Brent Venables had himself a pretty good summer.
The Oklahoma Sooners have spent most of the offseason garnering high praise and lofty preseason expectations for their upcoming season. They return a loaded defense and one of the most dynamic quarterbacks in the entire sport. This is off the heels of making a run to the college football playoff a season ago. That was a season that started with rumors of Venables being on the hot seat if his team didn’t perform.
They did. And now, Venables gets to reap the benefits of that run from a season ago. Last week, Venables received a contract extension that will take him through the 2031 season. It will also increase his yearly salary to $10.5 million and an overall price tag of $63 million.
“It is truly an honor and a privilege to serve as the head coach at the University of Oklahoma and to represent a place with such a proud tradition, an incredibly passionate and loyal fan base and expectations that match our own,” Venables said in a statement.
Naturally, upon receiving the massive extension, and joining the $10 million-a-year-club with other head coaches from around the country, Venables’ resume has been under scrutiny. Is a head coach with a record of just 32-20 really worth that much? Afterall, that makes him the 10th highest paid coach in America and puts him ahead of coaches like Marcus Freeman of Notre Dame and Dan Lanning of Oregon. It also puts him behind coaches like Kalen DeBoer of Alabama and Lincoln Riley of USC who he has either beaten or outperformed.
It’s tough to say if $63 million is the appropriate amount for Venables. His salary has been compared with DeBoer more than anything since he has beaten the Alabama head coach twice in two years. DeBoer signed a much larger contract that made him the nation’s fifth-highest paid coach at $87.5 million. His first-year buyout alone of $67 million is larger than Venables’ entire contract. What’s perplexing isn’t whether or not it’s deserving, it’s the timing. DeBoer’s contract was negotiated during an offseason where 38 coaching jobs became open. He was also the presumed front-runner for a number of those jobs such as Penn State and Michigan. That’s not the case with Venables, and in the current calendar, every job in the FBS is currently filled.
So, why now? Well for one, he got his team to the College Football Playoff last season. Secondly, it provides stability and a clear vision for the future. That’s something that means a lot and has become more and more seldom across the sport’s landscape. It also gives him the ability to sit in a recruit’s home and assure him that he’s not going anywhere during his career. The seat was hot a year ago, and the foundation that the program was on felt shaky.
Paying $63 million dollars to fix that feels like a bargain to me.
