Broyles Award winner
Third try is the charm for Clemson’s Venables.
Brent Venables made a decision in January 2012, but he was not sure it was for the best.
After 13 seasons working for his mentor Bob Stoops, Venables left Oklahoma to venture out on his own. He was leaving a coach he had known since he was a player at Kansas State in 1991 for Clemson, a school in a league he didn’t know much about located in a state that he had rarely visited.
“I cried like a baby for a week,” he said. “Tried to change my mind a few different times. But, again, God is good, and He has put me in the right place.”
Almost five years later, it’s hard to second-guess Venables’ decision.
Since the move, he’s led one
of the country’s best defenses and helped Clemson reach the College Football Playoff for a second year in a row. On Tuesday in Little Rock, he was named the 21st winner of the Broyles Award, which goes to college football’s top assistant coach and for which he had been a finalist two other times.
Venables, 45, has the Tigers’ defense ranked first or second in the Atlantic Coast Conference in scoring defense, total defense, pass defense and turnovers forced. Clemson, ranked No. 2 by the College Football Playoff committee, will play No. 3 Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl on Dec. 31, with the winner playing for a national title. Clemson lost to Alabama in last season’s national title game.
“It’s the ultimate team award,” Venables said of winning Tuesday at the Little Rock Marriott. “Even our offensive coaches and offensive players are having a huge part in this — a collaborative effort that I’m proud to represent.”
Venables might not have been there Tuesday had he not taken a career risk in 2012.
After six seasons as a graduate assistant and linebackers coach at Kansas State, his alma mater, Venables went to Oklahoma as co-defensive coordinator in 1999. For 13 years he worked for Stoops — who was an assistant at Kansas State when Venables played — putting together some of the game’s best defenses. The Sooners won a national title in 2000, played for it three other times and won the Big 12 title seven times.
After a 10-4 finish in 2011 capped by a 70-33 loss to West Virginia in the Orange Bowl, Clemson Coach Dabo Swinney was looking for a new defensive coordinator. He contacted Venables, who by mid-January 2012 was coaching on the East Coast.
“I’m not afraid to admit that I was terrified for my family,” Venables said. “I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t know who I could trust. Very, very hard to close a chapter in your life. We love Norman, and we love Coach Stoops and the Oklahoma family.”
Venables said it was the “spirit of Coach Swinney” that pulled him from Oklahoma more than his desire to branch out on his own.
But Jim Leavitt said the independence helped. Leavitt, Colorado’s defensive coordinator who also was a finalist for the Broyles Award, coached Venables at Kansas State and worked with him as a graduate assistant.
“That was important for his career,” Leavitt said.
It was Leavitt who could have made Venables’ career go in a different direction from the start. Leavitt left Kansas State in 1996 to start the program at South Florida. He told Venables he had a job for him, but it didn’t come with many perks.
“You’ll have to work for free. Full-time. I might be able to get you a car,” Venables said Leavitt told him.
Venables stayed at Kansas State, and his career began an upward arc.
Almost every finalist Tuesday told tales of their humble beginnings.
Jeremy Pruitt, Alabama’s defensive coordinator, at one time taught elementary physical education.
Matt Canada, Pittsburgh’s offensive coordinator, was paid $5,000 in his first fulltime job at Butler. He made extra money by hanging signs
advertising the Indianapolis 500.
Leavitt, whose duties as a first-year coach at the University of Dubuque included teaching a psychology course, said he lived in a car parked at a campground while being paid $6 a day.
“I think you learn early through the game of football that you’re going to get what you earn, nothing comes free,” Venables said. “It takes a commitment and a consistency and hard work and toughness. And so, as a foundation, that’s what it’s all about.”
If successful, coaches earn better jobs and higher salaries, like all five of the finalists did at one point. Some even become head coaches. Last year’s winner, Oklahoma offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley, has not become a head coach, but six of the seven winners before him are current head coaches.
Venables, who also beat out Michigan’s Don Brown for the award, said that move isn’t quite on his mind yet.
“I’ve got everything I could ever want in a coaching career,” he said. “I’m very aware of what I do have, not what I don’t have. So, I have an attitude of gratitude, and I embrace what I have and fight every day to keep it.”