Bob Stoops: ‘We Kept Confident the Entire Season’
By Chip Rouse
Bob Stoops has seen it all in 18 seasons as head football coach of the Oklahoma Sooners, but it doesn’t come much better than the way the Sooners finished out the 2016 season.
The college football season comes down to a grand finale Monday night when top-ranked Alabama takes on No. 2 Clemson in a rematch of last season’s thrilling College Football Playoff championship game.
Last year, it was Oklahoma and Clemson that were engaged in a bowl rematch, although not in the game that was for all the marbles.
The Sooners and Tigers met last postseason in one of the semifinal Playoff games, the outcome of which didn’t turn out much different than it had the year prior, although the Sooners were much more competitive in the 2016 Playoff game than they were in getting completely blown out in the 2015 Russell Athletic Bowl matchup with Clemson.
Oklahoma also faced Alabama several seasons back, in the Sugar Bowl in 2014 (in the 2013 season), the only time in the last six seasons that the Crimson Tide have not been among the two or four teams playing for the national championship.
The Sooners stunned the college football world with a convincing 45-31 Sugar Bowl victory over an Alabama team alleged not to have been all that interested in being there, given that the Tide were not playing for the championship that season.
“We stayed positive with each other the entire season and trusted our system, trusted our methods and the way we do things.” –OU head coach Bob Stoops
Only unbeaten, top-ranked Alabama finished the season stronger than Oklahoma did, and that only assumes that the Crimson Tide take care of business against Clemson on Monday night to remain unbeaten and retain their title as national champions.
After beginning the 2016 season going 1-2 in their first three games, the Sooners regrouped and reeled off 10 consecutive wins thereafter, capped by a solid 35-19 victory over the Auburn Tigers.
Only one other FBS team that went to the postseason this year will be able to say it won its final game of the season. That other team will come out of the national championship game on Monday night.
Head coach Bob Stoops was asked following his team’s Sugar Bowl victory, giving 12 seasons out of 18 at Oklahoma with at least 11 wins, what it says about this Sooner team and the players and coaches that they were able to win 10 games in a row to finish the season?
“It shows the strength, I think, of our character overall,” Stoops said. “We’re a prideful, very close team, and we’re a confident team, regardless of the people that try to rattle (the) cage and shake your confidence.
“We kept confident the entire season. We stayed positive with each other the entire season and trusted our system, our methods and the way we do things. We built on it. We improved as we went through (to) the end, and we fought through the outside noise.”
Like Kansas is to Big 12 basketball excellence, Oklahoma has become to Big 12 football.
The 2016 season, which resulted in a 10th Big 12 championship for Bob Stoops and the Sooners, may have been one of the best of all in terms of the true grit and resilience displayed by a team that refused to give in when it was down for the count early and showed the tenacity, confidence and collective leadership to pick itself up and take care of business the rest of the way.