Bob Stoops Hall of Fame

BY:Chris Plank

The winningest coach in Sooner Football History was chosen as a first-ballot selection to the College Football Hall of Fame joining five previous Sooner head coaches already inducted.

The selection was by no means a surprise, instead a validation of what Sooner fans witnessed first-hand. While the award recognizes on the field success, the Sooner legend has been a Hall of Famer both on and off the field.

“As a son of an all-time, lifelong high school coach,” Coach Stoops said in a statement released by the OU athletic department, “no one appreciates the game of football and the coaching profession more than I do, and so I am grateful for and humbled by this honor.”

Stoops holds Oklahoma’s record with 190 career victories. Under his leadership and guidance, the Sooners won a national championship in his second season. The title in 2000 reestablished the Sooners among the elite in college football, setting a foundation for Oklahoma Sooner football for years to come.

“Football is the ultimate team game with so many moving parts and players. No one does it alone,” Stoops said in an interview on Sports Talk 1400 and 99.3 FM. “I always felt appreciative of the hard work of everyone around me, administration, assistant coaches, support staff and players.

“Fortunately, I’ve had a ton of great players. All the help and support and the hard work of the players truly made the difference.”

The Sooners went 17-27-1 (.389) overall and 10-21 (.323) in Big Eight/Big 12 play in the four years before Stoops arrived. After going 7-5 in 1999 in his debut season, Stoops led OU to its seventh National Championship title with a 13-0 record and a 13-2 upset of Florida State in the Orange Bowl. The Sooners played in three more BCS National Championship games under Stoops (2003, 2004 and 2008) and made the College Football Playoff in 2015.

The Sooners spent 30 weeks in the No. 1 spot of the AP Top 25 and ranked No. 1 in the BCS standings for 20 weeks — most in the nation. Stoops also went 60-30 against AP Top 25 teams, the best in the nation during his tenure.

“You truly have to live it to understand the bond,” Stoops said. “When you’re working and striving, and everyone is putting in the sweat in the rough times, there is an appreciation and respect for one another that you get when you’re in those tough times or in the middle of the game when you’re battling it out and it’s third down and you’re trying to get a stop. To me, that’s probably the most important thing for a coach — being able to connect with and relate to your players… and if I did anything right it was always connecting wholeheartedly with them.

“Ultimately, though, the dedication and hard work of the players is what wins, and I am so appreciative of all of the guys who played for me.”

This year’s Hall of Fame class includes fellow Big Eight/Big 12 alums Kenneth Sims from Texas and Darren Sproles from Kansas State. Also names like Tony Romo, Dan Morgan and Carson Palmer will be inducted in December along with a fellow teammate of Coach Stoops from Iowa, Andre Tippett.

“I’m so pleased to go into the Hall with Andre Tippett,” Stoops said. “We played two years together at Iowa and we were on the Big 10 Champ team that went to the Rose bowl. He was our All-American defensive end and it will be great to connect with him. I’ve heard from a lot of buddies with Tip and I both going in.”

Perhaps nothing says more about Bob Stoops than his willingness to do whatever is necessary to help continue the growth and success of Oklahoma Football. When the Sooners were down coaches due to COVID-19 concerns late in the season, Stoops donned the headset and helped in preparations for the home finale against Baylor.

The return to the Sooner sidelines was 22 years to the date from his hiring as Oklahoma’s head coach on December 1 of 1998.

“He’s certainly one of the few people in my life that I know, regardless of what it is, that I can go to and get really thoughtout, honest, great advice,” Sooner head coach Lincoln Riley said. “We still talk often. This program is obviously still extremely near and dear to him. He’s been great for me. If not for him, some of these questions and things that you go through in this deal, if not for him, I don’t know who exactly who I would go to. I just don’t really have anybody else quite like that that I have that much trust in, that I know has my best interest or, more importantly, has this football program’s best interest. I probably don’t understand how fortunate I’ve been to have a guy like him in that position.”

Stoops is OU’s sixth head coach in the College Hall of Fame, joining Bennie Owen (1905-26), Lawrence “Biff” Jones (193536), Bud Wilkinson (1947-63), Jim Tatum (1946) and Barry Switzer (1973-88). There are also 22 former Sooner players in the College Hall of Fame. But the retired head coach has never been one to shine the light on himself, choosing to consistently highlight those around him.

“I hired great guys around me,” Stoops said. “I’ve said it a lot…from day one. I hit a home run with my first staff to start things off. Then it morphed and evolved from there. I was incredibly lucky to start off with great coaches and throughout the whole time to have great coaches and to have the support of Joe C. up to President (David) Boren and (Joseph) Harroz who was always a confidant of mine when I was coaching before he became president.”

When Joe Castiglione officially hired Bob Stoops as the guy to take over the Sooners, the success was almost immediate. But through the interview process that led to hiring Stoops, there wasn’t a feeling of necessarily having a three- or four-year plan in place.

“Neither one of us wanted to put a barrier in front of how quick we could get it turned around,” Sooner Athletic Director Joe Castiglione said. “We didn’t want to come in and say it is going to take us three years or five years. It was, let’s get to work. What are we going to do to get this turned around?”

“I’ve always been the guy that basically felt, do the absolute best job you can at what you’re doing and if you do, other things will come,” Stoops said. “So, I didn’t have that master plan of when I became a head coach, I felt I did in my head because the great people I had been around from Hayden Frey to Bill Snyder, Steve Spurrier, Dick Krum. All these guys were great head coaches, and you know, the great assistant coaches I was around.”

Stoops posted a 190-48 record (.798) and coached teams that made a school-record 18 consecutive bowl trips. He was the only coach in the BCS era to win the Fiesta Bowl, Orange

Bowl, Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl and the National Championship, and he compiled more wins in his first 18 seasons than any coach in college football history.

Before Stoops unexpectedly retired on June 7, 2017, Oklahoma amassed the most wins of any Power Five program between 1999 to 2016. He led the Sooners to double-digit victories in 14 of his 18 seasons, the most in the nation during that span, and had at least eight wins in each of his last 17 seasons, the longest streak in the nation at the time of his retirement. Seven Sooner teams finished in the top five of the AP Poll, including each of the last two. Stoops was a six-time Big 12 Coach of the Year and two-time national coach of the year.

“It was very important for me to leave in a positive way where the program can continue in a great way,” Stoops said of his retirement “That mattered to me to leave the program in good shape. I felt I knew that Lincoln was the right guy to do it and move forward in a great way. I knew the players and the maturity on the team would handle it well.”

The Sooners have advanced to the College Football Playoffs in three of the four years since Stoops surprisingly retired with two Heisman Trophy winners and two quarterbacks going number one overall in the NFL Draft. The run of success would not be possible had Coach Stoops not build an incredibly stable foundation for the program which was by no means on steady ground when he took over after the 1998 season.

And even with the immense amount of success and the deserved accolades including selection for the Hall of Fame, Stoops always turns the credit and the memories back to the players he coached.

“Fondest memories were the relationship with the players, absolutely. It remains today whenever I get to see them,” Stoops said. “The fun times in the locker room, seeing them happy and excited about their accomplishment, being proud of their accomplishment in the locker room celebrating after a game, that connection and relationship with the players definitely. Even going to practice and having fun moments, somebody gets mischievous about something and you get to laugh about it, nothing is better than that.”

Bob Stoops is a Hall of Famer. On December 1, 1998 that expectation was set, and it was executed to almost perfection.

“There won’t be any excuses,” Castiglione said in looking back at the career of Bob Stoops. “You know the moment on the steps of Evans hall when he uttered that phrase, for many Oklahomans to hear that… ‘There won’t be any excuses’... and then he also followed it up and said, ‘When we’re successful, not if, when we’re successful, it won’t be about me, it will be about the collective efforts of everybody else… players, coaches, the administration, the fans, the donors, everybody.’

“And you know what, Bob Stoops lived that every single day that he was the head coach, and even to this day when I hear him speak, I know he still has that same kind of characteristic in his mind.” – BSM