Oklahoma Football: What It Takes to Win the Big 12
By Chip Rouse
Being the best at anything is hard to do, and to do it again once you’ve done it is even harder to accomplish. Next to Kansas in basketball, Oklahoma football has been the king so far as winning major championships in the Big 12 era.
Under head coach Bob Stoops, the Sooners have won outright or shared nine conference championships in football. That is three times more than the next closest school, Texas, which has won three Big 12 football titles.
Following a season in which Oklahoma posted its 11th 11-win season in the Big 12 and earned a spot in the College Football Playoff, the Sooners should again be favored to capture the conference crown in 2016.
During the Big 12 era (1996-present), the conference has generally be regarded as one of the top two among the five major conferences.
When Oklahoma was in its heyday in the 1970s and ’80s under legendary coach Barry Switzer, the Sooners won three national championships and 12 Big Eight titles, including eight consecutive conference championships from 1973 to 1980. Those great OU teams paved their way to success as great ground-pounding teams operating out of the vaunted triple-option Wishbone offense that was invented in Texas but perfected at Oklahoma.
The Sooner teams of the 2000s have achieved success in a manner that is in sharp contrast to the great Oklahoma teams of the past, incorporating spread formations on offense with a cadre of speedy receivers designed to spread the field and stretch the defense. These modern-day, pass-heavy offenses force the defense to cover the entire field and allow fleet-footed, sure-handed receivers to create mismatches in coverage and utilize their speed in open space.
Former Oklahoma Sooner and longtime University of Texas head coach and administrator Darrell Royal is famous for saying: “Three things can happen when you pass the football and two of them are bad.”
Don’t tell that to today’s head coaches and offensive coordinators, a number of whom have achieved great success taking to the air early and often, piling up lots of yardage without using much time on the clock and putting up plenty of points on the scoreboard.
One thing that remains constant throughout the history of the game is the team that scores the most points wins, and it has become crystal clear that these Air Raid-style offenses – like the one employed at Oklahoma by offensive coordinator Mike Leach in Bob Stoops’ first season at OU, and later introduced and made ever popular at Texas Tech when Leach became the Red Raiders head coach – do just that.
When equipped and executed by the right personnel, these high-powered passing offenses not only pile up the points, but with the quick strike ability you are never truly out of a game.
When you look at the styles of play of the teams that have been Big 12 football champions the past five seasons, several factors stand out.
Outstanding quarterback play: Big 12 teams are offensive minded, and the teams that are at the top of the standings are the ones that have quarterbacks who make good decisions with the ball and are superb passers with who are able to find open receivers and get the ball to them with high accuracy. The truly great quarterbacks in the league, past and present, are ones who are able to keep plays alive with their legs and scrambling ability and protect the football when the pocket and pass protection break down. It also helps greatly to have experience at the position.
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A group of talented pass receivers: The key word here is group, or more than one. Using Oklahoma as an example, Sterling Shepard was easily the Sooners’ No. 1 receiver, and he was Baker Mayfield’s primary target last season, and for good reason. But after Shepard, the reliability at the position dropped off noticeably. It was not that the Sooners didn’t have any capable receivers behind Shepard, but rather that the consistency and trust factor between the QB and the receiver just wasn’t there like it is with teams that have better depth and talent at the receiver position. Baylor and TCU are strong examples of Big 12 teams that have had outstanding play at both quarterback and in their receiving corps over the past several seasons and their high finish in the conference race is a direct reflection of that.
Outstanding defense: The Big 12 champions the past five seasons have all displayed top defensive play. They not only put up plenty of points, but they also gain critical third-down stops and limit the scoring ability of their opponents. It is not always the same formula, either. It could come from taking away the passing game, or just as easily by shutting down the opponent’s ability to gain yardage on the ground with any consistency, if at all. But it does not have to be, and rarely is, both. What the truly effective defenses in the conference are able to do is take away one or the other and, in doing so, force their opponent to be one-dimensional and predictable on offense. When Baylor won the Big 12 outright in 2013 and shared the league title with TCU in the controversial 2014 season, the Bears led the Big 12 in scoring offense both seasons (in 2013 by a 13-point margin) and were in the top four in the conference in scoring defense. Oklahoma, by contrast was third in the Big 12 in its 2015 championship season while leading the conference in scoring defense, pass defense and total defense and finishing second in run defense.
Run the football: None of the major conferences feature as many prolific passing teams and high-octane offenses as the Big 12. Interestingly, though, while the teams that have been crowned Big 12 champions the last five seasons have done so largely with off-the-wall passing stats, none relied exclusively on an air attack to get the job done. In fact, the reason they were so successful throwing the football was because they were also able to run the ball effectively. The once run-dominant Sooners have won nine conference championships under Bob Stoops and they’ve done so behind great quarterback play and an explosive passing attack. Even so, Stoops never abandoned the run game. The 2015 Big 12-champion Sooners were 17th in the nation last season in pass offense, averaging 303 yards per game, yet they ran the football more times than they went to the air. With a pair of outstanding running backs in Samaje Perine and Joe Mixon, both of whom will be back in 2016, OU averaged over 200 yards on the ground every game last season. And it was that success that helped make the passing game even more effective than it might otherwise have been.
Stable coaching staffs: With all the movement in the coaching ranks in college football, and especially among coordinators and coaching assistants, it is rare indeed to keep the same coaching staff in place for more than a few seasons at a time. Next to Bill Snyder at Kansas State, Bob Stoops is the longest active Big 12 head coach, going on 18 seasons this fall. The Sooners have only had two defensive coordinators (brother Mike Stoops and Brent Venables) since Stoops took over as head coach in 1999. Former OU quarterback Cale Gundy, who has coached the running backs and wide receivers, has been on Stoops’ coaching staff the entire 17 seasons, and Bobby Jack Wright was on the staff for 16 of those 17 years before being let go at the end of 2014. Wright was for years the Sooners primary recruiter in the talent-rich state of Texas. Coaching staff continuity goes a long way in the attracting new players through recruiting as well as the growth and development of players once they are on campus and evolve in their college careers.