What if you could organize a game that would feature the best OU players under Barry Switzer – in their prime, of course – against a football team made up of the best players who played under head coach Bob Stoops. Which team would prevail in such a fantasy contest?
This year marks the 30-year anniversary of the 1985 Oklahoma national championship team under Barry Switzer and the 15-year anniversary of Bob Stoops’ national championship Sooner team, the most recent of Oklahoma’s seven total national championships, third most of any school.
Bob Stoops, beginning his 17th season as head coach at Oklahoma, is the winningest coach in the long and highly successful history of Oklahoma Sooners football. Stoops’ time at Oklahoma is the third longest tenure in a long line of successful Sooner head coaches. Only the late, great Bud Wilkinson, who completed 17 seasons as head coach and Bennie Owen, who coached from 1905-1926, had longer stays on the Sooner sidelines.
Sep 20, 2014; Morgantown, WV, USA; Oklahoma Sooners head coach Bob Stoops on the sidelines during the first quarter against the West Virginia Mountaineers at Milan Puskar Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports
Switzer may be the most popular of OU’s 21 head coaches in football. Until Stoops passed him in the 2013 season, Switzer was the winningest coach in Sooner program history. In addition to leading his teams to 157 of the school’s 850 all-time victories, Oklahoma won 12 conference championships and three national championships in Switzer’s 16 seasons.
Switzer’s teams won outright or shared the then-Big Eight conference championship in each of his first eight seasons as OU head coach. The lowest any of his 16 Sooner teams finished in the conference standings was runner up, and that happened four times.
Between Wilkinson’s 145 all-time Oklahoma wins, Switzer’s 157 and Stoops’ 168, those three Sooner coaches have won more than half (471) of OU’s 850 total victories.
With Switzer and Stoops responsible for two of the greatest eras in the storied history of Oklahoma football, what do you think might happen if there were a game between a team of Switzer all-time greats vs. a team made up of all-stars who played for coach Stoops?
Of course, we can only imagine what a contest of this magnitude might be like, but you can be certain that it would be epic: the All-Time, All-OU Red and White Game, the Crimson and Cream Championship or perhaps just the Sooner Super Bowl.
Aug 30, 2014; Norman, OK, USA; Former Oklahoma Sooners head coach Barry Switzer on the field during the game against the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
Selecting two separate teams of all-time greats on offense, defense and special teams who played under either Switzer or Stoops is both easy and, at the same time, an extremely difficult proposition. There are more than enough players with outstanding college careers to choose from, but that is also what makes it so hard, because there are so many great players at most of the positions who have donned the crimson and cream in the two celebrated areas.
As an example, in Stoops’ 16 seasons at OU, he has produced 34 First Team All-Americans, eight of them two-time All-Americans, and 78 of his players have been selected in the annual NFL draft, including 12 first-round picks. Thirty-one First Team All-Americans played for Switzer when he was head coach between 1973 and 1988. A total of 112 Sooners became NFL draft selections during Switzer’s 16 seasons as head coach, including a school-record 13 in 1988, his final season on the sidelines at OU.
Out of 373 total NFL draft picks that have come from Oklahoma, 42 have been chosen in the first round (15 under Switzer and a dozen under Stoops). Three of those first-round selections were taken as the No. 1 overall pick, and all three played under either Stoops or Switzer.
Quarterback Sam Bradford, a member of Stoops’ 2006 recruiting class, was the No. 1 overall pick in 2010, by the St. Louis Rams; running back Billy Sims (1980) and defensive end Lee Roy Selmon (1976) were the other No. 1 overall selections from Oklahoma (although linebacker Brian Bosworth was the No. 1 pick in the 1987 supplemental draft). Sims, Selmon and Bosworth all played for Switzer.
Bradford (2008) and Sims (1976) also won the Heisman Trophy, two of five Sooners all-time to do so.
Say the rules of a Switzer-Stoops All-Star Showdown dictated that you could only have 11 players on offense, 11 on defense, plus a punter, a place-kicking specialist and one or two other specialists to return kicks. We know that isn’t reality, especially in football, where the rosters are larger than most team sports because of injuries, fatigue and other in-game factors (not to mention special teams).
But this entire scenario is fantasy, after all.
Part II on Friday – “The Rosters for the Grand Dame of Oklahoma Football Fantasy Games”