OU's play caller, was fired and Finley was promoted to play caller along with Kevin Johns being promoted to co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
This offseason, Venables will have another chance to hire an offensive coordinator capable of turning around the SEC's second-worst scoring offense.
"I believe in him," Castiglione said of Venables' ability to make the right offensive coordinator hire. "He's gone up against the best offensive coordinators that college football has seen as a defensive coordinator. He understands as any head coach would, what makes teams tough to defend.
"We want to be focused on hiring a coach that can obviously assemble the strategy to make our offense one of the toughest to defend in college football."
