Head coach Brent Venables and the Oklahoma Sooners will see another familiar face on the opposing sideline in 2026 in the SEC. After a number of players from the 2025 roster transferred to SEC schools that are on the schedule for OU in 2026, there’s a name Sooner Nation will surely recognize that will be coaching against Oklahoma next year as well.
Former OU defensive coordinator Mike Stoops has been hired to a role on Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding’s coaching staff, per multiple reports. Stoops was most recently the inside linebackers coach at Kentucky, where he worked for his brother Mark Stoops, from 2022 to 2025. It’s not known at this time what Stoops’ role will be, but one would have to think he’ll be working with the defense, given his extensive experience on that side of the ball.
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Stoops reunites with Golding, as the pair coached together at Alabama in 2019 and 2020. In between, he was the defensive coordinator at FAU in 2021.
Stoops’ coaching career began when he was a graduate assistant at Iowa in 1986 and 1987. In 1991, he was the Hawkeyes’ linebackers and defensive backs coach. From 1992 to 1998, Stoops worked at Kansas State, beginning as a defensive ends coach and working his way up the ladder. During his first decade of coaching, he coached under two icons in Iowa’s Hayden Fry and Kansas State’s Bill Snyder.
Of course, Mike is the brother of Hall of Fame former Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops. When Bob left his post as Steve Spurrier’s defensive coordinator at Florida to take the OU job ahead of the 1999 season, he took Mike from Kansas State, where he was the co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach, with him to have the same role in Norman.
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Venables also came over from Kansas State, getting a promotion from linebackers coach to co-defensive coordinator/LBs coach at OU. Together, Mike and Venables oversaw the Oklahoma defense from 1999 to 2003, with Mike calling the plays. Oklahoma went undefeated and won the national championship in 2000.
Then, Mike left to become the head coach at Arizona, where he served from 2004 to 2011. During that same timeframe, Venables assumed play-calling duties and became the sole DC for the Sooners. Mike went 41-50 as the head coach in Tucson, and was fired midway through the 2011 season.
When Mike was hired back on as the co-defensive coordinator at Oklahoma ahead of the 2012 season to work alongside Venables again, Venables instead left to take the same role at Clemson, where he would get to continue calling plays. From 2012 to 2018, Mike had sole control of the OU defense. However, his second stint did not go nearly as well as his first, as the Sooners became one of the worst defenses in college football by the last couple of years of his tenure.
Midway through the 2018 season, Stoops was fired by former OU head coach Lincoln Riley after a 48-45 loss to Texas. Meanwhile, Venables was busy helping build a perennial title-contending defense with the Tigers, and he won two more national titles in Clemson. When Riley left after the 2021 season, the Sooners hired Venables as the program’s new head coach.
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Now, Oklahoma is set to see Stoops on the opposite sideline for each of the next four seasons, provided he stays with the Rebels for that long. Ole Miss is one of Oklahoma’s three annual rivals for the next four years, meaning Stoops and Venables will once again be connected, over a quarter-century after they both arrived as co-DCs in Norman.
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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Former Oklahoma DC hired by SEC program
