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SEC Sports
Clemson's Brent Venables saddened by college football's changing landscape
The Clemson’s defensive coordinator played at Big Eight Conference member Kansas State, and later was an assistant coach at Kansas State and Oklahoma.
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Change is inevitable, even in college football, and no one knows this better than Brent Venables.
Venables, Clemson’s defensive coordinator, played at Big Eight Conference member Kansas State, and later was an assistant coach at both Kansas State and Oklahoma after the Big Eight transformed to the Big 12 in the mid-1990s.
So after the recent announcement that Oklahoma and Texas would be joining the Southeastern Conference four years hence and reports that the Atlantic Coast Conference soon will combine forces with the Big Ten and the Pac-12 in an “alliance,” indulge Venables a melancholy moment or two.
“I’m a loyalist and a traditionalist at heart,” Venables said Thursday evening following Clemson’s final scrimmage of the preseason. “I was a player in the Big Eight and a coach in the Big Eight and coached in the first game in the history of the Big 12 Conference – Kansas State versus Texas Tech – with Byron Hanspard, Zebbie Lethridge at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, so, yeah, I’m very connected to that. Sad in many ways, but I’ve got great, great memories of the Big 12 Conference.”
Venables was a first-year linebackers coach at Kansas State when the Wildcats defeated Texas Tech and Hanspard and Lethridge 21-14 in that first Big 12 game on Aug. 31, 1996. He’s now entering his 10th season at Clemson and is the highest-paid assistant in the country at $2.5 million a year.
The ultimate fate of Venables’ former league remains uncertain, but the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 appear to be continuing with their own plans.
ESPN reported Friday that those three leagues will formally announce their alliance in the next seven to 10 days.
Clemson athletic director Dan Radakovich and ACC commissioner Jim Phillips both declined to comment on the report Friday afternoon.
“There will be some good that comes out of it,” Venables said. “I don’t know what exactly that is right now, but the game and the landscape that we’re in, as we all know, is changing.”
