Is Brent Venables facing the most pressure in college football?

Oklahoma Sooners head coach Brent Venables enters Year 4 on the job facing a make-or-break season in Norman. Year 2 in the Southeastern Conference will be very telling for both his future as a head coach and for the future of the program as a whole.

OU is just 22-17 overall since Venables took command three seasons ago. A 6-7 mark in 2022 was rough. A 10-3 campaign in 2023 gave hope for the future. But, another 6-7 record in 2024 has made 2025 a critical year for the Sooners.

Venables is 0-3 in bowl games, even while playing in mid-tier bowls. The Sooners haven’t been to a New Year’s Six bowl since 2019, their last year in the College Football Playoff. Despite a 4-0 record in nonconference games a season ago, Oklahoma went just 2-6 in the SEC. That means the Sooners only had three wins against Power Four competition in Venables’ third season.

The schedule next season actually looks more difficult than a year ago, with the same league opponents but different locations and the Houston game replaced by a visit from Michigan instead. OU’s other three nonconference games (Illinois State, Temple, and Kent State) should be layups, but nine tough contests still await.

Put the lackluster results with a brutal schedule along with the ever-changing climate around college football, in which Oklahoma seems to be falling behind under Venables, and you have a head coach who may be under more pressure than just about anybody in 2025.

That’s what 247Sports’ Brad Crawford believes. He ranked the head coaches who are under the most pressure next season and Venables topped his list. He was followed in order by Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy, Florida State’s Mike Norvell, Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell, and LSU’s Brian Kelly.

Each of the other five coaches on the list are proven commodities who need to bounce back in a big way. Gundy has been in…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/brent-venables-facing-most-pressure-220130028.html

Author : Sooners Wire

Publish date : 2025-02-19 22:01:00

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