Oklahoma football: Standout stat from Sooners’ Stoops era
By Chip Rouse
You could fill a trophy room with accolades and meritorious accomplishments in Oklahoma football during the nearly two decades Bob Stoops was head coach of the Sooners.
None of the 20 OU head football coaches that preceded Stoops won more games then he did at Oklahoma (190). Included among those record-breaking wins were 10 conference championships in 18 seasons. His teams never finished lower than fourth place in the league standings.
The Sooners unprecedented 47-game winning streak between 1953 and 1957 is likely never to be broken, but under Stoops’ leadership, Oklahoma put together two of the seven longest winning streaks in the illustrious history of Sooner football. His 2000 and 2001 teams won 20 consecutive games, and in 2002 and 2003, the Sooners strung together 14 consecutive wins.
Oklahoma played 110 home games in 18 seasons under Stoops and won an incredible 101 of those games. All 110 were sellouts.
Oklahoma Sooners Football
No team in college football history has more 10-win seasons than Oklahoma (37), and 14 of those double-digit-win seasons belong to Stoops’ Sooners.
A successful season in college football is generally measured by whether or not a team is invited to play in a postseason bowl. Stoops’ teams made 18 consecutive bowl appearances, going every season that he was the head coach (1999-2017). and four of those bowl appearances were in the national championship game (all in the BCS era).
Only three teams in the current FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) have longer active postseason bowl appearances than OU.
These represent just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Bob Stoops’ coaching accomplishments at Oklahoma.
To me, however, the stat that stands out above all the rest is his 190 wins. Not only are those victories more than any other Sooner head coach in program history, they also represent the most of any college coach since 1999, Stoops’ first season at Oklahoma. In addition, no coach in the history of college football accumulated more wins in his first 18 seasons than Bob Stoops.
Plain and simple: That is what you call going out at the top of your game.
Bob Stoops would have it no other way.