Brent Venables looking for players at 'every position' in the transfer portal

USA Today

16-04-2025

Brent Venables looking for players at 'every position' in the transfer portal
When Oklahoma Sooners head coach Brent Venables opened up his press conference after OU's "Crimson Combine" this weekend, it was only a matter of time before he was asked about the spring NCAA transfer portal window.
With spring football closed, the attention of the college football public turns to the spring portal, which runs from Wednesday until April 25th. It's the last opportunity for Oklahoma to add to its roster before the 2025 season begins in late August.
Venables and his coaching staff won't be shy about exploring the spring portal window. The head coach made sure to be clear about that on Saturday.
"Again, you're looking at, you know, probably every position on your team," Venables said. "You say, 'Well, we could use another guy there,' you really could. And so we have our priorities and really don't want to talk through those right now."
More: Oklahoma Sooners General Manager planning to be aggressive in Spring Transfer Portal
On Tuesday evening, the Sooners signed interior offensive lineman Jake Maikkula from Stanford and running back Jaydn Ott from Cal.
Venables also expressed the importance of retaining his own players as well, a constant struggle in the new world of college football.
'I think retention is the most important part of the whole puzzle," Venables said. 'You want to develop a locker room that has continuity, consistency, stability. That's healthy to be successful. And if you look at our roster and the numbers that we've signed — each year its gone down. And that's ideally what you want ... 'And you're going to have some fluidity. That's just the nature of where we're at today. But you want guys that are speckled throughout your roster that have been here three, four, five years. In a perfect world, you want a roster that has somewhere in that 75 to 25, 80 to 20, high school to portal range. I think that's a philosophy that we all believe in from a continuity standpoint.'
As Venables assumes full control of the defense and Ben Arbuckle steps into the role of offensive coordinator, the duo has an opportunity to build depth and improve this team. What OU does over the next ten days could have a big impact on how the 2025 season goes. According to the head coach, the Sooners are evaluating every position on the roster.
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