Brent Venables confirms his representatives have spoken with Arkansas

Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables was in Arkansas for the Broyles Award ceremony Monday night and was asked by Bo Mattingly of Sports Talk with Bo if he is a candidate for the Arkansas head coaching job.

Venables has been linked to jobs at Arkansas, Mississippi State and Tennessee over the past two weeks. Mississippi State has since filled its opening.

“That’s a tough thing to answer,” Venables said of the Arkansas vacancy. “I have not spoken to anybody, but my representatives have. I’ll just leave that at that.”

Venables was also asked how he handles interest from other programs, something that he has dealt with several years since building Clemson’s defense into one of the best in the nation.

The former Kansas State player has only coached at Kansas State, Oklahoma and Clemson during his career.

“I handle it as it comes, you know, I’m super loyal to what I’m doing, and I’m very simple just by nature. I don’t try to make things overly complicated,” Venables said. “When there’s interest, when people reach out, and they do it in a variety of ways just to gauge your interest, you’ve got your XYZ questions that you’re going to ask, or maybe some other things that you feel like you already know and whether or not it might be a good fit, but I don’t ever allow it to be a distraction for me.”

This story was originally published December 4, 2017 at 10:26 PM with the headline "Brent Venables confirms his representatives have spoken with Arkansas."