Why Brent Venables is grateful his first evaluation of Josh Heupel 'couldn't have been more wrong'
The Tennessee coach changed OU football fortunes as the 1999-2000 quarterback.
NORMAN — Brent Venables looked down at the old turf practice field and sized up the quarterback recruit Mike Leach had brought to town.
Skinny. Frail. Pasty.
The lefty was playing catch that winter day in 1999, and every once in a while, the football would come out of his hand wobbly.
"That ain't it," Venables thought.
Then the OU co-defensive coordinator, Venables wanted a quarterback for Bob Stoops' first Sooner team and Leach's first Air Raid offense who was bigger and stronger. Someone who could run and pass. Someone who cut an impressive figure.
Basically, the opposite of what he saw that day on the practice field.
"Couldn't have been more wrong," Venables admitted Tuesday.
That recruit was Josh Heupel.
As Heupel and his Tennessee Volunteers prepare to face Venables and his Sooners on Saturday, there are lots of big storylines. OU's first game in the SEC. Tennessee's ascension to the top-of-the-conference heap. Heupel's return to the place from which he was fired as offensive coordinator.
But as much as anything, this is a chance for Sooners everywhere to appreciate what Heupel did as a player. Yes, he quarterbacked OU to the 2000 national championship. Sure, he finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting.
His biggest impact, though, may well have been on things all of us outside the program didn't see.
"He bridged ... " Venables started, then stopped himself. "I don't know what the culture was like before we got here, so it's not really fair for me to say that he changed it, other than there was some brokenness."
No doubt about that. After John Blake was fired after the final game of the 1998 season, players were torn. Emotions were raw because Blake was wildly popular with the players despite his failings as a head coach.
Things were so bad that the Sooners who had just finished their first season at OU — the 1998 recruiting class — were considering transferring en masse. That would've likely taken out guys like Roy Williams and Andre Woolfolk, Rocky Calmus and Trent Smith.
The group ended up meeting one night in a downstairs lounge at Bud Wilkinson Hall and ultimately decided to stay.
But still, there were fissures and fractures.
Enter, Heupel.
"He brought people together, and he was able to relate to people regardless of what they come from," Venables said. "Sometimes it's not as easy to get it to mesh, everybody from all the different backgrounds and whatnot, but it was for him. He led the way."
Venables smiled as he retold the stories, the appreciation for what not only Heupel but also the Sooners did in those days no doubt growing with time and perspective.
"One of his best friends was Torrance Marshall and is still to this day," Venables said of the supremely talented linebacker. "And if you know Torrance, he went to (Miami Sunset) High School in South Miami, and of course, Josh is from Aberdeen (S.D.).
"Man, they couldn't have come from two completely different environments."
For his part, Marshall doesn't remember any differences with Heupel.
"See, I went to junior college," Marshall said when I reached him by telephone Tuesday evening, "so I learned pretty fast that you judge people on not where they're from but on their character. You'd be surprised by the type of people you meet at junior college; it's all types of people.
"We're kind of cut from the same cloth as far as taking a different route."
Heupel started his college career at Weber State, but after tearing his ACL, he spent a year at Snow Junior College in Ephraim, Utah. He once told me that he lived in a four-bedroom apartment with seven other players, but he did have his own room: a closet.
Marshall signed with Miami, but after failing to be admitted academically, he went to Kemper Military School in Boonville, Missouri, then to Miami-Dade Community College.
When Marshall arrived in Norman during the summer of 1999, Heupel was already on campus. He was quarterbacking seven-on-seven drills the first time Marshall met him.
"He was real inviting," Marshall remembered. "Just introduced himself and said who he was. ... He was real personable."
That personality wasn't always what outsiders saw in Heupel as he broke every passing record in the crimson-and-cream record books. During his two seasons as a Sooner, he was the gunslinger with the hard-as-nails exterior.
But behind the scenes, Heupel was the glue.
Marshall realized it the first summer he and Heupel were in Norman.
"Leaders stand out," Marshall said. "He stood out as far as being a leader, talking to everybody, motivating everybody and stuff like that.
"You knew off the bat that he was good people."
Heupel became a leader for the entire team, not just the offense. He helped bring together the players remaining after Blake's firing and the players brought in by Stoops' new staff. And after the Sooners went 7-5 in Heupel's first season, Marshall says a day during the summer of 2000 when Heupel gathered everyone together during a workout and planted the seed for a lofty goal.
"Our schedule is set up perfectly," Marshall remembers Heupel saying, "for us to actually win the national championship."
Even though the Sooners had lost five games the year before, they'd led in many of those games. They just hadn't finished them.
Heupel was reminding them how close they were.
"We believed every word he said," Marshall said. "We practiced like it."
Of course, there were lots of leader on that team. Bubba Burcham. Seth Littrell. Chris Hammons. Calmus. Marshall, too. But there was an ease with which Heupel maneuvered among the team. Offense. Defense. New. Old. None of that mattered.
He bridged any gap.
"That's just in his blood ... " Marshall said. "No one really had to tell Josh to lead. He's just a natural. It was real easy to get on board with his message because he lived it. He studied hard, practiced hard on and off the field. He was exceptional, so it was real easy to believe what he said."
Marshall and Heupel have remained close through the nearly quarter of a century since they played togehter. They know each other's families and still communicate regularly.
"A good human, good friend," Marshall said. "Love him dearly."
That will make Saturday's game a nearly unbearable experience for Marshall as his good friend faces his alma mater.
Venables was Marshall's coach at OU, and they, too, remain close.
"It's weird because Coach Venables and that crew taught us to love your brother, always stick with him, right?" Marshall said. "So ... "
He paused a long moment.
"Um ... "
He paused again, then chuckled.
"I'm not gonna go," he said when I asked him if he was going to be in Norman for the game. "I'm not gonna go to that one. It's too much for me. My blood pressure, I'll probably pass out. I'm just getting pulled in every direction."
But he already has what he needs to do a big barbecue, grill out and watch the game at home.
"So nobody knows who I'm cheering for," he said.
Safe to say, Marshall isn't the only Sooner with heartstrings on both sidelines. Everyone knew how much Heupel helped turn the fortunes of the Sooners on the field — frankly, without him, the Stoops Era would not have been as successful, would not have begotten the Riley Era, would not have positioned OU to be irresistible to the SEC — but those on the inside back then knew how much more Heupel changed.
"There was plenty of guys that helped create the culture," Venables said, "but Josh led the way."
Venables is forever grateful that his evaluation of Heupel from the football office windows was so very wrong.
"Don't judge a book by its cover," he said with a smile.
Even if the book is skinny, frail and a bit pasty.