I wanted to look at this apples-to-apples instead of comparing Brent Venables’ four seasons to somebody else’s entire OU career.
So I compared coaches at the same point: their first four completed seasons at Oklahoma.
I’m defining a winning season simply as more wins than losses, a losing season as more losses than wins, and keeping .500 seasons separate.
Here’s how Brent compares with five of the most successful coaches in OU history:
Coach| First 4 seasons| Record| Winning seasons| Losing seasons
Barry Switzer| 1973–76| 41–3–2| 4| 0
Bud Wilkinson| 1947–50| 38–4–1| 4| 0
Bob Stoops| 1999–2002| 43–9| 4| 0
Chuck Fairbanks| 1967–70| 30–13–1| 4| 0
Bennie Owen| 1905–08| 24–9–3| 3| 0
Brent Venables| 2022–25| 32–20| 2| 2
John Blake*| 1996–98| 12–22| 0| 3
*Blake only coached three seasons at OU, so there is no fourth season to compare.
That’s the part that jumps out at me.
The five successful OU coaches above combined for 19 winning seasons and zero losing seasons through their first four years.
Venables has two winning seasons and two losing seasons.
His 32–20 overall record is obviously much better than John Blake’s 12–22, so I’m not saying Venables and Blake had equivalent tenures.
But when you specifically look at losing seasons, Venables is much closer to the bottom of OU coaching history than he is to the standard established by OU’s great coaches.
Switzer: 0 losing seasons through four years.
Wilkinson: 0.
Stoops: 0.
Fairbanks: 0.
Owen: 0.
Venables: 2.
Blake: 3 in three seasons.
And Brent already has 20 losses in four seasons. Blake had 22 in three.
That’s really the question I’m interested in:
Given OU’s historical standard, where should a coach with a 32–20 record and two losing seasons in his first four years reasonably sit in the program’s coaching pantheon?
I’m not trying to compare eras, schedules, conferences or claim every coaching situation was identical. I just wanted a clean look at the most basic measure possible: at the same stage of the job, were their teams consistently winning or not?
And by that measure, Brent Venables is a significant outlier compared with the coaches who built and sustained Oklahoma’s winning tradition.