Oklahoma football coach Bob Stoops has become the goat, again, for another devastating Sooner bowl loss.
Fans of longtime elite programs like Oklahoma do not like to lose. It is not part of their DNA or their vocabulary. Sooner fans were hoping the No. 4 seeding of the Sooners in this year’s College Football Playoff would turn out like what happened with Ohio State last season.
For those who are memory challenged – selectively or otherwise – Ohio State knocked off No. 1 Alabama in the Playoff semifinal round a year ago, and then went on to rout No. 2 Oregon and rise to the national championship. History obviously did not repeat itself this year as top-ranked Clemson pretty much had its way with No. 4 Oklahoma, bringing some to question if Bob Stoops has coached his last OU bowl game.
Let’s clear something up right now. Bob Stoops has not coached his last bowl game at Oklahoma – that is, unless that is his personal choice – which doesn’t appear to be the case. And answer me this: How can we praise the Sooners’ coach with the most all-time Oklahoma wins for getting the 2015 to the brink of the college football national championship one year removed from going 8-5 and enduring a couple of the worst defeats in his 17 seasons at OU, and in a little less than 24 hours turn around and cut him off at the knees?
A career victory total of 179 and 13 seasons (out of 17, mind you) of 10 wins or more answer that question. Even in the wake of a highly disappointing performance against Clemson as the curtain closed on 2015, the naysayers need to back off on all the Les-Miles-like coach bashing.
After the inexplicable loss to Texas, people started righting off the Sooners’ title chances, and we’re just talking about their chances to win the Big 12. With games against Baylor, TCU and Oklahoma State still ahead, it didn’t seem plausible that OU would be able to overcome a midseason loss to a not-so-good Texas team, especially knowing that to beat Baylor and Oklahoma State the Sooners would have to do it on the road.
All OU did was go on to win its next seven regular-season games – including the three most difficult games on the schedule, against Baylor, TCU and Oklahoma State – and leapfrog everybody to claim the outright Big 12 crown and the school’s ninth in the 20-year existence of the conference in it current structure. No other Big 12 school has won more than three Big 12 titles in football.
That doesn’t sound to me like a coach who is losing his passion for the game or his ability to win football games.
The problem with fan bases at schools like Oklahoma that have enjoyed a long history of success and championships to go along with it is that the standards for success keep going up and up and the expectations right along with them. So much so that a single loss becomes almost unbearable, and especially when it comes in a conference championship or a postseason bowl in the final game of the season.
When that happens, fans start looking at what went wrong and who and where to point blame. When all the complaining and badmouthing is exhausted and the finger pointing is done, the dust usually settles at the feet of the head coach, who may not be the sole source responsible but unequivocally is the person accountable.
The Sooner fans that are critical of the job Stoops is doing at Oklahoma have lost perspective and are getting too caught up in the details of what constitutes success. Lest I remind you that before Bob Stoops came to Oklahoma, the Sooners had not enjoyed a winning season or been to a bowl game, let alone win a bowl game, in four consecutive years. That was one of the more difficult times in the long history of Oklahoma football.
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Since Stoops’ arrival, however, the Sooners not only have been to a postseason bowl game in 17 consecutive seasons, but have won nine conference championships, played in four national championship games as well as being one of the four participants in the College Football Playoff this season.
Unfortunately, of the five legitimate chances to win a national championship during that time, Oklahoma has come away as the nation’s top team just once (in 2001). Granted, it is always better to win than to end up on the losing end, but in a one-game format, only one team can win and it’s not always the best team that comes out on top, but rather the team that plays the best on that particular day.
I don’t know about you, but I believe there are only a handful or fewer of big-name college coaches who might do a better job than what Bob Stoops has accomplished at Oklahoma and for as long as he has done it. Now the Sooners’ all-time winningest football coach, Stoops has, in my opinion, more than lived up to the expectations of returning Oklahoma football to the elite level in college football with a sustained record of high achievement.
Stoops has won fewer than eight games just once in his 17 seasons at Oklahoma – and that was in his first year, in 1999, when he inherited a very pedestrian 5-6 team from the year before. A better way to say that is that the Sooners have won 10 or more games in all but four of Stoops’ 17 years at OU. How many head coaches can say that? I’ll make it easy for you: No other major college coach has been that successful over the same period of time.
So stop the bickering and let’s be thankful for what we have. No head coach is beyond criticism, but the Sooners have a darn good one and we should be honored and overjoyed that he has brought as much success and national acclaim to the Oklahoma football brand that he has and for as long as he has. Bob Stoops will know when it is time and place to step away. Let’s just hope that is a ways off. When the time does come, which it inevitably does for all head coaches, it will be a better day for Stoops and his family than it will be for OU football fans.