Comments on: Power Lunch: Chat with Berry Tramel

By: Randall

Randall — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:58:56 +0000

Whitworth: I’m not your son. Why don’t you show everyone how smart you are by pointing out where I’m wrong, instead of trotting out that line that everyone has heard a thousand times before?

74: The first OU football game I watched on TV was OU’s loss to Alabama in the Orange Bowl after the 1962 season. So, yeah, I remember the 2 coaches previous to Bob Stoops.

I’m not calling for Bob to be fired. He’s a fine coach. He just won a share of his 8th Big 12 championship.

I’m just saying that he’s not going to win another national championship at OU unless he goes back to what got him to the one he won 12 years ago.

Many coaches lose the fire as they age. They get comfortable, or complacent, or set in their ways, or just less intense than they were when they were younger. It happened to Bud Wilkinson. It happened to Barry Switzer, but he rekindled it and won a 3rd national championship a decade after his 2nd one. He’d have won two more had Miami not been so good.

Maybe Bob will find what he’s lost. If he does, I’ll be glad to admit that I was wrong. A good sign would be if he were to go looking for the best position coaches available instead of having guys he likes and is comfortable with.

Right now, he’s got a staff full of coaches who could not find another top-10 program to hire them at their present positions. Could Bruce Kittle be coaching half the offensive line at any other top program? Could Josh Heupel be the Offensive Coordinator at any other top program? Could Jerry Schmidt be the S&C Coach at any other top program? I don’t think so.

But, all in all, it’s a staff good enough to win the Big 12 every other year, and that’s a lot better than what we had with Gary Gibbs, Howard Schnellenberger, and John Blake.

By: Lxxiv

Lxxiv — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 07:49:31 +0000

That should be “I remember.” Sorry!

By: Lxxiv

Lxxiv — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 07:44:53 +0000

Were you guys around during the tenures of the two coaches prior to Stoops? For that matter, I remover the really bad years we had when Gomer Jones was head coach after Bud Wilkenson plus numerous other bad years with subsequent coaches.

By: willie

willie — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 06:26:34 +0000

You are RIGHT, Randall, well said! Bob is a good 10-15 rated coach & staff and his teams have started to reflect it. They say a team always takes on the persona of their leader. My notable memory of the ’08 NC game was OU 1st & 10 inside the Florida 1 yd. line w/what was said to be the best O-line in college football that season, but failed to score in 4 attempts. Tell Stoops to turn the lights out, he’s the last to leave.

By: kent whitwerth

kent whitwerth — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 04:07:43 +0000

Randall – don’t quit your day job son !!

By: Randall

Randall — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 18:53:32 +0000

The ’98 championship game between Tennessee and Florida State was in the Fiesta Bowl.

About OU winning another national championship, it’s not going to happen on Bob Stoops’ watch. He’s not the bold young coach he was in 2000, he doesn’t recruit as well as he did then, and his staff is not as good as that staff was. There’s not one assistant at OU who is near the best in the business at his job.

Bob Stoops is still a very good coach. He’ll still win more than his share of Big 12 championships. But he’s averaged 3 losses a year since the debacle against USC, and even his best team since then–the 2008 squad–lost 2.