Nick Saban heaps praise on the Oklahoma Sooners

Day 1 of 4 at SEC media days in Dallas featured plenty of influential figures in the conference making their opinions known. One of the biggest voices in SEC country had high praise for the Oklahoma Sooners and their head coach.

Former LSU and Alabama head coach Nick Saban complimented Brent Venables and said he believes the roster in Norman is improving.

“I think he’s a really, really good coach. He’s a hard worker, he’s an attention to detail guy,” Saban said of Venables. “He’s one of the best defensive coaches in college football. I think their roster is getting better, especially on the defensive side, which was the issue.”

T.J. Eckert of KUTL Channel 8 in Tulsa shared more of the seven-time national champion head coach’s comments, as Saban elaborated on his point.

“They’ve had really good offensive teams when Lincoln (Riley) was there and were never quite good enough on defense to get it over the hump, but I think they’re getting better as a total, balanced roster in terms of the kind of athletes they have, the kind of speed they have, the kind of athleticism they have on their team,” Saban said.

Saban’s comments echo the drumbeat of local media in the state of Oklahoma about the football program that has gotten louder over the years. National media is beginning to pick up on the idea that fans and analysts of the Sooners were right about the roster building that was occurring in Norman.

Saban saw the Sooners firsthand when they were very poor defensively, beating them in the College Football Playoff in 2018. In the semifinal game at the Orange Bowl, Alabama defeated Oklahoma 45-34. Saban’s Crimson Tide got out to a 21-0 lead before Kyler Murray and the Sooners could even blink that night in Miami. Tua Tagovailoa and Alabama led 28-0 before the Sooners even got on the board. From there, the Tide were content to take their foot off the gas and keep OU at arm’s length. The Sooner offense led a second-half comeback, but ‘Bama never allowed them to get closer than 11 points, the eventual winning margin.

The following year, in 2019, Jalen Hurts and Oklahoma were defeated by Justin Jefferson and LSU by a score of 63-28 in the Peach Bowl CFP semifinal game. The Tigers jumped out to a 35-7 lead but refused to let up on the gas pedal and led 49-14 at halftime, rolling to the 35-point win. The loss dropped OU to 0-4 in the Playoff, with only one of those games decided by one possession.

These events, and others of the more recent variety, make it clear that OU needed to change the composition and makeup of their roster if they wanted to win national championships, not just make the Playoff. This fact would be true even if the CFP was staying at four teams, as opposed to the reality of the expansion to twelve teams. The way that the roster was built had to be altered if more titles were to come to Norman.

Brent Venables has only been on the job for two and-a-half years, but the OU administration knows they’ve got their guy. Saban’s comments are just the latest this week that illustrate that people around the country are beginning to believe in what Venables has been patiently building in Norman.

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