When Bob Stoops came to Norman, OU hadn’t finished above .500 in five years. Nick Saban was entering his fifth year at Michigan State and had just a series of six-win or six-loss seasons to show for it. Urban Meyer was receivers coach at Notre Dame; Dabo Swinney receivers coach at Alabama. Tulane was coming off an unbeaten season.
For better and worse, Bob Stoops was new school on the field and old school off it
The OU coach constantly evolved his team, but didn’t show that level of careful thinking when it came to discipline.
Things change, even in a college football universe that sometimes moves with glacial speed. The names changed, and the sport changed, but there OU was, winning every other Big 12 title for what seemed like eternity. He was as constant a figure as the unrealistic fans he served.
I was driving through Oklahoma City back from Texas on January 1, 2000, the day after Oklahoma had lost to Ole Miss in the Independence Bowl. In front of a crowd of nearly 50,000 in Shreveport, in their first bowl since a 1994 Copper Bowl pasting, OU had trailed 21-3 at halftime, stormed back to take a 25-24 lead with two minutes left, then fallen via 39-yard field goal at the buzzer. I have no idea why I was listening to sports talk radio, but a man called in to rail on the Sooners, their rinky-dink offense, and their gutless defense.
I like to imagine that this guy calls the same station to deliver the same rant after each OU loss. He finished the call with the three magic words every fanbase recognizes from local sports radio and message boards. If the Sooners were going to keep this know-it-all coach around, with these know-nothing assistants, then they were settling for mediocrity.
Coaching is the ultimate thankless profession, particularly in the Internet era. But you’re paid handsomely for the derision. Stoops, in particular, is paid really well. He has won 160 games in 15 seasons, nine top-10 finishes, and four BCS bowls, and he begins Year 16 predicted to make the first College Football Playoff, land top-10 finish number 10, and win conference title number eight.
Somebody, somewhere, will call that mediocrity. Oklahoma seems okay with it.
From a national title win in his second year to a Playoff bid in his second-to-last, Stoops’ 18-year Oklahoma career was defined by on-field renewal.
Their down periods were down months, and no matter the state of the Big 12, Stoops’ Sooners were the face of the conference.
When you stick around for 18 years, a lot is going to change. Stoops entered a Big 12 that had in its inaugural years been dominated by Big 12 North teams. South teams had won two of the first three titles, sure, but both came via upset wins.
- Nebraska had won three national titles between 1994-97 and was about to generate three more top-10 finishes under Frank Solich.
- Colorado had hit a bump but was just two years removed from three straight top-10 finishes and five in eight years. The Buffaloes would nearly make the BCS title game in 2001.
- Kansas State nearly made the national title game in 1998, falling short only due to a conference title game upset. The Wildcats had won 59 games in six years and had three top-10 finishes in the last four years. They would have three more such finishes in the next four years.
With help from recent Texas hire Mack Brown, Stoops transformed the conference and reversed the geographic balance. When the Big 12 led the spread offense train, Stoops’ Sooners were the front car. When the Big 12 nearly fell apart in the early 2010s, OU was still the most likely title-caliber squad.
Stoops hired young coaches, identified early trends — from the air raid to the mid-2000s spread to the nickel defense — and won as consistently as any coach not named Saban or Meyer.
Lincoln Riley broke down at last week’s press conference. The new OU head coach was a quarterback at Texas Tech in 2002 and spent his entire career under either Stoops (2015-present), Stoops disciple Mike Leach (2003-09), or Leach disciple Ruffin McNeill (2010-14).
Oklahoma is no stranger to hiring an exciting head coach; Bud Wilkinson was just 30 when he took over in 1946, Barry Switzer was 35 in 1973, and Stoops was 38 in 1999. Riley was just the latest young assistant to get early breaks on the Stoops tree.
Brent Venables was 28 when Stoops made him his defensive co-coordinator in 1999. Leach, Mike Stoops, Bo Pelini, Josh Heupel, and Chuck Long were under 40 when given primary roles. Stoops’ first staff featured six assistants under 40 and three under 30. In a way, this was paying it forward; he had been 30 when Kansas State’s Bill Snyder made him defensive co-coordinator in 1991.
Stoops valued quality of experience over quantity. He valued hunger, confidence, and new ideas — “I want guys that I feel will be head coaches, that kind of ability, that kind of attitude,” he once told me — and he made sure that assistants didn’t work to burnout stage. He was conscious of wanting to remain healthy and have a life to live after coaching. That made him an assistant coach’s dream boss.
He lived the sleep-in-the-office lifestyle as an assistant for Bill Snyder at Kansas State, and then he learned in his three years working for Steve Spurrier at Florida that it was possible to win and spend time with your family. ... When assistants came from other programs to work for Stoops at Oklahoma and he encouraged them to get out of the office and see their families, their reaction was almost universal. I didn’t know it could be like this.
The trade off was that if a hire wasn’t working, he reserved the right to a new hire. In 2015, he replaced Heupel, his title-winning quarterback who was fielding good-but-not-great offenses, with Riley. In 2012, he let Venables leave for Clemson after what was perceived as a defensive funk. (Not every move was a good move, but he was unafraid of change.)
Stoops was a great mentor for new-school coaches, but make no mistake: He was old school. And that was a problem sometimes.
“I tell my guys all the time,” Stoops says, “you’re not the first one to spend a hungry Sunday without any money.” [...]
“You know what school would cost here for non-state guy? Over $200,000 for room, board and everything else,” Stoops said. “That’s a lot of money. Ask the kids who have to pay it back over 10-15 years with student loans. You get room and board, and we’ll give you the best nutritionist, the best strength coach to develop you, the best tutors to help you academically, and coaches to teach you and help you develop. How much do you think it would cost to hire a personal trainer and tutor for 4-5 years?”
When it came to disciplinary issues, he was thoughtful enough to treat every incident as its own unique case. Whatever nuance he showed, however, went out the window when it came time to explain his decisions. He grew testy and impatient when challenged, and didn’t care much about PR battles.
He proved willing to grant second chances and sacrifice short-term win totals. He dismissed All-American defensive tackle Dusty Dvoracek for the 2004 season — one that began with massive national title hype — following a nasty assault incident, then brought him back in 2005. He dismissed starters Rhett Bomar and J.D. Quinn in 2006 following NCAA allegations of improper benefits. He suspended all-conference tackle DeMarcus Granger before the 2008 Fiesta Bowl after an alleged shoplifting incident.
However, he publicly appeared unwise when it came to violence against women.
- After an apparent blessing from Missouri coach Gary Pinkel, he took on Dorial Green-Beckham in 2014 following the star receiver’s dismissal from Mizzou. (Green-Beckham went pro after a mandatory redshirt season and never suited up for the Sooners.)
- He suspended five-star running back Joe Mixon for a season, instead of dismissing the eventual star outright, following a well-publicized assault of a woman in Norman.
- He recruited another eventual star, Dede Westbrook, despite previous domestic arrests.
- Linebacker Frank Shannon was suspended — not by Stoops, but by the school itself — for alleged sexual misconduct. When his suspension was up, he was welcomed back to the team.
That at least three of these players had All-American potential probably helped their cases, but in a vacuum, the decisions could be defended as opportunities to help the players grow as people. In Dvoracek, he had the perfect example of what a second chance can do for somebody.
Stoops didn’t hurry to defend these moves, however, and the resulting perception was one of a program that didn’t treat issues with the gravity they deserved.
And in Mixon’s case, even if the intent was to give him a second chance, shielding him from media for over a year only made things worse.
Since he punched a woman in the face so hard that she had to have eight hours’ worth of reconstructive surgery, he hasn’t had any incidents worse than yelling at a parking attendant. But he punched a woman in the face so hard that she had to have eight hours’ worth of reconstructive surgery.
And it was caught on camera. And he was shielded from media for almost two years afterward, which had the effect of reviving the incident over and over with no resolution.
(Stoops appeared to acknowledge late in 2016 that dismissal of Mixon would have been the right course, though it’s fair to note that this is a lot easier to say after a player’s career is over and after he has helped you win games.)
In recent months, Mixon has set out to become the type of rehabilitation case we say we want to see. He served his suspension without incident, and he and his victim made public peace with each other.
The best-case scenario is that Mixon, Green-Beckham, etc., become Dvoraceks: Examples of people who made extreme mistakes but became role models for others.
But Stoops’ reputation needs repair. It will be further sculpted by how these former players develop (or don’t) off the field.
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