After just two seasons, the Oklahoma Sooners locked up head coach Brent Venables for another six years in Norman.
Oklahoma is coming off a 10-3 season where they came close to playing for a Big 12 title. The Sooners watched rival Texas take home the title against their in-state rival Oklahoma State. Still, there were plenty of positives to take away from 2023. Especially after suffering the first losing season last year since 1998, John Blake’s last season at the helm.
On Friday, ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported that the Sooners extended their head coach with a ‘significant raise’. According to the USA TODAY Sports coach database, Venables was paid $7.1 million and his buyout was set at $30.6 million as of Dec. 1, 2023.
Venables’ original contract ran through the 2027 season but the new deal will keep him in Norman through the 2029 season. According to Thamel, the contract has a total value of $51.6 million. At this time it is unclear what the new buyout terms will be.
The head coach is heading into his third season with a combined 16-10 record and 0-2 in bowl games. Oklahoma lost to Florida State in the 2022 Cheez-It Bowl 35-32 and Arizona in the 2023 Alamo Bowl 38-24.
As college football analyst and podcaster Alex Kirshner put it, this smells an awful lot like the Jimbo Fisher-Texas A&M situation. The Aggies finally opted to pay the massive buyout after a disappointing 45-25 tenure that mirrored Kevin Sumlin’s time in College Station.
This isn’t a knock on Brent Venables as a head coach but more of what Oklahoma opted to do rather than taking a wait-and-see approach. They originally had the head coach locked into his deal through the 2027 season, which would be the fourth year in the SEC by that time.