Everything Brent Venables said from the podium at SEC Media Days

SEC Media Days kicked off Monday from Tampa, Florida, with 4 SEC head coaches taking the podium to discuss their team’s upcoming seasons. Across the next 3 days, we’ll hear from the other 12 SEC coaches.

Following Greg Sankey’s comments, Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables took the podium. Here is the complete transcript of Sankey’s televised press conference, via ASAP Sports:

RELATED: Take a look at some of the best sports betting apps on the market here!

—

BRENT VENABLES: Alright. Thanks so much. Good to be here with everyone. Excited to be here. This time of the year, this is my 33rd year in coaching, my fifth year at Oklahoma, and my third SEC Media Day. This time of the year never gets old. Certainly goes by fast, though.

On behalf of Roger Denny, our athletic director, Joe Harroz, our president, and Randall Stephenson, our chair of football, and Board of Trustees, I have to say it’s an extreme honor to be here to represent both our program and our University of Oklahoma.

Everything that we’ve done for the last seven months as we know builds to this moment. This is a very energetic, there’s a buzz in the air, an excitement across the country. People that love college football, with kickoff, training camp is just around the corner here for us in 16 days. Our kickoff against UTEP, 46 days from now. Really exciting times.

I’d like to thank Commissioner Sankey and his entire staff for, again, all the countless depth of the staff that they have to not only put this event on, but all that they do, the leadership, their tireless work to make the SEC from top to bottom the premier conference in all of intercollegiate athletics, first class in everything that we do.

I want to take this opportunity as well to recognize and give gratitude to our incredible donor base and our fans. Their investment in our program, their commitment, their passion, their love, the impact on the success that they have for us as a program, truly does take everybody. Again, I can’t thank them enough. Incredibly fortunate when it comes to that.

Thanks to the great city of Tampa for hosting this event, putting on a first class event. Baker Mayfield recommended to Mike Houck, our SID, to go to Charley’s last night for a good steak. It was absolutely phenomenal. Players really enjoyed it. The butter cake is better than what they said it was going to be. I highly recommend that.

I appreciate all the media, all of you, for being here. Especially the Oklahoma media. I’m going to give you the flowers one time a year. If you’re lucky I’m going to give it.

I just want to thank you for all your hard work covering our program, certainly our players that are here today. Y’all are really going to enjoy your time with them.

Finally before I answer any questions, I also want to express my love and appreciation for the amazing staff that I have, for the players that are here, and especially for the players that are still back in Norman. Their body of work, their commitment, just their relentlessness over the last seven months to give us the chance to have the kind of season that we want.

One of the many reasons that gets us excited about this year’s team is finding the three guys and telling several other guys that were more deserving they weren’t going to make the cut. The depth of the leadership we have in our locker room right now is as good as we’ve had, better than we’ve probably had here in the five years at Oklahoma. Really excited about that.

The three young men that are here today, several of you have probably already heard from them and visited with them, but our quarterback John Mateer, defensive end Taylor Wein, and offensive guard Eddy Pierre-Louis from right here in Tampa. These are three young men that, man, they are as good as it gets when it comes to the type of alphas they are and their ability to elevate everyone around them.

But they’re going to be able to give you the details about this year’s team, where they want to see it go, what they believe this year’s team’s identity is going to be all about. You guys are going to love getting a chance to know them a little more.

This year’s team, we got a lot of really good pieces. The real challenge now is kind of putting it all together to build the best team we possibly can over the next several weeks and months. The true identity of this team will be developed going through hard stuff, the highs and lows and challenges of a season.

We have to build and stack every day. A lot of hard work in front of us now. Don’t have a day to waste. Really looking forward to getting started with them here in 16 days.

With that, I’ll be glad to answer questions.

THE MODERATOR: If you have a question, raise your hand.

Q. Is it weird for you to process the fact that despite all the hiking and stadium runs you do, that you’re now the oldest coach in this conference?

BRENT VENABLES: Nothing’s weird to me. But I’ll say this, I don’t feel old. I’m double nickels, 55. That sounds old, but my spirit’s good. I’m in a great spot.

Q. How will you replicate the success of last year’s defensive line and the offense line challenges?

BRENT VENABLES: We returned four guys up front. Last year we started three freshmen. What happens with freshmen guys that haven’t played in the SEC, their first snaps in college, you’re not as confident, aggressive, strong as a fourth- or fifth-year guy. There’s the timing, the cohesion.

A year ago on offense, we had nine first-year starters. This year we’ve got several returning starters, give or take seven or eight guys coming back.

Up front we’ve got four returning starters. We have one of the most experienced portal tackles in the country in E’Marion Harris to add to that group of those four years. Jake Maikkula, a year ago at this time he had just gotten on campus from Stanford. Went several months without being in a locker room preparing his first year away from Stanford in the SEC.

I think there’s going to be a better version of all those guys. I think they’re stronger, more confident, there’s more chemistry, cohesion. Certainly there’s an experience factor, what it takes to be better in the SEC.

Make no mistake, we’ve got a lot of improvement to do there offensively speaking in being able to run the football. We have to run it a heck of a lot better than we did a year ago. I believe in not only them but the other parts around them offensively.

Defensively I don’t take anything for granted. We lost four really good players up front, two at defensive end and two at defensive tackle. A year ago at this time David Stone, very highly recruited guy coming out of high school, top guy in the country, proclaimed him, wrote stories about him, might be a bust, things of that nature. He didn’t listen to any of that. He just put his head down and worked and had an outstanding sophomore year.

Taylor Wein is a guy coming into the summer, he comes to see me, one of the lowest paid guys on our roster, a guy that we offered his senior year in high school in the Playoffs. He asked me if he could get some incentives. I said why don’t you worry about playing first before we worry about that. All he did Taylor is became an all SEC player and lead our team, seven sacks, 15 tackles for loss.

I say that to remind certainly myself but everybody that every year there’s a new storyline when it comes to players emerging, players coming out of nowhere.

This is a line of scrimmage league, make no mistake about it. The margins are incredibly small. I would argue if you lose the line of scrimmage in any particular game, most of the time you’re going to lose the game. If you’re going to lose, it’s by how much you’re going to lose.

That’s where it starts for us. It’s not only a mentality, you recruit to that, you nurture that. As we’re getting ready to start fall camp here, our training camp, you develop a tough physical team in fall camp. You want to play that way in the season. That’s what you have to develop during the course of fall camp.

But I am excited about the group of guys that we have there up front on both sides of the ball. We’ve recruited well, developed well. The guys are eager to go prove their worth.

Q. Last year you came in the season without a lot of hype on the team. This year quite a bit more. How did you use that to your advantage last year and how will you replicate it since the buzz about your chances are much higher?

BRENT VENABLES: Yeah, I screen shot the list and stuff like that. Sometimes you use it, sometimes you don’t. We’re at the bottom of most lists. I don’t know what lists are out there, but most of them.

Listen, we focus on things that we can control. Do you ever use that as a motivation for a guy to maybe humble a guy? Absolutely. But at the end of the day this is a game of performance, this is a game that’s about the work, and this is a game where it’s decided on the field.

As I said opening up, we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’re not a very good team yet. We have a lot of foundational pieces that, as I said, we’re really excited about. There’s a tremendous eagerness. Learned a lot a year ago. Some of it’s affirmation and belief.

Where maybe a lot of people didn’t pick us or talk highly of us a year ago going into the season, our ability to overcome that, to block out the noise, to focus on the things that we can control, improve and get better, figure out our identity as the season went along.

There’s a confidence and momentum that comes from the season as well, as well as the way the season ended, the disappointment. I think the hunger of this football team is there. The motivation to put themselves in the conversation down the road, the work it needs to do that.

Try to be focused and rooted in our work, our preparation, our brotherhood, loyalty, the toughness it takes to win and do the things that winning requires.

Q. Coming off a 6-7 season two years prior to 10-3 last year, what are you instilling in your players that success becomes the standard at Oklahoma and not just a one-off season?

BRENT VENABLES: Yeah, I think again you focus on the programmatically your standards, what your non-negotiables are as a program. You recruit the right kind of people, have the right kind of staff. There’s a development component.

Obviously two years ago we were hemorrhaged on offense, nine starters that were out, season-ending injuries, ten different starting lineups. Our top six receivers unavailable with a freshman quarterback squeezing the ball, a very unforgiving conference with the defenses they see week in and week out.

You see the things that were going well, try to build on those. You try to learn from your injury situation to efficiently get better. You’re always looking at that.

But you recruit the right kind of guys. If you look defensively speaking, for example, you saw a lot of it last year, but you see a program that’s a developmental program. I think we had nine starters on defense that were all high school guys that were here for us a year ago, guys that were homegrown and developed. Went through some hard times, ability to get better from those hard times, learning from both the good and the bad.

Creating real momentum, that’s a real thing from one year to the next, especially with the amount of returning guys that we have in all really three phases to continue to build on the success from a year ago.

Q. You were just talking about the defensive development. Since you’ve gotten to OU, you’ve had great competitive depth on defense. On offense you have struggled the last couple of years. Where do you feel that competitive depth is on that side of the ball and that development of homegrown players?

BRENT VENABLES: A great question.

I think there’s some positions that have a little more of competitive depth, a few positions you wish you had a little more.

At the end of the day I think we’ve addressed and improved every one of the positions from the guys that are in the room. I think you develop that as well. I think modern college football today requires you to get more inexperienced players ready sooner rather than later to develop that.

Raising the bottom half of your roster, if you will, guys that maybe haven’t established themselves quite yet or they’re out of high school, I think it’s important that we do a great job. We’re very mindful that we expeditiously develop them and put them in a position where they can create the kind of depth that helps you win. It’s easier said than done, but that’s really where the focus is.

Again, I think, for example, we’ve transformed really the wide receiver and the tight end room. We have five really good backs. Up front we probably have nine guys that can play winning football for us right now.

How that compares, there’s probably a few teams that have better than that, then there’s probably more people that are like us or a little bit less when it comes to that.

I like where we’re at quarterback right now, both with John and certainly in the future.

Not an easy thing to do in this transfer portal world. I’m excited that we only have one portal. Helps you have your team a little bit longer and less tampering.

But I’m really excited about what Jim Nagy and our front office have helped us do, transform that side of the football. We’re going to be better and our quarterback and have a lot of experience coming back this year compared to where we were a year ago.

Q. What leadership have you seen from Eddy specifically? What factored into the decision to bring him here as a team representative given that leadership that you talked about earlier?

BRENT VENABLES: Yeah, great question.

Eddy, he’s an alpha. Eddy is a guy that’s had to work incredibly hard. I think he was the top-rated guard by many recruiting outlets coming out of high school.

Eddy had some things he needed to work on fundamentally, from his body standpoint, flexibility, things of that nature. Eddy has been somebody that has shown up in the facility from the day he got to Norman, Oklahoma with tremendous gratitude. He affects everybody in our building every single day. He’s thoughtful. Shows up with the right mentality, with something to prove. He brings out the best in his teammates. He’s willing to have honest conversations with his teammates. He’s a motivator. He loves to play, loves to compete, loves to kick butt. He loves to knock the hell out of the guys lined up across. That resonates.

His juice, his energy, his passion, his love for his teammates, his love for his opportunity really kind of has him stand out there all by himself. He’s been fantastic.

We talk every day in our facility about elevation. Oklahoma is a place of elevation. But everybody has that responsibility to elevate the brand of Oklahoma football, elevate their opportunity, their teammates. If they’re doing it right, becoming a great player, a great leader, is about elevating others. Eddy has done that as good as anybody in our facility.

Q. Y’all struggled around the ball last year, same as Alabama, same as Texas, a lot of teams. Do you feel like the running game has taken a backseat in any way to the passing game?

BRENT VENABLES: I think there potentially could be something to that. I don’t want to get into all the minutia in that regard. Certainly you named three teams that have been used to running the ball incredibly well over the history of time, not doing it well. Lots of reasons for that.

For us, I don’t spend a whole lot of time on what’s out there in college football, who’s doing what, other than what we’re doing in Norman. We have to be more aggressive, more physical. We have to be better technically sound, have all the right schemes. We got to have belief. We got to have the toughness that goes along with that. That’s really where we have focused our time here in the out of season.

For us to be a championship team, to be in that conversation at the end of the year, we have to be a whole heck of a lot better. It puts tremendous pressure on every part of your team when you can’t consistently run the football.

Fortunately for us a year ago, guys stepped up at times and were a big part of helping us win. At the end of the day for us to be who we want to be, the vision that we have, we have to run the ball a hell of a lot better than we have the last couple of years.

Q. What are your thoughts on renewing an old conference rivalry with Texas A&M this year?

BRENT VENABLES: It’s exciting. Another one of the long teams that talks about the depth of the SEC. Mike and his staff have done a wonderful job at building the roster, taking over a really good roster when Jimbo left, continued that tradition of building in the trenches. If they’ve done something really well, they’ve done that well.

Going to be a great, great challenge. Going to be in Norman thankfully for us. One of many good teams that man we have to show up with our A game and have a chance to compete.

Q. So much for easing into the schedule this year. Three of your first five games really front-loaded. You’re at Michigan, at Georgia, then Texas in Dallas. Does that change your preparation schedule for the beginning of the season? You start right in the fire.

BRENT VENABLES: I mean, every game’s big, right? You only get 12 opportunities, unlike baseball or basketball. My responsibility is to get our guys ready to play football all 12 games.

You play an early game against Michigan on the road. There’s some things you’re trying to do from a scheduling standpoint that will give you the best chance to recover and be ready to go play. Great challenge.

I think in the out-of-season program for us, it’s worked to our benefit in regards to the motivation, the excitement, the enthusiasm, the quality of the work that our guys have put in. Couldn’t be more excited about that.

Again, you’re not going to sneak up on anybody in Ann Arbor or going to Athens, Georgia. I think they’ve lost maybe once in five or six years at home. Georgia has been the gold standard in my opinion for college football for quite some time now. Then obviously Texas in Dallas is always a tremendous challenge, something our guys are ready to do.

I think that’s more of an affirmation. Playing Michigan certainly out of conference, but that’s what our conference looks like. Each and every week, you’re not going to sneak up on anybody. Nobody’s going to look past Oklahoma. We’re going to bring out the best in everybody.

Something our guys are really looking forward to the challenge particularly early in the season. There’s no walkovers after those three games either.

Q. Last year’s team motto was ‘hard to kill’. Is that carrying over this year? More importantly, are we getting any more 50 Cent performances in Norman this year?

BRENT VENABLES: I don’t know about 50 Cent. The ‘hard to kill’ motto, we don’t look to those to hang on. I think the identity of the team is what we focus on. That’s going to be developed.

‘Hard to kill’, what does it mean? It means all the things we want to be about as a program, stick-to-itness, a program built on toughness. This is the game of football, and we play again in a game today where the margins, as I said earlier, are incredibly small. Winning is incredibly challenging.

For our guys, man, each and every week is going to be a bloodbath. We got to figure it out, play complementary football. The most physical football teams win at the end of the day. That’s what it’s all about. There’s no substitute for being physical.

For me, that aligns right with who I am. So our guys, they understand what it takes to win in this league. Again, I’m not sure we’re going to hang our hats on any new slogans and whatnot. I think we need to be building on the right things and rooted in the right things: hard work, toughness, physicality, learning the value of punching back because you’re going to get punched, knocked on the ground. How you respond decides ultimately the kind of success you have.

Q. Last year you talked about middle depth being a big part of your reason you guys won. This year heading into this season, how do you feel about the middle depth, guys that take up snap counts, special teams? What are some of those guys that you feel have a chance to step up this year?

BRENT VENABLES: Great question. Something we’ve talked about over the last seven months virtually daily in our program.

I think a year ago, particularly on defense, there were more proven players in that middle half of our roster that we had not theory but we actually had evidence that we could build on.

I think the challenge for this year’s team is how fast can we raise that level up. Just like there was a year ago, nobody knew who Tate Sandell was, Grayson Miller. Mike Fasusi wasn’t even shaving last year. I think he started his first football game and he had just turned 18 years old.

Ryan Fodje, same thing as a freshman. Isaiah Satenga, some guy from Arkansas. So many guys you didn’t know about. It’s going to happen again this year. Who that is going to be, very intentional about developing, trying to, again, bring guys along quickly, put guys in a position where you strain them, put them in positions where they’re forced to grow and get better, whether that’s reps, lot of development, film room.

That makes for us as a staff the competitors we are is how fast can we do that. Can we do it better than other people. Whether that’s Nigel Smith or Trent Wilson or Bishop Thomas. P.J., to play a season where he’s healthy. Reggie Powers emerging, things of that nature. Courtland Guillory is another guy that a year ago nobody really knew who he was other than a true freshman from Houston. He comes out and has a freshman All-American type year.

That’s going to happen again. I don’t know who that is going to be. Don’t know where it is on the Richter scale we’re at this percentage or we’re close to where we were a year ago. I think it will all play itself out over the next several months. I think it’s going to be part of the story of this football team when it’s all said and done as well.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you for your time.

BRENT VENABLES: Appreciate it. Y’all have a great day. Boomer Sooner.