FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Brent Venables will get a chance to revisit his past again Thursday night.
Venables got his first big break in coaching when Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops hired him as a member of his staff in 1999. Now, two years after he left to take a similar position at Clemson, he will get to match wits against his mentor when the top-ranked ACC champion Tigers (13-0) play the Big 12 champion Sooners (11-1) in the first of two national semi-finals here at Sun Lite Stadium.

The game comes a year after the two teams played each other in the 2014 Russell Athletic Bowl in Orlando.

Clemson won that game big, 40-6, leaving Venables with mixed emotions. He was happy for the way his defense played, but got an uncomfortable feeling watching Stoops take so much abuse from fans and media as the Sooners’ disappointing 8-5 season came to a screeching halt.

“We all have those moments in our careers,” Venables said.. “We get written about — justifiably so; we’re in a performance-based profession, but we all are, at some level — and we’ve all had those moments where you question yourself, you doubt yourself. Other people do it for you. Other people print it and talk about it on TV for you. But that’s part of the deal you signed up for. And I love and respect so much about where their program is today. It’s just a lesson to all of us: you know, not so fast.

“Every year you play, you’ve got to start over and you have to earn everything again. You’ve got to tear everything down from week to week, season to season. You look at Oklahoma and look at where they feel like they are mentally from their last game from a year ago, and now all of a sudden they lost their bowl game, they have no momentum, and they’re going to get rid of everybody, and it’s time for Coach Stoops to go and everything else. I know that animal, whether it’s at Oklahoma or whether it’s at Clemson or it’s at Bowling Green. It doesn’t matter, whether it’s at Texas. You’re always a week away from humility. It’s a very fragile game, and a lot of times, win or lose, it comes down to having really good players, and then having really good players play well, and then you’ve got to coach them well, too, don’t get me wrong. But look where they are one year later, or even less than that. They went from that last game to then look at the run that they’ve had.

The 45-year-old Venables is happy to see Stoops and the Sooners back on top. In his 23 years in the business — 13 at OU — no one has meant more to Venables than Stoops. “He’s taught me everything,” Venables said. “I don’t know. I mean, that’s a long list. Bob is first class. He’s just a good human being. He never changed, from the time he recruited me to Kansas State as a player to all the success he had. You know, winningest coach ever at Oklahoma? Are you kidding me? That’s pretty special.”
Bob Stoops had the courage to make much needed radical moves in the off season. He hired a new offensive coordinator Luther Riley and switched quarterbacks, handing junior Baker Mayfield–a transfer from Texas Tech– the keys to the offense. The mobile Mayfield had an All American season, completing 68.6 percent of his passes for 3,389 yards, 35 touchdown passes and just five interceptions and successfully scrambling out of the pocket to elude tacklers and make big plays to keep drives alive as the Sooners, who are averaging 45.8 points and 542.8 yards, rolled to their first Big 12 championship since 2012.

When Venables was 22-year old, he thought he had a career already picked out — and it wasn’t in coaching. “I was pre-law, political science and then I was gonna be either an athletic administrator or go into sports law,” he recalled. “Then they asked me to be a graduate assistant and I was like, ‘Eh, you know, sure. I could go for another year or so and have y’all pay for it.’

“I didn’t think coach Snyder was gonna hire me full time. He had a bunch of people. He said, ‘I have over 400 resumes; let me get through ‘em.’ I know for a fact coach Stoops (who was then K-State’s defensive coordinator and associate head coach) went to him and said, ‘Brent’s my guy. That’s who we want to hire.’ It took two months, but Bill Snyder finally hired him on an interim basis in 1993. His salary was only $33,000 the first year.

He received a $50,000 raise after his first year and became a valuable member of the staff as a linebacker coach.

When Stoops took the OU job, one of his first hires was Venables. Snyder did not want to lose Venables. As respectfully as he could, he asked Venables, ‘How do you know he’s gonna win there?”
“Well,” Venables said, “that didn’t come anywhere in the equation. I’m like, ‘That’s just gonna happen. It’s Bob Stoops.’ As a leader, he’s fearless. Go for broke. He exudes a very respectful, confidence.”
Venables serves as defensive coordinator for the Sooners from 2004 through 2011. In January of 2012, after it was announced Bob Stoops brother Mike, who had just been dismissed as head coach by Arizona, would be returning to Oklahoma to resume the defensive coordinator position he had held until 2004, Venables accepted the position of defensive coordinator at Clemson, where his salary was expected to be between $750,000 and $1 million.

He had been previously reported to be a candidate for the head coaching position at a number of schools including Miami, Kansas, Arkansas, Kansas State, Clemson and Texas Tech.

Venbable’s physical defense has helped turn Clemson into one of college football’s biggest surprises.
“I know we were replacing both lines. We had one starter returning on the offensive and defensive lines. To say we would be in a College Playoff, I would have checked into an insane asylum,” Venables said.
But here they are, winning a league that has been traditionally owned by Florida State since Jimbo Fisher arrived and playing for much bigger stakes.

No one on the Clemson staff knows Stoops better than Venables. But, with the addition of Riley, Stoops’ offensive philosophy has changed. The Sooners are more balanced with Samaje Perine and Joe Mixon, who are averaging a combined 216.5 yards rushing with 18 TDs. And they have a franchise quarterback in Mayfield, who has a lot of Sam Bradford in him, who has been so effective, he has excited four of the last seven games early.

Stopping Mayfield is a priority if the Tigers want to advance to their first national championship game since 1981.

Venables has thrown himself into his work, routinely taking snaps and throwing wobbly, side arm passes against Clemson’s first team defense in practice just so they get an idea what to expect. He may not be the best passer but occasionally he had burned the secondary with the deep ball in scrimmages. “They get so mad when they get beat on a deep ball by Coach Venables, because his arm is just terrible,” linebacker Ben Boulware said.

Venables has been known to rub it in, too. Few coaches ride their teams harder than Venables, but to his credit, he gives the players a chance to exact some revenge.

Last week, Venables was again playing QB — a live target for the D-line. All-American defensive end Shaq Lawson took advantage of the opportunity.

“Shaq sacked him, threw him to the ground,” Boulware said. “He was cussing us all practice, then Shaq blasts him.”

The team loved it. So did Venables, who bounded off the turf and shouted his approval.
It’s part of what endears him to his team so much. He is not afraid to mix it up at practice — even if it’s at the expense of his physical well-being. “It just shows what he’s willing to do,” Boulware said. “He’ll get tackled by Shaq Lawson because he wants to win so bad. He’ll do anything for his team.”