The 120th edition of the iconic [autotag]Red River Rivalry[/autotag] is days away from coming to fruition. The Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners will face off yet again in Dallas at a neutral site in the Cotton Bowl at the State Fair of Texas in one of the greatest rivalry games sports has to offer. There’s simply nothing like it. The atmosphere and the stakes are simply unbeatable in college football.
On the surface, the two head coaches in this game couldn’t be more different.
Texas’ [autotag]Steve Sarkisian[/autotag] enters his fourth Red River with a 1-2 record in the game. He’s one of the best offensive minded coaches in all of college football, renowned for directing some of the greatest units in recent memory. He’s a quarterback whisperer who played the position at BYU in the mid-1990s for LaVell Edwards. His teams put points on the scoreboard in an entertaining fashion.
Oklahoma’s [autotag]Brent Venables[/autotag], on the other hand, enters his third Red River at 1-1. He’s regarded as one of college football’s greatest defensive minds, and has also been in charge of some of the best units of the 21st century. His specialty is linebackers, as he played the position at Kansas State in 1991 and 1992. His teams suffocate opposing offenses and create chaos defensively.
But as different as these two men are, we can look at their most recent gigs before becoming the head coaches at Texas and Oklahoma to see how they’re building things very similarly.
Sarkisian had multiple stints coaching quarterbacks for Pete Carroll at USC from 2001 to 2008, though he spent the 2004 season doing the same in the NFL for the then Oakland Raiders. In 2007 and 2008, he was the offensive coordinator for the Trojans, in addition to his role as the quarterbacks coach.
From 2009 to 2013, Sarkisian served as the head coach at Washington before returning to USC after Lane Kiffin’s firing. For two seasons, he coached Southern California, but was fired midway through the 2015 season due to personal issues.
But it’s what happened next that got him where he is today. Sarkisian was hired as an offensive analyst by Nick Saban at Alabama for the 2016 season. He then spent two years as the Atlanta Falcons’ OC before returning to Tuscaloosa to be the offensive coordinator for the Crimson Tide.
In 2019 and 2020, Alabama and Sarkisian had some of the best offenses college football had ever seen. The Tide were particularly dominant in 2020, winning the national championship with an undefeated record and an incredible offense. All of that happened with Sarkisian calling plays on offense for a defensive-minded head coach in Saban.
Sarkisian was hired to be Texas’s head coach following his success in Tuscaloosa in 2020, replacing Tom Herman. It took a couple of years, but he has brought Texas “back” after nearly 15 years of dormancy. He learned from his time at Washington and USC, but his most crucial steps were the three years he spent learning how to build a program under Saban. He’s taken those lessons to Austin, building the team the way it has to be done in college football, something his two predecessors failed to do.
His philosophy is a combination of Edwards, Carroll, and Saban, but he certainly draws from his time in Tuscoloosa on how the process needs to look in the modern era of college football.
Venables coached at Kansas State under Bill Snyder for six seasons, serving as the linebackers coach from 1996 to 1998. [autotag]Bob Stoops[/autotag] hired him to be the co-defensive coordinator and coach linebackers at Oklahoma, where the Sooners won the national championship in 2000. Venables eventually became OU’s solo defensive coordinator a few years later, coaching some of the best units in college football.
He decided to leave Norman to go to Clemson, serving as the defensive coordinator under Dabo Swinney from 2012 to 2021. The Tigers won the ACC and made the College Football Playoff six times in a row, winning the national championship in 2016 and 2018. Clemson was often led by stingy defenses in their run atop the sport. All of that happened with Venables calling the defense for an offensive-minded head coach in Swinney.
Venables was hired to replace Lincoln Riley after the 2021 season and has taken on the task of rebuilding the program and leading it into the [autotag]SEC[/autotag]. Though the job isn’t finished, there are certainly things to like about the way Venables is steering the ship.
His philosophy is a combination of Snyder, Stoops, and Swinney, but what he learned in Clemson mirrors how the Tigers were always the biggest foil to the Crimson Tide. Swinney’s squads were often the only team capable of matching up across the board with Saban’s teams. The two programs were often “shadowy reflections” of each other, as René Belloq once said to Indiana Jones.
Swinney built the Tigers from an also-ran to a powerhouse, and Venables was there for a lot of it, watching how it was done. He’s taken those lessons to Norman, building the program in a way his predecessor could not.
Alabama and Clemson were the titans of college football for over half a decade, dominating the four-team era of the CFP. Both teams are still very good and positioned nicely in the twelve-team era and beyond as well. Saban and Swinney will go down as the two greatest coaches of that era. Bama and Clemson faced off in the title game three times and once in the semis. The Tigers went 2-1 in the national championship, but the Crimson Tide had the edge in the 2017 semifinal.
As a change in leadership has taken place for the Tide, and the Tigers have seen their death grip on the ACC weaken, two former top assistants have made their way to the Red River Rivalry, applying what they’ve learned to their programs.
All of that said, both teams are on their way up entering the SEC. It may not take long for Texas under Sarkisian to look similar to Alabama under Saban. And it may not take long for Oklahoma under Venables to look a lot like Clemson at their best under Swinney. The chess match between the two every October will no doubt be intense.
Even though one head coach has a gifted mind for offense and the other has a brilliant mind for defense, and even though they come from completely different backgrounds, Steve Sarkisian and Brent Venables may be far more alike than you think.
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