Brent Venables reportedly intends to opt out of Oklahoma contract but….
Oklahoma Sooners head football coach Brent Venables signed what boils down to a two-year contract extension last week. The new six-year contract also comes with a raise.
While opinions from local and national analysts were wide-ranging on OU’s decision to extend Venables, one writer feels Oklahoma made a sound tactical move.
Rock Westfall, writing for Mike Farrell Sports, had some opinions on the move made by athletic director Joe Castiglione, praising the timing of the extension:
“The 2024 schedule is a maneater,” said Westfall. “And it could have left Venables vulnerable. If Oklahoma does well against that slate, the Venables extension will look like pure genius. But if, more likely, the Sooners struggle in 2024, the new contract will shut down any hot seat talk and allow Venables to effectively recruit without opposing coaches being able to say that he won’t survive.”
Westfall was extremely complimentary of Castiglione for his track record of good decisions:
“Joe Castiglione is in the conversation for being the best athletic director in college sports,” Westfall continued. “He has led Oklahoma since 1998, and the football program has been outstanding under his leadership. Castiglione hired Bob Stoops to usher in a generation of glory in Norman. Lincoln Riley and Brent Venables were both celebrated as good hires when Castiglione made them. Most importantly, Castiglione made Oklahoma athletics attractive enough to get an invite to the SEC. So while the Venables extension looks hasty, there are logical reasons behind it. The best reason for the extension is that Castiglione made it.”
While we have to wait and see how Oklahoma will perform in 2024, Venables’ new deal takes away any hot-seat talk if the Sooners don’t meet expectations this season. Nationally, most are predicting a rough year in Norman, but the roster is continuing to improve. There aren’t a lot of holes on the depth chart aside from offensive line. Even that unit looks better than the national media likely thinks it will be.
But, like it or not, negative recruiting happens in college athletics, especially in college football. Coaches on the hot seat have an uphill climb to attract elite recruits because those recruits don’t know if that coach will still be there in a couple of years. Other programs know this and attack, doing all they can to sway the prospects away from that school.
As he prepares to lead the Oklahoma Sooners into a new dawn as an SEC program in 2024, Brent Venables received a contract extension and salary boost in late June. How much will the Oklahoma head coach earn in 2024, what are the terms of his contract, and what is Venables’ net worth with the Sooners?
Brent Venables’ Salary and Contract in 2024
Venables was once the model of consistency as the defensive coordinator for the Clemson Tigers. As a result of his contract extension, announced on June 21, 2024, he’ll provide a similar even keel for the Sooners as they travel into SEC waters. The extension is a six-year deal that will pay Venables a salary of $8.15 million in the 2024 college football campaign.
The extension comes just over two years after Venables left his comfortable and successful position as the Clemson defensive coordinator to become Oklahoma’s head coach. His original deal was a six-year contract totaling a $43.5 million salary. The June 2024 extension will bolster his total salary for the contract period to $51.6 million and aims to keep him in Norman until 2029.
Venables’ salary for 2024 is broken down into three components. Like several other head coach contracts, his agreement contains a relatively meager annual base salary ($325,000) that is bolstered by other income streams. At Oklahoma, those consist of personal services compensation ($7,225,000) and an annual remittance of $600,000 that contributes toward retirement.
Both the base salary and the retirement contribution remain static throughout the duration of Venables’ next six-year contract. However, the personal services compensation increases each year. As a result, the Oklahoma head coach will earn an average salary of $8.6 million under his newly announced deal.
