Salina’s Brent Venables named Oklahoma football coach

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WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) - Brent Venables isn’t quite coming home, but it’s close.

The 50-year-old Salina native who helped build the Kansas State football program from virtually nothing as an assistant alongside Bill Snyder, and who rose up the ranks of the profession as a highly thought-of defensive coordinator at Oklahoma and Clemson, was named the Sooners’ coach Sunday evening.

The school scheduled a 10:30 a.m. press conference Monday to introduce Venables. He’s replacing Lincoln Riley, who departed for USC.

Oklahoma has hired one coach with previous head-coaching experience in the past 75 years -- Howard Schnellenberger, hired to replace the fired John Blake in 1995. Schnellenberger did not return the following season.

Venables continues that trend, having worked as an assistant during his entire career, which began when he was a graduate assistant at K-State from 1993-95. Venables was part of Clemson’s national championships in 2016 and 2018 as defensive coordinator and was co-defensive coordinator at OU when the Sooners won it all in 2000.

Venables, barring the unexpected, will be OU’s coach when it departs the Big 12 for the SEC in the near future -- it hasn’t been determined exactly when that will happen.

“Our memories from Norman, where all four of our children were born, have been nothing but great,” Venables said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to making another decade-plus of incredible memories as we transition to a new era of Oklahoma football, especially with the opportunity and the challenge to join the SEC, the premier conference in all of college football.”

Venables graduated from Salina South then played football at Garden City and Kansas State prior to beginning his coaching career under Snyder. In Venables’ seasons with K-State from 1993-98, the Wildcats went 50-13-1 with victories in the Copper, Holiday and Fiesta Bowls.