Oklahoma football: Will Bob Stoops mesh with 2004 USC alums?

.Former Oklahoma football head coach Bob Stoops has signed a deal to replace Urban Meyer on FOX Sports’ “Big Noon Kickoff” show as he heads into the next chapter of his football life.

Two members of the FOX college football studio crew, however, Stoops has a bit of history with.

For the 2004 season, USC and Oklahoma both finished the regular season undefeated at 12-0 and No. 1 and 2 in the national rankings. Those two teams had been at the top of the rankings the entire season and met in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 4, 2005 as part of the BCS National Championship.

That 2005 BCS National Championship game not only featured a showdown of two undefeated, top-ranked teams but also was the first time that two Heisman Trophy winners were on the field in the same game on opposite sides.

Oklahoma Sooners Football

USC quarterback Matt Leinart was the 2004 Heisman Trophy winner, and Oklahoma QB Jason White had won the award the previous year. OU running back Adrian Peterson was the Heisman runner-up to Leinart in 2004, White was third in the voting that year and Leinart’s USC teammate Reggie Bush finished fourth in the voting and was actually the Heisman winner the following season.

Both Leinart and Bush are part of the FOX Sports “Big Noon Kickoff” broadcast crew, along with program host Rob Stone, who will be joined with Stoops in the 2021 college football season.

Behind the passing of Leinart and the running of Bush and LenDale White, USC handed Stoops and Oklahoma one of the worst losses during Stoops’ 18 seasons as the Oklahoma head head coach in that BCS National Championship in January 2005.

Leinart finished with over 300 passing yards and five touchdowns for the Trojans, and Bush added 78 yards on the ground in a game Stoops would most likely want to forget. Leinart and Bush most likely will not let him forget this on “Big Noon Kickoff.”

This aspect is going to create plenty of fun moments on the show, as they will most likely bring up the game itself, especially in any of the weeks that Oklahoma is playing in the FOX featured game. Although the USC championship in the 2004 season was vacated, there most likely will still be those jabs that make the show fun.

When FOX cast Stoops they most likely had this in mind along with his great knowledge and analysis of the game. There will probably be a moment when Leinart and Bush brag about the national championship win. No telling how Stoops might respond if and when that subject comes up, but we can’t wait to hear it.

That is a clip that could very well go viral across the College football world and should be very entertaining. The game itself was over 15 years ago, so the jabs would all be in good fun. Because of that, there is little chance for some sort of bad blood between Stoops and his two USC FOX colleagues.

With Stoops having won a national championship at Oklahoma, he should be fine joking about that game after this much time has passed. Oklahoma football could very well have claimed that championship after it was vacated, but the decision not to shows they have accepted the loss.

It is going to be interesting to see how the show changes with the transition from Urban Meyer to Stoops. For Oklahoma, it will obviously be more fun to see him there, but across the country, Meyer probably has more notoriety.

Stoops has a great football mind, so in terms of analysis, he will be just fine and he has the the personality to be more entertaining than Meyer. who is leaving the program to become the new head coach of the NFL Jacksonville Jaguars. This will be good television and a must-watch for Oklahoma football fans.

Seeing the Sooner legend who brought the program its seventh national championship and plenty of great years of OU football will be special for Sooner fans. USC fans also love to clown on Oklahoma whenever the OU-USC national championship game gets brought up in good fun, so the chemistry will reflect this.

This will make Saturdays much more fun for Oklahoma football fans and is a great opportunity for Stoops.