This past winter saw the Big 12 turn over more than 25% of its coaching ranks as Brent Venables, Sonny Dykes, and Joey McGuire took over at Oklahoma, TCU, and Texas Tech.
Dykes is the only one of the three that enters 2022 with any head coaching experience after stops at Louisiana Tech, Cal and SMU. While Venables doesn’t have any head coaching experience, he’s spent the better part of the last 30 years learning from hall of fame coaches Bill Snyder, Bob Stoops and Dabo Swinney. As arguably the best defensive coordinator of the last decade, Venables gets to try his hand at building and running his first football program.
There’s a great deal of optimism surrounding Oklahoma under Venables, and there’s little doubt that the Sooners will have success. However, the turnover the Sooners endured this offseason leaves many wondering if Oklahoma can reassert itself as the king of the Big 12 in 2022.
In a deep league full of quality coaches, Venables checks in at No. 8 in CBS Sports Big 12 coach rankings for 2022. And that’s simply because he hasn’t done it before.
Here’s a look at how the coaches stack up in the Big 12 conference.