The tier of college football head coaches making $10 million per year grew on Thursday as the Oklahoma Sooners gave Brent Venables a six-year extension worth $10.5 million per year. It's another buy-in from OU after the head coach led the Sooners to the College Football Playoff in 2025. Frankly, it's one that's likely to come back and bite them.
Technically, the extension is for an additional two years on his previous deal, an extension struck in 2024 to keep him in place until 2029. The new deal locks him in until 2031 and gives him a significant pay raise up from $8.15 million.
Extensions are just part of the business of college football. Recruits and their families want to know that a coach is going to be around for their entire career, so it's common for schools to keep their coach extended out four or five years as a matter of course. When a coach achieves something, a raise usually follows. That doesn't change where this extension could put the Sooners with a head coach who is still very much unproven.
Brent Venables coaching snapshot at Oklahoma shows mixed results
- Record: 32-20 (.615)
- Postseason record: 0-4
- Record vs. Texas: 1-3
- Best AP finish: 13th (2025)
- Best SEC finish: T-5th (2025)
Venables has as many 6-7 seasons at Oklahoma as he does 10-3 (two each). He took them to the playoff, yes, but his team lost that playoff game by 10 points at home to an Alabama team that they'd beaten earlier in the season and had just been curb-stomped by Georgia in the SEC title game.
At this point, just making the playoff should be the minimum expectation for a head coach at a program like Oklahoma. The reward should come for winning a playoff game.
Giving Brent Venables a significant raise could look silly in record time
The last time Oklahoma extended Venables, before the 2024 season, the Sooners went on to a 6-7 season. This year, FPI's projected win total is 7.5-4.6. Venables will have to outperform projections in order to have OU anywhere near the playoff.
Maybe he'll do that and make this whole things look silly (preemptive hello to Freezing Cold Takes!). That feels like a 50-50 proposition. I don't know about you, but locking myself into $10.5 million per year for the next six years on a coin flip isn't something that would fill me with confidence.
This is the kind of deal that would have made all kinds of sense if Oklahoma had struck it after the 2026 season. Maybe the cost would be higher if Venables led the Sooners to an outstanding season, but that's a risk that would feel worth taking.
The ceiling on coaching contracts in college football is now $13.2 million, a figure set by Indiana's Curt Cignetti after winning a national title. If I were Oklahoma, I'd be happy to come closer to that number with Venables if he went out and proved himself in the College Football Playoff in 2026. They're just as likely to see him scrape to a 7-5 record in the regular season.
There is a real possibility we're talking about Venables on the hot seat by the middle of October. Oklahoma plays at No. 16 Michigan and at No. 3 Georgia before the month of September is over. And then they get No. 5 Texas on Oct. 10. That's not to mention ending the season against No. 9 Ole Miss, No. 8 Texas A&M and at No. 25 Missouri.
As it stands, Oklahoma may find themselves in a familiarly embarrassing spot: extending a coach whose team then takes a step back.
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