Oklahoma football: Bob Stoops’ coaching tree is growing and flourishing

Bob Stoops won a program-record 190 Oklahoma football games over 18 seasons. Only one other Sooner head coach was at the job longer than the man they once called “Big Game Bob.”

Coaching greatness isn’t just measured in wins and losses, it also takes into account the number of conference championships, the number of All-Americans and all-conference performers, national award winners and, of course, the number of players who go on to play at the next level.

Bob Stoops checks all of those boxes. Another measure of coaching greatness is the number of assistants who go on to obtain head-coaching jobs. The call that a coaching tree, and Stoops’ tree and has grown to great heights and continues to branch out.

Brent Venables, the new Oklahoma head coach, is the newest branch on a tree that was a bare seedling back in 1999, when the eldest of the Stoops brothers landed his first job as a head coach after spending 14 years as an assistant and defensive coordinator, with stops at Iowa, Kent State, Kansas State and Florida before being offered the head coach’s job at Oklahoma.

Stoops’ initial staff at OU included four assistants who went on to become head coaches: Mike Leach, Mike Stoops, Mark Mangino and Venables.

Leach was the first of the Stoops’ assistants to land a head coach’s position. Leach was the Oklahoma offensive coordinator in Stoops’ first season in Norman in 1999. A year later he was the head coach at Texas Tech, a job he held for 10 years. After leaving Texas Tech in 2009, he took the head-coaching position at Washington State. He is now the head coach of the Mississippi State Bulldogs in the SEC.

Mangino, Stoops’ younger brother Mike and Venables were all assistants on the Kansas State staff at the same time Bob was and joined him at Oklahoma.

Mangino started out at OU as the offensive line coach and was elevated to offensive coordinator when Leach left for Texas Tech. In 2002, he returned to the Sunflower State and became the head coach at Kansas. Mangino coached at Kansas for eight seasons and led the Jayhawks to a 12-1 season and an Orange Bowl win over Virginia Tech in 2007. He was fired after the 2009 season and has not been a college head coach since.

Mike Stoops was co-defensive coordinator along with Venables on Stoops’ initial staff. In 2004, he was named head coach of the Arizona Wildcats and held that position for eight seasons. He was fired from Arizona six games into the 2011 season after compiling a 41-50 overall record. He returned to Oklahoma in 2011 as assistant head coach and defensive coordinator. After the Sooners lost to Texas 48-45 in the annual Red River Showdown in 2018, Mike Stoops was relieved of his duties at OU by then-head coach Lincoln Riley.

Bob Stoops brought in Chuck Long, an All-American quarterback at Stoops’ alma mater, Iowa, and the quarterbacks coach at Iowa when Stoops approached him in 2000. He joined Stoops’ staff at OU, initially as quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator, and in 2002 Long became co-offensive coordinator. Long’s head-coaching debut came in 2006 at San Diego State. He was 9-27 over three seasons coaching the Aztecs.

Josh Heupel quarterbacked Oklahoma to a perfect 13-0 season and the 2000 national championship in Stoops’ second season as the Sooners’ head coach. He joined the Oklahoma staff as a full-time assistant in 2006 as quarterbacks coach, and in 2011 was promoted to co-offensive coordinator. His contract was not renewed after the 2015 season. After a season as offensive coordinator at Utah State and a couple more at Missouri, Heupel got his first break as a head coach, getting the top job at UCF. In three seasons as head coach at UCF, Heupel produced a 28-8 record. This past season, he became head coach at Tennessee.

Kevin Sumlin was a veteran assistant coach by the time he arrived at Oklahoma in 2003 as tight ends and special teams coach and later as co-offensive coordinator. His next stop after OU, however, was a step up on the coaching ladder. He became head coach at Houston in 2008. Sumlin moved on to become head coach of Texas A&M in 2011, and he was head coach at Arizona from 2018-20.

Stoops brought Lincoln Riley in as offensive coordinator in 2015, and two seasons after that handed the reins to the Sooner program over to him. Riley cut his head-coaching chops in Norman, and after five seasons and a 55-10 record with the Sooners, he moved on earlier this month to take the head-coaching position at USC.

Other former Stoops assistants who have gone on to head-coaching positions during his 18 seasons at Oklahoma are Shane Beamer (who just finished his first season as head coach at South Carolina), Jay Norvell (Nevada, 2017-21, and Colorado State, 2022-present) and Bo Pelini (Nebraska, 2008-14, and Youngstown State (2015-19).

All told, 11 former assistants under Bob Stoops while he was at Oklahoma have gone on to add head coach to their college football resume.