Brent Venables and the legend of Jimmy Greenbeans

— -- CLEMSON, S.C. -- After a recent game, cornerback Cordrea Tankersley clicked through photos on a Clemson fan site, looking for pictures of himself in action, and noticed something strange. There he was, reaching into the air to knock a pass away from a receiver, and in the background was his coach, mimicking the motions. In another picture, Tankersley is breaking on a pass, and his coach is just behind, waving him in the right direction.

One photo after another, Tankersley is in the foreground and defensive coordinator Brent Venables is in the back.

"He's always photobombing me," Tankersley said. "But it just shows his intensity."

Yeah, Venables can be a little intense.

How many assistant coaches require their own assistants for the express purpose of serving as wranglers? But Clemson's "get back" coach, whose primary game-day function is to keep Venables from erupting onto the field with every fit of anger or excitement, has saved the Tigers from myriad penalties.

Venables is an absolute madman, screaming and cursing from the morning meetings through afternoon practice and beyond.

"He's intense at dinner," safety Jadar Johnson said. "If you don't have enough greens on your plate, he yells at you."

The screaming, the yelling -- it isn't malevolence or anger, it's passion that rises up from Venables' belly and explodes from his throat, a Pavarotti of profanity.

The ferocity is infectious. Rather than terrifying his players, it electrifies them.

"I'm super appreciative of him cursing me out every day for the last four years," linebacker Ben Boulware said. "It's made me who I am."

Then there's the legend of Jimmy Greenbeans, which we should say, sort of defies proper explanation.

The story goes like this: When prepping for the opener against Auburn this summer, Venables grew frustrated with the performance of the scout team quarterback.

"It was taking too long, wasn't going how you'd like," Venables said. "So I'm like, 'Here's how you do it.'"

By the end of practice, Venables had usurped the position for good. His players loved seeing him drop back with the football in hand, shouting out coverages and then dropping dimes into the secondary. He'd take hits from pass rushers and taunt corners, and he ran it all perfectly.

After a few of those early practices, Venables introduced reporters to the new scout team quarterback, an alter ego he dubbed "Jimmy Greenbeans." The name simply came to him, a gift from either the gods of football or comedy, and it stuck.

Venables kept the job all season, much to the delight of his players, and coach Dabo Swinney gleefully reports that he's seen students wearing Clemson jerseys around campus with "Greenbeans" on the back. When former Clemson quarterback Tajh Boyd subbed in for him during bowl prep last week, Venables couldn't help but take some jabs at the guy who threw for nearly 12,000 yards in his Tigers career.

"We had to make some concessions for Tajh," Venables joked. "Tajh doesn't have as big of an arm as Greenbeans, and it was windy, so we had to take it inside and cut down on the reps because Tajh doesn't have the Greenbeans' endurance."

It's a thin line, perhaps, between intensity and insanity, but Venables loves to toe the line. He's a whirlwind of unfiltered energy -- all football, all the time. It's the only way he knows how to do things, which might explain why he's both college football's best coordinator and not remotely interested in a promotion.

"My agent calls me and says, 'These guys are interested,' and I'm absolutely not," Venables said. "I'm good."

The day Venables was set to fly to Clemson for his first visit, he sat in the airport with a pit in stomach.

For 13 years, he'd worked at Oklahoma, and he didn't want to leave. When head coach Bob Stoops hired his brother Mike to co-manage Venables' defense after the 2011 season, however, change seemed inevitable.

At the same time, Clemson was looking for someone to fix a defense that had become a national embarrassment after surrendering 70 points in an Orange Bowl loss to West Virginia. Swinney reached out to Venables, touted the resources he'd have at Clemson and offered him the job. Venables didn't want it.

Truth is, Venables abhors change, and all the things he valued most in his job -- loyalty, trust, consistency -- would be left in Norman, Oklahoma, and he'd need to start from scratch at Clemson.

It was Venables' wife, Julie, who ultimately made the call. She'd already fallen in love with Clemson, loved the idea of a fresh start and told her husband to get on the plane.

"He was going to do it, and then he wasn't," Swinney said. "I think she sold him on it, that it was the right decision."

Still, that first year was misery.

On the field, Clemson's defense improved dramatically, but Venables felt like an outsider on a close-knit staff in a small town a thousand miles from the place he'd called home for the previous 13 years. He'd wanted to bring coaches with him from Oklahoma, but Swinney demurred. A year later, Venables realized he couldn't stay simply because his wife liked Clemson. He had to choose for himself.

When the season ended, Venables set a meeting with Swinney to clear the air.

"I told him, 'Here's who I am,'" said Venables of the meeting. "I said I wanted to be part of a family. I didn't come here to be defensive coordinator. I want to be a part of the Clemson family. I don't have one foot in and one foot out. I'm completely committed. ... After that talk, I think I felt much better."

With that, everything changed.

Clemson has had a top 25 defense stocked with NFL talent every year since, helping the Tigers earn two trips to the College Football Playoff. Venables has become the second-highest-paid coordinator in the country, according to USA Today, earning $1.4 million a year. He won the 2016 Broyles Award as the country's top assistant coach. More than anything, however, he's part of the Clemson family.

"You look at the best head-coaching jobs in the country," said Venables, "and I've got a very good DC version of it. I've got a great job."

If the ballad of Jimmy Greenbeans is the story of a simple man with an overwhelming drive to achieve simple goals, Venables at least admits to one exception, one impossible dream.

If he could, would he trade that play card and the fluorescent yellow hat he wears on the sideline for a chance to take the field one last time?

"Are you kidding?" shouts Venables, his eyes wide and his nostrils flaring. "Just give me one more shot."

It's not that Venables doesn't care about being a head coach. It's that he's never really stopped being a player.

That's part of what fed the Jimmy Greenbeans persona. Why let some kid mangle the scout team when Venables can get behind center, show these young punks how it's done?

The truth is, no one at Clemson doubts Venables could still get it done. Put him on the field in the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State, and he'd make plays, Boulware said. He's sure of it.

"He's got a six-pack," Boulware said. "He just turned 46 the other day, and he's in better shape than anyone here."

Tankersley insists that if Venables had a year of eligibility left, he'd lead the team in interceptions. After all, he's seen Venables in the background of every photo, making those plays.

Becoming a head coach would just be one step further from all of that, all the things about the game Venables truly loves.

A week before Clemson won its second straight ACC title, Venables was asked about players eyeing an early departure for the NFL. He's had some stay, plenty more go. He gives them all the same speech, an impassioned and emotional one that sounds like some Don Draper sales pitch about nostalgia and fragile memories of moments that can never be recovered once they disappear into the ether.

Don't go, he tells them, unless you're ready for what awaits on the other side -- where football becomes a job, where plays equate to a paycheck and where teammates become adversaries if there's more money to be earned elsewhere.

It all sounds like a speech he's given himself again and again.

"He loves defense, loves coaching linebackers, and I don't know if he wants all the bells and whistles of being a head coach," Boulware said. "I just know how he is."

Venables has seen the dark side. He's seen friends take jobs for better money or a more impressive title, and after the losses mount and the pressure overwhelms them, they yearn for the old days.

He's thought often about that day in the airport, that sick feeling in his stomach, and sometimes he still misses Oklahoma. He's thought about Swinney and the talk they had, how Venables was welcomed into the family -- one that, in 2018 will include Venables' own son, Jake, a linebacker who committed to Clemson last week.

"I don't think Brent could function anywhere he doesn't have a chance to win," Swinney said. "That doesn't mean he doesn't ever want to be a head coach, but he's one of those guys that truly loves what he does and sees the big picture. It'd have to be a special situation."

Here's what Venables considers a special situation: A place where his family is happy. A place where he feels comfortable to be himself. A place where he gets to talk football with anyone who'll listen. A place where a guy named Greenbeans gets to jump into the huddle and test his arm against kids half his age.

"I just believe in simplicity," Venables said. "Sometimes I think people go out of their way to complicate things."