How OU football's Zac Alley has striking similarities to Brent Venables, Lincoln Riley

It’s uncanny how much Zac Alley sounds like Brent Venables. Alley’s cadence, the words he emphasizes and the intensity with which he speaks — it’s Venables 2.0. There’s more rasp in Venables’ voice, but that’ll come with time. Alley is only 30, after all. Venables has been yelling at defenses since Alley was in diapers. Really, though.

Venables got his first coaching gig, as a graduate assistant at Kansas State, in 1993. By 1999, at age 28, Venables joined Bob Stoops’ first staff at OU as co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach — the very job Alley will hold at OU under Venables, who’s entering his third season as head coach.

Alley also reminds me of another Sooner coach. A former Sooner coach who specialized on the other side of the ball. Scroll down or cover your eyes if you need to, Sooner fans, because you know to whom I’m referring.

Lincoln Riley, of course.

It’s like a double dose of deja vu in Norman. Not only is Alley a younger version of Venables, but Alley’s path to OU is also very similar to that of Riley’s.

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That Alley is a clone of Venables is no coincidence. Alley, who grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, was a freshman football assistant at Clemson in 2011, the year before Venables left the Sooners for the Tigers. Over the next three years, Alley was basically an apprentice under Venables.

And for four years after that, Alley served as a graduate assistant at Clemson, working with Venables and the defense.

Those seven formative years under Venables shaped Alley in more ways than one.

“Everything I do is based on what Coach Venables did at Clemson,” Alley said in a release, when OU announced his hire. “That’s been the foundation for how I’ve built defenses. I always respected how he handled himself as a coach and as a man, and I wanted to emulate that as best I could.”

“I talk like Coach V,” Alley told the Post and Courier, a Charleston, South Carolina, newspaper. My parents tell me my mannerisms are like him on the sidelines.”

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After Clemson, Alley spent two seasons at Boise State, where he served as co-special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach. In 2021, Alley was hired as Louisiana-Monroe’s defensive coordinator. At 28, he was the youngest coordinator in the FBS.

Alley spent the last two seasons at Jacksonville State, where he worked as defensive coordinator under Rich Rodriguez.

Now Alley, hired earlier this month by his longtime mentor, is coordinating the Sooner defense.

“He’s going to fit in really well from a culture, chemistry and philosophy standpoint,” Venables said in a statement. “Obviously, there’s a familiarity and comfort based on our background together at Clemson.”

As for Alley’s connections with Riley? There aren’t any concrete ones. Only parallels.

Like this one: Alley, remember, grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. Riley’s first offensive coordinator job was at East Carolina in … Greenville, North Carolina. The two cities, about 350 miles apart, are roughly the same size.

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Riley was 26 when he was hired as East Carolina’s offensive coordinator. Alley was 28 when he got his first defensive coordinator gig at Louisiana-Monroe. Riley was 31 when OU hired him as OC. Alley is 30.

Alley didn’t play college football. Riley played at Texas Tech, but he didn’t really play. Then Red Raiders coach Mike Leach knew Riley’s future was as a coach, not a quarterback. Like Alley at Clemson, Riley became a student assistant at Texas Tech.

Alley learned from a defensive mastermind in Venables while Riley studied under an offensive genius in Leach. Venables and Leach, by the way, worked together on Stoops’ first OU staff in 1999.

Who knows if Alley will conjure OU defenses of old, but the hire made sense for the Sooners. This play has worked before.

Joe Mussatto is a sports columnist for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joe? Email him at jmussatto@oklahoman.com. Support Joe's work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: How OU football's Zac Alley is like Brent Venables and Lincoln Riley.