It's Pile on Stoops Week

It's easy writing this week to pile on Bob Stoops...doesn't win the big one, can't win a bowl game, etc. Here are a few rebuttals:

1. Conference championships: Stoops has won 7 conference championships in ten years. While Texas has gone 3-1 against OU in the past four years, that's translated into exactly ONE Big 12 South Division championship. Seems to me like there are other big games in the conference that lead to conference championships. In hindsight, those games against Kansas State, Texas A&M and Texas Tech are pretty important, too? Aren't they Mack? Stoops starts every year with the goals of a) win the Big 12 South; b) win the Big 12 Championship; c) play for National Championship; d) win National Championship. He's won the Big 12 South seven times, the Big 12 six times, played in four NCGs, and won one. It's an impressive resume.
2. Quality of Bowl Opponents, part 1: Winning conference championships leads you to playing in higher profile bowls, against better teams. For programs who have played more than 5 bowl games in the past ten years, here are the top 10 by winning percentage of the opponent prior to the bowl game: 1) Southern California: 87.4%; 2) Louisville: 86.6%; 3) Oklahoma: 86.55%; 4) LSU: 84.8%; 5) Ohio State: 81.5%; 6) Florida: 81.0%; 7) Miami (FL); 79.4%; 8) Michigan: 79.2%; 9) Virginia Tech: 78.8%; 10) Florida State: 78.6%. Of those schools, Miami, Southern Cal and LSU are the only schools to have a winning record in these bowl games. So, one of the things is that Stoops is playing some of the top teams in the country. For example, no one else beat USC in 2004, and no one else beat Boise in 2006. On another note, Louisville really snuck in there, didn't they? They've gone 3-5, losing to 10-3 Boise State, 10-2 Colorado State, 11-2 Marshall, 13-1 Miami (OH) and 11-2 Virginia Tech.
3. Quality of Bowl Opponents, part 2: following are the top 5 by Point Differential of the opponent: 1) Oklahoma: 20.18; 2) Southern Cal: 19.27; 3) Ohio State: 16.61; 4) Louisville: 16.44; 5) Florida: 16.24. This is another example of how the quality of opposition is at a higher level when you play for championships every year.
4. Record against ranked opponents: Stoops is 33-13 against ranked teams. That's 12-0 at home, 7-3 away and 14-10 on neutral territory. Neutral territory games include playing LSU in New Orleans and Florida and Florida State in Miami. I'm not making the "Dallas is in Texas" comment here, tickets are allotted evenly and the field is equidistant between the two schools.
5. Loyalty and Success don't go hand in hand: There are eight programs that have played in bowl games the past ten years: OU, BC, Florida, FSU, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Texas and Virginia Tech. That doesn't rebut anything, but FSU, OU, Texas and Virginia Tech are the only four that have had the same coach during that tenure. So Stoops is in rare air in terms of success and loyalty to a program.

So you can all pile on and say Stoops is no Pete Carroll or Mack Brown, or Urban Meyer, or Les Miles or Nick Saban or whoever else. The fact is that Stoops is not based in a recruiting hotbed like Florida, Southern Cal, Texas or Louisiana. Stoops takes home grown kids like Jason White or Sam Bradford and sprinkles in some Texas and Colorado and other state talent to compete with the big boys. He doesn't go on national TV and whine about the tie breaking system of his conference. Is he perfect? No. Would I fire him and hire anyone else? No.