-
Dave Wilson, ESPN Staff Writer
THE BLEACH BLONDE Oklahoma linebacker with the ever-changing hairstyles hops in his Corvette convertible in his fur coat, driving home one more cocky statement in a crimson and cream career.
Oh, and Brian Bosworth is there, too.
This isn’t a scene from 1986. Rather, it was just weeks ago, in a video featuring Bosworth tossing a set of keys to junior linebacker Danny Stutsman, wearing Barry Switzer’s famous mink, in a metaphorical passing of the torch to another cocky Sooners star. Stutsman was announcing that he would be bypassing a chance to enter the NFL draft and instead would lead OU into the SEC.
I’M NOT �� LEAVING. pic.twitter.com/FfCIy23Q9W
– DannyStutsman (@FbStutsman) December 11, 2023
The junior Sooners star broke out as a star on and off the field this year, with his animated tackle celebrations – and there are a lot of tackles – to go along with his fiery motivational speeches, including one that instantly became an all-time OU favorite.
So when it came time to find a model, he didn’t have to look too far to find Bosworth, who maintains strong ties to the OU program.
“He’s obviously a mentor for a guy like myself. [I want] to be able to soak up as much as he gives me,” Stutsman said earlier this year. “I want to take all that in. He’s a high-personality dude but he backed it up on the field.”
Now, since announcing his return in the aforementioned video that signed off with “SEC, see you soon,” Stutsman is the unquestioned leader for Oklahoma heading into Thursday’s Valero Alamo Bowl (9:15 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN App), when the No. 12 Sooners face No. 14 Arizona.
There will be a new quarterback, Jackson Arnold, under center after this year’s starter, Dillon Gabriel transferred to Oregon. There will be a new offensive coordinator, Seth Littrell, after Jeff Lebby left to become the head coach at Mississippi State. In many ways, the Alamo Bowl will provide a preview of the Sooners’ first SEC team. It’ll also be a chance for Stutsman to finish off a rebound season and lead his team into a new era. And he’s earned notice of his mentor and acting collaborator, Bosworth.
“It was passing the torch on to the next great generation of linebackers,” said Bosworth, who won two Butkus awards in the mid-1980s. “I’m just proud that he even knows who I am.”
STUTSMAN WAS ALL but gone a few weeks ago. Reports circulated that he had notified Sooners coach Brent Venables that he was headed for the NFL. He confirmed that in an interview with reporters after he announced his return, saying his locker had been cleaned out and that OU had already deactivated his building access. Even his katana — a Japanese sword he apparently kept in his locker — was left on the floor, he said.
His change of heart wasn’t driven by some sort of last-minute recalculation – Stutsman said he hadn’t yet received his draft grade – but rather a chance to finish school alongside his teammates, most notably defenders Ethan Downs and Billy Bowman Jr., who were both in his recruiting class. In a tough new conferenceStutsman would have another chance to prove himself. And the Sooners need him too. Bosworth said that in the SEC, “you need linebackers that are instinctive, can play man defense… you want somebody who can come in there and fill a f—ing gap.”
“The good thing about Danny is he’s a sponge,” Bosworth said. “He wants to get better. He is starving for it. He listens. He hears but more than that he does.”
So the NFL can wait. That’s notable because Stutsman is not really a fan of waiting.
His dad, Steve, can attest to that. A former star athlete himself, he always coached his children, starting with his oldest, Sabrina, who eventually played softball on Florida State’s 2018 national championship team.
But his boy was different. Coaching young Danny Stutsman presented its challenges, particularly in non-contact sports. Steve was a track star growing up in East Texas and played football at Baylor, a pass-catching tight end ahead of his time. Danny got his dad’s wheels, but had zero interest in track.
“He didn’t like waiting around all day for his events,” Steve said.
Baseball was even worse. “If he didn’t go 4-for-4 with four home runs it was an absolutely bad day,” Steve said. “If he didn’t strike out every batter, he just couldn’t deal with it. He just doesn’t accept failure that way. I told him, ‘Dude, you’re out. You’re going to football, a sport where you don’t have time to dwell on failure. You have to deal with it right then and move on.'”
He thrived in the environment, becoming a speedy linebacker at Foundation Academy in Winter Garden, Fla., where his mom and dad, who met as athletes at Baylor – him, a tight end on the football team and her a point guard on the basketball team – had moved after college because Stutsman’s mom Susy, originally from Puerto Rico, thought Texas was too cold.
Danny embraced the idea of dealing with it and moving on. He was the first OU commit during the COVID season of 2020, making his pledge without ever visiting campus. Stutsman was there for Lincoln Riley’s departure for USC, along with all the coaches who recruited and signed him. He was there for Brent Venables’ first season last year, which ended with a 6-7 record and a loss in the Cheez-It Bowl. And he was there for a bounce-back 10-2 season this year, but Stutsman missed six of the eight quarters in those two losses, unable to help the Sooners.
VENABLES DIDN’T SIGN Stutsman, and Stutsman didn’t know what to expect from Venables.
The coach has told a story several times about his first few days back in Norman, when he kept waiting on his star linebacker to seek him out and ask him for the playbook. Eventually, he decided to say something.
“I saw him in the hallway like, ‘You know, one thing I’ve noticed about you? You didn’t come up and ask for a playbook. That’s weeeeeird.‘” Venables said, stretching it out for effect. “‘Call me crazy. But this is my expectation.'”
It became a tone-setter for the season, a story that makes Stutsman wince now, only because he thinks it’s a little overblown. But that tough-love start led to a close relationship between Stutsman and Venables. “I’m like 18, a freshman in college,” Stutsman said. “Obviously, when he got here, I didn’t know what to do. Man, I’m sorry, I didn’t know everything. My bad. Coach V came here, saw it and fixed it.”
In Stutsman’s freshman season, he made 38 tackles and forced two fumbles in 10 games. His sideline-to-sideline speed was obvious, but Bosworth was struck by how naturally Stutsman flowed to the ball.
“There were some instincts there that were something that only the blessed and gifted get,” Bosworth said. “It was just a matter of whether he’s going to work on those.”
Enter the famously intense Venables, who had been an overachiever as a junior-college product and walk-on linebacker at Kansas State in the early 1990s before becoming one of the most respected defensive coaches in the country at Oklahoma and Clemson.
“We both kind of needed each other,” Venables said. “I needed him to be one of our stalwarts on defense, one of our leaders, a pillar if we were going to be any good on defense. I needed him to really buy into the preparation part of it.”
But things didn’t go as planned in Year 1, with the Sooners struggling on defense and finishing with their first losing season since 1998. Venables said he evaluated everything in the offseason, tweaking practice formats, nixing movie nights before 11 a.m. games, even moving his coaches’ show taping to allow practice to finish earlier. In short, he was willing to adapt, but he needed his players to as well. Stutsman, though, had been a bright spot. He bought in, and led the Big 12 with 126 tackles (10.5 for a loss), three sacks, two interceptions, and seven passes defensed.
“I feel like me and Coach Venables are kind of opposites in ways,” Stutsman said. “He’s super serious and I’m a little more chilled out.”
It worked. Venables got Stutsman to dial it in, and Stutsman got Venables to loosen up. It’s the same thing Stutsman’s high school coach, Brad Lord, could recall.
“I’m a little old-fashioned sometimes and I’m ripping them at practice. And he goes, ‘Coach Lord, what’s up?'” Lord said, in a slow, high-pitched tone. “I just gotta start laughing, the way he said it. No disrespect. He knew the temperature of the team and he knew me well as a coach.”
It’s the kind of yin and yang that can impact an entire locker room.
“Danny was the perfect candidate to be the facilitator of Brent’s message to the rest of the team,” Bosworth said.
THIS SEASON, STUTSMAN started speaking up. Dan Cody, a star linebacker under Venables in Norman in the early 2000s, told Stutsman he needed to fill the void whenever the room got quiet. Other Sooners greats like Teddy Lehman and Gabe Ikard pushed him. Bosworth spoke to the team in preseason and Stutsman asked to hang afterward.
It’s been a surreal experience for Stutsman, who idolizes all the Sooners linebacking legends.
“Even the fact that I get kind of considered in that conversation is disrespectful to them,” Stutsman said. “I’m a keeper of the room. They’ve worn the same jerseys as I put on. So every time I wear it I want to be respectful for all the hard work they put in, all the sweat equity, and just kind of live up to that standard.”
Earlier this year, Stutsman was captured on video giving a pregame speech to his teammates before they faced the Longhorns:
“I’m certain about two things in [expletive] life: I’m certain that, one, Oklahoma only fears God, and No. 2, Texas fears Oklahoma.”
He says he didn’t know he was being recorded, and that he didn’t practice the speech. It was all from the heart, in the moment. Once the speech was released on social media, it became a new entry into Red River Rivalry lore. In a lucrative NIL agreement, a local company, Opolis, made T-shirts with a postgame photo of Stutsman smoking a cigar at his locker while wearing sunglasses autographed by Bosworth, with the quote on the back. It was their biggest seller ever.
He even got Venables to wear one.
Oklahoma LB Danny Stutsman got coach Brent Venables to rock a “TEXAS FEARS OKLAHOMA” shirt ��
(via @DannyStutsman) pic.twitter.com/GyQsBj1gvC
– ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) October 12, 2023
It was a rare show of bravado from his coach, but Venables said the occasion merited it.
“I’m kind of a ‘let your success be your noise’ guy,” Venables said. “If Danny didn’t work so hard, if he wasn’t passionate, if he didn’t go above and beyond to do extra all the time, I wouldn’t be OK with him. He’s a big personality, but it’s not a show. He’s actually pretty funny. If he was silly with no work, we’d have a hard time getting along. He’s serious about being a great player. That’s what I’ve got incredible appreciation and respect for. I love Danny’s personality. I don’t know if he’s always been humble, but I think he’s got great humility.”
That doesn’t mean Stutsman hasn’t been able to convince Venables to let him style his hair in one of Stutman’s more flamboyant styles, from his braids to the blonde mop-top look he has shared at times with his linebacking partner (and fake Horns Down tattoo co-conspirator), Jaren Kanak.
Danny Stutsman said after practice today that these are fake. I asked Brent Venables about them and he said, “I’ve got enough to worry about… They need to get their hair fixed first.” #Sooners https://t.co/2emLnAAksr
– George Stoia III (@GeorgeStoia) October 10, 2023
“Stuts’ cuts,” Venables said. “I respectfully declined.”
But on the field, Stutsman did once again lead the team in tackles with 99 in 11 games, including 16 tackles for loss and three sacks.
His absence was felt after he went out with an ankle injury in the second half of the Kansas game (a 38-33 loss), and when he missed all of the last Bedlam game, a 27-24 loss to Oklahoma State.
“When he came back, the elevation of emotion came back and they played much better,” Bosworth said.
Stutsman said he’s got just one mission from here on out: “Tackle people.”
He’s got a mentor in The Boz, who might even envy Stutsman’s NIL capabilities. He’s got a chance to play his senior season in the SEC and become an even bigger name. He’s got a coach who is pushing him to become even greater. It all starts Thursday night in the new-look Sooners’ bowl game.
“He’s had tremendous growth,” Venables said. “He’s a reflection of what I think our defense is in our program. He has this huge ceiling. It’s still in front of him. And that’s exciting to me.”
Sponsored Content
Juega en grande con cryptomonedas
