Oklahoma football: The 5 best teams of the Bob Stoops era
By Chip Rouse
#3 — 2003 Oklahoma Sooners (12-2, 8-0)
Oklahoma rolled through the regular season in 2003, mowing down all 12 of its opponents and by wide margins. The average margin of victory for the Sooners that season was 28 points.
Quarterback Jason White passed for almost 4,000 yards that season and threw 40 touchdown passes. (He would go on to win the 2003 Heisman Trophy, OU’s fourth Heisman winner all-time.) Mark Clayton caught 83 passes, 15 for touchdowns, and the running-back combination of Kejuan Jones and Renaldo Works totaled over 1,600 rushing yards.
It wasn’t all about offense that season, though. The OU defense was a big contributor to the relative ease with which the Sooners dominated their opponents in the regular season.
There was talk leading into the Big 12 Championship game between the undefeated South Division champs, the Sooners, and No. 13 Kansas State, winners of the conference’s North Division, of this OU team being the GOAT (greatest all time) of all Sooner teams.
Oklahoma began the 2003 season as the nation’s top-ranked team and remained in the top spot through every week of the regular season.
Kansas State head coach Bill Snyder had been a tough out for the Sooners every game since Bob Stoops, once an assistant under Snyder at K-State, became the OU head coach. Despite that, Stoops had not lost to his former boss in three previous matchups.
The Sooners were heavy favorites to brush aside Kansas State in the conference championship and go on to play for the national championship, in what would be their second appearance in the BCS title game in four seasons.
Oklahoma scored on its opening possession in the Big 12 Championship, with Jones breaking off a 42-yard touchdown run to put the Sooners up 7-0 three-minutes into the game.
What wasn’t known then was that the TD on OU’s opening drive would be the only points the high-scoring Sooners would muster that night.
Behind the superb quarterback play of K-State’s El Roberson and 235 rushing yards by mighty little man Darren Sproles, the Wildcats scored 35 unanswered points and pulled off one of the biggest shockers of the 2003 college football season. It wasn’t just the fact that K-State won the game, but the margin of victory that was the most surprising.
All of a sudden, Oklahoma’s hope of playing for a second national championship under Bob Stoops was in serious jeopardy.
Despite the odds, somehow the Sooners managed to hold on to enough rating points in the BCS standings to fall only one spot in the final voting, to No. 2, thus preserving their national title chances and a matchup with new No. 1 LSU.
LSU’s defense proved to be too much for the high-octane Oklahoma offense in the BCS Championship game that season. The Tigers held the Sooners to just 154 total yards and just 102 passing in posting a 21-14 win over the Crimson and Cream.
(Because of the controversy created by Oklahoma going on to play in the BCS National Championship despite the blowout loss to Kansas State in the 2003 Big 12 Championship, a new rule was put in place requiring a team to win its conference championship to remain in contention for a spot in the national championship game. The reasoning, of course, was that if you don’t win your conference championship, you should not be playing for the national championship.)
So what began as a season like no other for Oklahoma football ended with two sputtering offensive performances and a pair of heartbreaking, back-to-back losses. Nevertheless, the domination with which the Sooners played, on both sides of the ball, through the first dozen games in the 2003 season was a good as any OU team ever. This is why we consider this group of Sooners’ one of Bob Stoops’ best.