Oklahoma Sooners Head Coach Brent Venables Gave Players His Salary After Awful 2024 Season

When Lincoln Riley stunningly left Oklahoma for USC prior to the 2022 college football season, the Sooners turned to Brent Venables to take his place.

Venables, who had been the defensive coordinator at Clemson prior to the move, spent 13 seasons at Oklahoma on the staff of head coach Bob Stoops from 1999-2011. But his return to Norman hasn’t gone according to plan.

The Sooners went just 6-7 in Venables’ first season. And after a bounce-back year in 2023, in which they put up a 10-3 record, Venables and co. struggled last season, going 6-7 yet again.

Oklahoma Redirected $1M Of Brent Venables’ Salary To Players For 2025 Season

That brought his career record to just 22-17, which ins’t good enough for a program of Oklahoma’s caliber. So, how did the Sooners respond? Well, according to a report from Steve Berkowitz of USA Today, they took $1 million from Venables $8.65 million contract and gave it directly to players instead as part of the school’s new revenue-sharing efforts.

An Oklahoma spokesperson claims that Venables volunteered to take a pay cut in order to get more money into the hands of his players.

“It was initiated by Coach Venables as a one-time give-back to contribute to the department’s revenue-sharing efforts,” an Oklahoma athletics department spokesman said.

But it’s hard to imagine that the pay cut, which is only for one season according to an amended version of his contract, would have happened had the Sooners not struggled so much in the first three years under Venables.

Of course, Oklahoma will be hoping its head coach turns things around. Not only would the Sooners prefer to succeed for obvious reasons, but also, the remaining value of Venables’ contract is fully guaranteed if Venables is fired without cause.

But fear not. Oklahoma is putting the money to good use, as Washington State transfer John Mateer is one of the highest-paid quarterbacks in all of college football. So hopefully the Sooners, and Venables, will get good value for their money.