The OU natives are getting restless.
John E. Hoover: Bob Stoops says he's satisfied with direction of OU but is his optimism misplaced?
DALLAS — Bob Stoops is optimistic about the University of Oklahoma football program.
The Sooners were picked to finish third in the Big 12 Conference race this season, though that might be ambitious. TCU and Baylor are the favorites and the rest of the league looks like a toss-up, so maybe third is about right.
But the past 18 months or so, Stoops has endured a lot more than a third-place league finish: the Joe Mixon punch and ensuing video, the Frank Shannon sexual assault and Title IX accusation, the Dorial Green-Beckham debacle, a five-loss season after crowing championship aspirations, another Baylor blowout, an historically bad sideline decision that likely lost a game to Oklahoma State, and a bowl game massacre at the hands of Clemson. He’s also had to replace one-third of his coaching staff and essentially reassigned the rest.
But Tuesday at Big 12 Media Day, Stoops played the part of Nero and continued to express optimism about the state of the OU program.
“Well, a lot gives me optimism,†Stoops said. “A 17-year background. We're just a year removed from being in the top 10 and winning the Sugar Bowl. … And then prior to that, there's been a lot of success and a great track record of success not only from myself, from our administration, from the way we direct this program.
“I look around the country, we're probably not the only team that's 8-5 or 7-6 and on and on and on. And I look at a track record of 12 of the last 15 years, we've had 10 or more wins. Now, I don't think anyone else has done that in the country with that kind of consistency, and that doesn't dissipate in a year.â€
Not in a year, no. But over time, the impact of that success from the previous decade does fade.
Don’t misunderstand. Stoops immediately elevated himself to the elite pantheon of college football coaches, and has endured the test of time to stay there, winning eight conference titles and becoming the program’s all-time winningest coach — and doing it for 15 years with the highest degree of integrity. Ask Rhett Bomar.
After the unbridled achievements Stoops reached from 2000-2004 — his teams went 60-7, won 90 percent of their games and played in three national championship games — he spent the next 10 years going 101-32 (.759), claimed four conference titles and played for a national title.
But win totals are hardly the problem in Norman. It’s the losses — the unsightly, unprecedented losses that have begun to pile up.
And that integrity thing? Last year, for the first time in his career, Stoops came under fire — first for pursuing and ultimately landing Green-Beckham after his troubling expulsion from Missouri, then for suspending but not dismissing Mixon after watching surveillance video of him violently punch a woman, and finally for keeping Shannon atop the depth chart two weeks into training camp before president David Boren stepped in and took Shannon to the Oklahoma Supreme Court to get him expelled for a year.
Mixon essentially redshirted the 2014 season as a freshman (he wasn’t allowed to participate in practices, workouts or other team activities), and Shannon eventually was kicked out of school. While Green-Beckham (ineligible last year per NCAA transfer rules) has moved on to the NFL, both Mixon and Shannon have been reinstated at OU.
All of which prompted the second question posed to Stoops during his 20-minute time on the dais: why haven’t you distanced yourself from Joe Mixon?
“First, let me say there's no place for it. It should never happen,†Stoops said. “There's not only domestic violence, but there's violence towards women, there's violence in general. None of it should be tolerated, and it has been disciplined.
“We disciplined in a certain way depending on the circumstances we have, and these guys have had significant penalties. They've had a lot of other internal measures to meet and to stand … up to, and if all those were met, then they had the opportunity to redeem themselves and hopefully grow from their experience.
“We also feel that, being an educational institution and the age of these young men, they deserve an opportunity to do that, and it's our job to help them. But they also know that we have some very high standards for them to meet, and if they're not met, then they won't be with us any longer.â€
Stoops is right, mostly. He’ll always deserve a pass for a bad season. He’s certainly earned it.
But he’s wrong, too. Clinging to dusty relics of glory is not evidence that the program is currently in a good place. Hanging on to a 19-month-old Sugar Bowl shocker is not confirmation of progress. And reinstating players who abuse women is not proof that Rome isn’t burning.
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