Oklahoma football: The 5 best teams of the Bob Stoops era
By Chip Rouse
# 1 — 2000 Oklahoma Sooners (13-0, 8-0), Big 12 champions, national champions
It should come as no surprise to anyone who closely follows Oklahoma football that the 2000 season, Bob Stoops’ second as head coach of the Sooners, was the best of his 18 seasons in Norman.
The drama began building after three nonconference wins by an average scoring margin of 35 points, followed by an 18-point win over Kansas in the Sooners’ Big 12 opener.
Game No. 5 that season was against No. 11 Texas and offered the first real challenge of the 2000 campaign for the resurgent Oklahoma team. The No. 10 Sooners not only came out a winner in the game — avenging the OU loss to the Longhorns a year earlier in Stoops’ first Red River Rivalry — they came out a big winner, 63-14.
The next weekend posed an even larger hurdle, at second-ranked Kansas State, where Stoops spent seven seasons on the coaching staff. By the time the K-State game rolled around, the Sooners had moved inside the top 10 to No. 8 in the national rankings, and they weren’t finished climbing.
Quarterback Josh Heupel was on fire against the nation’s No. 2 team. The Sooner signal-caller completed 29 of 38 passes for 374 yards, and Oklahoma held off a fourth-quarter Kansas State rally for a 41-31 victory, the Sooners’ first over the Cats in their previous four attempts.
After defeating No. 2 Kansas State, next up on the schedule was a home date against the nation’s top-ranked team, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, the Sooners’ longtime conference rival.
The Cornhuskers’ exerted their will early in the game, marching out to a 14-0 lead in the opening quarter. Many OU fans were fearful at this point that the bubble on the Sooners’ magical run-up to No. 3 in the country was about to burst.
That’s when the OU defense stiffened and the offense kicked in gear, scoring the next 31 points in the game while holding the Huskers scoreless from the first quarter on for a 31-14 victory.
That victory elevated Oklahoma to the top spot in the nation for the first time since the 1987 season.
Oklahoma won its final four conference games to go 8-0 in league play, but it wasn’t without a couple of close calls from Texas A&M and in-state Bedlam rival Oklahoma State.
The Sooners faced Kansas State in the Big 12 Championship. It’s never easy to beat a team twice in the same season, but Oklahoma held on for a 27-24 victory. That earned the Sooners a spot in the national championship against No. 3 Florida State.
OU was the No. 1 ranked team, but the Sooners were 11-point underdogs to FSU going into the national championship game in the Orange Bowl.
The Sooners had the higher ranking, but the Seminoles had the country’s highest scoring offense and a Heisman Trophy winner at quarterback (Chris Weinke).
If the fans were expecting prolific offense in this game, they were sadly disappointed. Only one touchdown was scored in the game — and that was by Oklahoma, midway through the final quarter, on a 10-yard run by Quentin Griffin. The Sooners also added a pair of earlier field goals by Tim Duncan for a total of 13 points in the game.
Those 13 points were like gold in this defensive struggle. Florida State’s only score in the game came in the fourth quarter on a harmless safety. The final score was 13-2 in favor of Oklahoma, earning the Sooners the seventh national championship and first under Bob Stoops.