Oklahoma Sooners, Brent Venables have finally mastered the transfer portal, provide refreshing take on spending in the portal

In Brent Venables' first season as head coach of the Oklahoma Sooners, he drew the ire of plenty of Oklahoma fans for his reluctance to use the transfer portal, especially for his decision not to pull any defenders away from Clemson. Even during his first two seasons at the helm, it was clear Venables was more set on prioritizing recruiting over the portal, and it never really seemed like he fully understood the balance of recruits and transfers.

However, that's begun to shift over the last two offseasons, culminating in a fresh take on the portal this offseason that has me optimistic about Venables and this coaching staff's approach to the portal. 

On SEC Media Days, Venables spoke about the Sooners' strategy in the portal, particularly citing their cornerback position as an example of their decision-making.

"We don’t have unlimited resources and the ability to allocate and go in the transfer portal, get a proven guy that comes with a tremendous financial investment, and then it leaves somebody else — it limits their opportunity. In a perfect world, we would have continuity and stability and consistency. So like I said, where we needed to kind of invest in our team, we just really felt like we had good, young talent with, again, good experience returning. That was the best use of our resources."

In my opinion, that viewpoint shows Venables understands the balance of resource allocation, playing time, and development in the portal era, and why Oklahoma wouldn't go swinging for big fish despite fan pressure constantly wanting big names from the portal. There's a key balance between spending and developing players you went out and recruited. Money spent there is money that could be used elsewhere. 

It may seem like an obvious point, but it surprisingly isn't by many fans and even some coaches who just constantly want to build through the portal (see: a former Oklahoma coach who went out west a few years ago). 

While this change in mentality could be due to Jim Nagy's presence as general manager, it's an important step in Venables' growth as a head coach and program builder.