Brent Venables & Jim Nagy forming a dynamic duo that has already paid dividends for the Oklahoma Sooners' roster building

To kick off the offseason, the Oklahoma Sooners made waves when they announced former Senior Bowl director and longtime NFL executive Jim Nagy as the general manager of their football team moving forward. 

The move was viewed as a coup by Oklahoma, and it's paid off with a tremendous spring transfer portal performance, most notably pulling in running back Jaydn Ott. Nagy has already begun building out a terrific front office to help the Sooners navigate this new era of revenue sharing and help shape the future of the Oklahoma football team. 

Last season, Venables had so much on his plate with all of the normal responsibilities of being a head coach with retaining talent for this season, continuing to recruit the 2025 class, keep morale up for the current team amid a dismal season with the weight of his wife's health struggles bearing down on him. It's a lot for even the most seasoned of people. Trying to balance this new era of college football on top of all that would have made things even worse.  

Nagy's acumen and his work have taken a load off of head coach Brent Venables's shoulders, and he made that clear at SEC Media Days. 

"The addition of Jim in that front office has allowed me not to have to worry as much. You’re still involved a little bit. But the resource allocation, the talent retention, the talent acquisition, the talent evaluation. Between putting together a staff and then dealing with both the ‘26 class and moving forward, it has been a lot of fun developing trust in the relationships." 

The balance between the evaluations of Nagy's staff and the coaching staff will be an interesting hurdle to see them overcome. Several of Nagy's staff have NFL evaluation experience, which is a different battle than high school recruiting.

While this is still a relatively new relationship and there will be some things to iron out over the coming months, it's evident that Oklahoma's new approach to the game is bearing fruit, and it's a newly renewed Venables that has taken center stage. 

"From a talent retention, we just smashed it, I feel like, for what we were able to keep. I know everybody can see, ‘OK, what was lost?’ What we were able to keep was where we put a lot of time. I think that was the most important piece of the roster structure and what we have going into the ‘25 season."

It's clear that Venables has been encouraged by the combined efforts of him and Nagy's budding relationship and what they've already been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time together. From the addition of Ott to the brief David Stone saga, Nagy and Venables have put together a strong first offseason together. 

I don't think it's a coincidence that shortly after the overhaul of the front office and subsequent changes, Oklahoma's 2026 recruiting class started popping off. While the Sooners haven't reeled in five-stars to jumpstart their class to the top ten once more, they've built inroads and picked up commitments from key players and upside prospects as they right the ship from their 2024 season. 

It will be fascinating to see how they continue to grow together from here and just what they can accomplish, especially now in this completely different era of college football.