Bob Stoops Is a Winner Like No Other Active College Coach

Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops may be under the gun to get one of college football’s most elite brands back on a championship track, but it is because of his enduring record of success that he finds himself in such a position.

Stoops took over an OU football program that was in complete disarray and had lost its way among big-time college programs.

The Sooners won only three conference games in 1998, the year before the Stoops era began, and those three victories were by a combined total of just 18 points (two of the wins were by a three-point margin). Perhaps even worse, OU was a 31-point victim against archrival Texas and fell by 15 points to in-state Bedlam rival Oklahoma State. Those two losses alone would have been enough to torpedo the entire season.

Oct 18, 2014; Norman, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners head coach Bob Stoops during the game against the Kansas State Wildcats at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

Oklahoma had not been to a bowl game for four consecutive seasons when the Stoops train pulled into Norman prior to the 1999 season.

In Stoops’ first year at the helm, the Sooners responded with a seven-win season, including a 37-point thrashing of Oklahoma State. In addition, OU led at Notre Dame going into the fourth quarter (but ended up losing by four points), and played Texas to a standstill for most of that annual rivalry before going down by 10 points (Texas led 31-28 entering the final quarter; recall that OU lost by 31 to the Longhorns the year before).

Since his debut season, Stoops’ OU teams have recorded 12 seasons of 10 or more wins and six years in which the Crimson and Cream posted a dozen or more victories. And, yes, there were three years in which the Sooners were good for just eight wins, including last season.

Overall, that adds up to 15 consecutive winning seasons of at least eight victories, 12 of those of the double-digit variety. Just how good is that? Those 15 consecutive eight-win seasons at the same school are the most of active any coach in college’s Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS).

LSU in the rugged Southeastern Conference has had 15 consecutive years of eight wins or more, but that came under two different head coaches combined (Nick Saban and Les Miles). The Tigers are the only school in one of the Power 5 conferences with more than eight straight such seasons.

So someone please tell me, what’s the big beef about Bob Stoops’ job being in jeopardy?

Stoops will be the Sooners’ head coach as long as he wants to be. OU’s winningest football coach has earned that privilege. If the cynics and critics among the Sooner fan base don’t learn to lighten up a little and look at the bigger picture, they may be in danger of wishing upon themselves – and all of us, really – an outcome that they will surely live to regret.