Brent Venables explains the right way to develop college football players in NIL era

Brent Venables is not a fan of changing the college football landscape where NIL and revenue-sharing dictate the team's roster strength and depth chart. However, he is learning to adapt in his unique way.

Per Venables, players need to look beyond just making money in college and develop themselves into strong human beings.

He means learning beyond the realms of college football, which includes academics and self-development. While speaking to Josh Pate on his "Josh Pate's College Football Show" podcast, the veteran coach mentioned how Oklahoma has revamped its process to gear up for the NIL-fueled football era.

“We just had our fifth straight record setting semester, academically over a 3.0 team GPA, and we have 51 business majors as the top major on our team. And so when we started, we were closer to a 2.0 than we were a 3.0 embarrassingly speaking,” Venables said on Monday this week. [Timestamp - 36:36]

“But we've changed the mindset and the goal and just having great habits, you know, we become whatever our strongest thoughts are and whatever our strongest habits are. And so just developing great habits and showing up every single day and, and so again, making sure that there is, you know, there is that life, you know, after football, and there's, there's a plane that's, you know, it's going to crash to some degree.

"You know, making six figures plus maybe three quarters of it, and that's cool, great. But guess what? In a very short amount of time, there's a better chance than not that that's not going to be reality. You play this game a long time, but that day is coming quickly when you got to hang the cleats up. Now, what’s next?” he explained.

The Sooners now have a new program called 'Soul Mission,' which focuses on player development outside of sports. Acing academics, financial literacy, and securing the future happen to be the main agenda of this scheme. Coach Venables mentioned that a change in mindset is essential to cope with frequent upgrades.

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Brent Venables will get $20.5 million as part of revenue-sharing

Post-April, things will change significantly in college football. All participating schools will get $20.5 million as part of the House vs NCAA settlement to distribute among programs and roster management. Brent Venables and his team will take away a significant chunk of it.

These funds will be used to bring in more players, manage the rosters, and build the program and facilities. However, it is unclear how much the NIL will play its role above the new cap and whether players will get the opportunity to earn more outside of the allocated funds. The final verdict on the operations is due this April.