Bob Stoops ranked as 4th best coaching hire in last 25 years

Bob Stoops is the winningest head coach in Oklahoma football history, and ESP N has ranked him as one of  the top coaching hires in the last 25 years.

A recent article by ESPN staff writer Adam Rittenberg places Stoops No. 4 on the list of the best coaching hires in college football over the past 25 years (1995 to present).

Predictably, Alabama’s Nick Saban tops the list, followed by Dabo Swinney of Clemson and No. 3 is Pete Carroll, formally of USC.

Stoops took over an OU football program in 1999 that had fallen on difficult times and lost it winning ways. In short order, he brought the Sooners back to national relevance, including a national championhip his second year on the job.

Over 18 winning seasons as the Oklahoma head coach, Stoops won 190 games, including appearances in four BCS national championship games, 10 Big 12 championships and 18 consecutive postseason bowls. His Sooner teams won 12 games fives times in his OU tenure and 11 games eight other times.

Four other coaches who led Big 12 teams during the past 25 seasons also made the ESPN list of the best college football coaching hires over that time frame. Mack Brown, who headed the Texas Longhorn program from 1998 to 2013 is the next highest Big 12 coach, ranked No. 9. Right behind him is Gary Patterson of TCU, at No. 10.

Gary Pinkel, who was at Missouri as a Big 12 team and also in the team’s early years as a member of the SEC, is ranked 19th, and Oklahoma State head coach is 24th.

In the first decade of the 2000s, Stoops’ Sooner teams produced an .821 winning percentage. Only in the decades of the 1950s and 1970s did Oklahoma teams have a higher 10-year winning percentage.