Oklahoma is hiring former New Orleans Saints director of rehabilitation Jonathan Gress as its new head football trainer, George Stoia of SoonerScoop reported Monday.
Gress, an OU graduate, will assume a newly-created position, and his hire is expected to be made official later this week.
Following a third-party audit of its training process, Oklahoma determined it needed a new hire to manage third-party trainers and its return to play process after enduring an unsustainable number of injuries over the course of the 2024 season. Oklahoma spent much of last season without its top five wide receivers, a major contributing factor to the Sooners' 6-7 campaign following the 10-3 breakthrough of 2023.
And for those keeping score at home, the move marks another key addition in an offseason full of them in Norman, as Oklahoma has revamped almost every aspect of its program in one form or another since the end of last season:
-- In December, OU hired alum and former AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson as an executive advisor to the president and AD.
-- Days before that, Oklahoma hired Ben Arbuckle from Washington State as its new offensive coordinator. In turn, Arbuckle brought along John Mateer to be the Sooners' starting quarterback.
-- After Zac Alley, Brent Venables's right-hand man for many years at Clemson, took the West Virginia defensive coordinator job, Venables appointed himself to the position.
-- In February, Oklahoma hired Senior Bowl executive director Jim Nagy as its new general manager. Nagy will have much more autonomy in his role than OU's previous GM, former Sooners linebacker Curtis Lofton. As evidence of that, Nagy has since hired Lake Dawson as senior assistant GM, Taylor Redd as assistant GM, Drew Hill as director of scouting, Kale Pearson as director of high school scouting, Stacey Ford as director of player personnel and retainment, and Charlie Parkinson as assistant director of high school scouting.
-- Now in addition to Gress, Oklahoma is expected to hire a trainer to oversee the "return to play" process, also a newly-created position.
In all, one could argue that of the nine most important people within the Sooner football program -- the head coach, offensive/defensive coordinators, general manager, AD, head strength coach, head trainer, starting quarterback, and Stephenson as head of payroll management -- the only individuals who were with the program when the 2024 regular season ended are AD Joe Castiglione, Venables, and head strength coach Jerry Schmidt.
There are two ways to look at this. One is that Oklahoma is finally equipping Venables with the necessary pieces he needs to build a competitive football program. Oklahoma was asking Venables to fight AK-47s with muskets, as evidenced by the two 6-7 seasons in Venables's first three tries.
The other way to look at this, which is not necessarily contradictory to the view above, is that Oklahoma is renovating the house while Venables still lives in it. These renovations are being done without Venables in mind specifically, and will continue uninterrupted without him if Venables does not win enough this fall.