Is Bob Stoops' Future at OU Drawing to an End?

Bob Stoops will be in his 17th season as the head coach of the Oklahoma Sooners when the 2015 college football season kicks off in September.

That is a long time for a college football coach at one institution. Only one other active head coach has more seasons with the same school than Stoops. Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech is in his 29th season in 2015. Stoops is tied with Kirk Ferentz, who begins his 17th year this season at Iowa, Stoops’ alma mater.

This season, Stoops, the winningest coach in Oklahoma’s storied football history, ties Barry Switzer as the second longest tenured Sooner head coach. The legendary Bennie Owen, the sixth OU head coach in the first 11 seasons football was played at Oklahoma, coached for 22 seasons, the longest in the school’s history.

Sep 6, 2014; Tulsa, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners head coach Bob Stoops before the game against the Tulsa Golden Hurricane at Skelly Field at H.A. Chapman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

Stoops took over a program in 1999 that was 12-22 in three seasons under John Blake and never won more than three conference games in a season. The first season under Stoops, the Sooners improved to 7-5 and won 5 of 8 conference games. The following season, in 2000, the Sooners surprised everyone in the college football world by going undefeated on the way to the school’s seventh national championship.

And that was just the beginning of the Sooners’ return to elite status on college football national stage. When the Sooners crushed Nebraska in the seventh game of the 2000 season to take over the No. 1 spot in the national polls, Sports Illustrated heralded OU’s return to prominence with the cover headline “Back on Top” in its issue the following week.

Since taking over the struggling Sooner football program, all Stoops has done is win a national championship, lead four teams to the BCS national championship game (only Florida State played in as many in the BCS era) and capture a Big 12-best eight conference championships.

Nov 8, 2014; Norman, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners sooner schooner before the game against the Baylor Bears at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

The Sooners stumbled to an 8-5 overall record and a fourth-place finish in the conference standings last season, only the fourth time in 16 previous seasons that Oklahoma has won eight or fewer games in a season. And to put a fitting ending on what by OU standards was a highly disappointing football season, the Sooners were blown out of the Russell Athletic Bowl by a Clemson team that posted the second widest winning margin over a Bob Stoops Oklahoma team.

Clemson rolled to a 40-6 win in OU’s final game of the 2014 season, the second worst in Stoops’ 16 seasons in Norman (USC’s 55-19 victory over the Sooners in the 2005 BCS championship game is the worst loss under Stoops).

Following last season’s uncharacteristic Sooner-like year, some college football experts and national radio talk show hosts who are paid to stoke lively, controversial discussion during football’s offseason, are questioning if Bob Stoops’ championship days at Oklahoma are behind him and whether he has lost some of the inner fire and influence that led to much of his past success at OU.

Texas and Oklahoma have long been the big bullies of the Big 12 in terms of football prominence and year-after-year success in reeling in top national recruiting classes. For Texas, however, the tide started to dramatically turn for the worst in Mack Brown’s final four seasons of a 16-year coaching tenure in Austin.

“Those close to him (Bob Stoops) say the stability in the president’s and athletic director’s offices are a major reason he’s still in Norman…and hopeful about turning around the program,” —Travis Haney, ESPN.com

Brown’s final four seasons at Texas were cited by a number of knowledgeable college football people of what can happen when a head coach stays too long in one place, despite what he may have accomplished in the past. The Longhorns managed just one more conference win than they lost in Brown’s final four years. And when the longtime Longhorn head coach was relieved of his duties after 16 largely successful seasons, the program he left behind for the new head coach, Charlie Strong, was in total disarray, a shadow of what it once was.

What happened at Texas has some Sooner fans concerned because they don’t want to see the same type of thing happen at OU. On the other hand, they saw what happened with the football program in the decade following the dismissal of Barry Switzer, who stands second in all-time Sooner wins and third on the list of the longest coaching stints in program history, and they certainly don’t want to contemplate that dismal 10-year cycle repeating itself all over again.

You have to wonder, though, if Stoops were to leave on his own accord or be replaced involuntarily, who would Oklahoma bring in as the next Sooner head coach? You would think that it would have to be a pretty big name with an impressive resume in leading a major program, but who out there would be on the Sooner short list?

The fact is that the success bar and expectations are extremely high for football at Oklahoma, and Stoops is fully responsible for resetting the bar and re-establishing the high expectation level for OU football program.

Something tells me, though, that Bob Stoops isn’t going to hang around and wait for the proverbial axe to fall. Over the past 15 years, he has been one of the most successful and respected college coaches in the game. He will know when it is time to go, and I would be surprised if it gets to the point where he is involuntarily asked to pack it in. He is too good a coach, has proved that over a sustained period of time and he has all kind of options at his disposal, including a coaching job in the NFL.

But for those naysayers who are already writing Stoops out of the future picture, if there are serious Sooner fans among that subset, I simply say to you: Be very careful what you ask for?

Stoops certainly has his critics, but that hasn’t seem to bother him much up to now. While there are those who think Stoops’ time heading up the Sooner football machine may be numbered, there are also good reasons he is happy remaining right where he is.

First of all, no one wants to get the OU program turned around and back where it once was more than Stoops himself. And to show that the Sooner head coach has the ability to get the ship righted, you only have to go back to the 2000, 2006 and 2010 seasons. In each of those three seasons, Stoops followed up a year with four or more losses with at least 11 wins the very next season and no fewer than 10 wins in the three successive seasons after that.

Stoops also has the full support of OU President David Boren and Athletic Director Joe Castiglione, and he gets along famously with both. As long as that leadership stays in place, Stoops’ position on the Sooner sidelines probably isn’t in jeopardy anytime soon.

ESPN.com college football writer Travis Haney is one of those who believes Stoops probably won’t make it through the life of his current contract at OU, which runs through the 2020 season. In his recent series of articles ranking the top 25 college football programs over the next three years, Haney says this about Stoops and the Sooners:

“The Sooners plummeted 10 spots (in the three-year power rankings) from a year ago, no longer riding the high from the Sugar Bowl win against Alabama. The flubbed ending this past fall against rival Oklahoma State – then being clobbered by Clemson in the Russell Athletic Bowl – has cast some doubt on the program’s future.”

Is Bob Stoops’ Future at OU Drawing to an End?

By Chip Rouse | Jul 2, 2015