Brent Venables' 'coaching tree' includes Hayden Fry, Bill Snyder, Stoops brothers

When Dabo Swinney assembled his first Clemson coaching staff three years ago, he didn’t stray far from his SEC/ACC area roots.

He retained Brad Scott, with his Florida State-South Carolina-Clemson background, Billy Napier (Furman-Clemson) and Andre Powell (North Carolina-Virginia), and hired Kevin Steele (Florida State-Alabama), Danny Pearman (Clemson-Alabama-Virginia Tech) and Charlie Harbison (Alabama-LSU-Clemson-Mississippi State).

But last year, when Swinney made a change at the offensive coordinator position, he looked elsewhere for his top two candidates – Chad Morris out of Tulsa, just a year removed from the Texas high school sidelines, and Justin Fuente, offensive coordinator at TCU.

Swinney continued his look to the West earlier this winter when he zeroed in quickly on Oklahoma’s Brent Venables as his choice for defensive coordinator.

Venables, like Morris before him, brings a fresh outlook and a very different background to Clemson’s coaching staff.

For Venables, the trunk of his personal coaching tree is Hayden Fry, long-time head coach at Iowa, who has sent a string of former players and assistant coaches to high-profile head coaching jobs, including Bob and Mark Stoops, Bill Snyder, Barry Alvarez, Jim Leavitt and Bo Pelini, among others.

Venables’ particular limb of the tree starts with Snyder, for whom he played at Kansas State, and includes the Stoops brothers, who he coached with, and for, at Oklahoma.

Asked to talk about his coaching influences during an interview with Clemson’s official website, Venables started with Snyder, who recruited him out of Garden City (Kansas) Community College, where he earned All-America honors as a linebacker in 1990.

At Kansas State, he encountered a tutor that he describes as “relentless in his demands” and “methodical” in his approach to everything he does.

“There’s just a totality and mind-set and attitude of the program,” said Venables. “Bill’s not a yeller or a screamer, but he’s very much about the discipline that it takes to be a success at anything in life.

“You control what you can control, and your goal should be to get a little bit better every day. He’s very strong into muscle memory. Defense is trained reaction, and offense is execution. He’s not out to trick anybody. It’s fundamentals and technique and playing with great effort, fighting through adversity and handling prosperity, and demanding the most out of your guys.

“If you always stick to those core values, even through rough times – because things aren’t always easy – then you’ll end up weathering the storm.”

From Snyder, Venables said he learned attention to detail and teamwork.

“He’s so much into the little things – fundamentals, technique, effort and being team-oriented,” Venables said. “It’s all team – we’re the Clemson Tigers, just like they’re the Kansas State Wildcats. It’s not offense-defense and all that. There are going to be days when one side is going to be clicking and the other isn’t. You have to play team football.

“As a team, we have to have the same mind-set – the tough-mindedness that it takes and resolve that it takes. We need to build our leadership within our locker room, and we need to develop chemistry as a team – not just defense and offense.

“If we do those things we’ll have success. It takes work, and you have to foster that environment. It doesn’t just happen by chance.”

As part of Oklahoma’s coaching staff for 13 years, Venables and the Stoops brothers took what they learned from older coaches like Fry and Snyder and ran with it.

“In regard to the influence of both Bob and Mike, it’s a lot of the same principles that we all learned through the Hayden Fry coaching tree,” Venables said. “Bob is a very confident, aggressive coach. He doesn’t want you to coach on your heels. At the same time, he understands when a call wasn’t the perfect call. But that’s OK, get to the next one.”

At Oklahoma, Venables said he learned the value of “forcing the issue.”

“That kind of confidence and aggressive approach means that you’re not afraid about the outcome,” he said. “You want to force the issue as a defensive play-caller and defensive coach. And then you want your players to play that way.

“On game day, (Bob Stoops) didn’t really have that much to say to us on defense. But if you asked him for advice in any particular situation – like ‘do we drop eight or come after them?’ It was always ‘come after them.’

“It’s not like it’s not calculated. It’s not being blitz-happy. Aggression doesn’t mean that you’re sending the house every time.”