LEAVING LEGEND
Players reflect on crazy day of Stoops’ retirement
Jeffery Mead’s phone lit up with a Facebook notification.
The wide receiver was in the middle of his intermediate accounting class when he looked down and read the alert.
A fan tagged him in a post that announced his head coach was leaving.
Up until that point, it had been a normal day.
It began with 7-on-7 drills, lunch and a couple summer school classes.
And even when he saw the first notification, he didn’t think his day would take such a dramatic shift from mundane to unforgettable. Fans talk and rumors fly. One post didn’t mean much.
But as the notifications poured in — including a message that the team meeting had been moved up by an hour — he knew that Wednesday, June 7 wouldn’t be an ordinary day.
“They’ve never called me out of class for a meeting, so I knew something was important,” Mead said. “Then when people were saying Stoops was resigning, that sounded important enough for them to move out of class.”
While Mead quietly slipped out of his lecture, safety Steven Parker was pulling into his Norman apartment with his roommate Myles Tease, a wide receiver from Tulsa, when his phone buzzed. Another teammate had
alerted the defensive back group message to a tweet: Bob Stoops was retiring.
“My stomach just dropped,” Parker said. “I’ve been in Oklahoma for 21 years, my whole life. Born in Oklahoma City, raised in Tulsa, went to Jenks High School. I grew up watching Bob Stoops and all the players that came before me. It’s very surreal, but at the same time, it’s a blessing that I got a chance to play under a great coach.”
While Parker and Tease sat in shock, linebacker Ogbonnia Okoronkwo was fast asleep. Oblivious to the tweets and rumors, the redshirt senior was napping in his room when he woke up and checked his phone.
The first thing he saw was the same message Mead saw earlier: team meeting moved up. Be there at 2:30.
He read the message at 2:20.
Still groggy, Okoronkwo jumped up and ran over to the new team meeting room in the recently renovated south end zone of Gaylord Family — Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.
He burst through the doors a minute late and was immediately met with a sea of somber faces.
‘‘What’s wrong with everybody? Cheer up,” he said to a couple teammates.
When nobody laughed, he knew it was serious.
As Okoronkwo took his seat, Stoops stepped to the front of the room and confirmed what so many of them had seen earlier in the day: he was retiring, effectively immediately. Offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley would be their new head coach.
Stoops told quarterback Baker Mayfield before he made the team announcement, but it was just as surprising to him as was to the rest of the room.
“I was taken aback,” Mayfield said. “It’s shocking. But it’s not going to be a negative thing. Lincoln is more than qualified, and he’s very, very able. He’s willing and capable of having success. I’m just shocked because Coach Stoops is the face of Oklahoma football and has been.”
As Stoops concluded his announcement, one by one, the Sooners stood from their seats and gave the man who brought them there a standing ovation.
When the applause ended, Stoops and his wife Carol, slipped out of the room, turning the team over to Riley.
None of the players woke up Wednesday morning expecting to experience such a dramatic and emotional shift.
And in truth, though it’s emotional, the change isn’t as dramatic as it could be.
“A lot of the time when we see a head coach leaving somewhere, everybody is scrambling around,” Okoronkwo said. “They don’t know what they’re going to do, but for us, I like that there’s a lot of security.”
The man in charge might’ve changed in the most unexpected fashion, but the team goals remain the same.
“We’re just all thinking, ‘Let’s go give Bob a ring. Let’s go get him a national ring. He has 10 conference rings, let’s get him a national title,’” Okoronkwo said of the team’s mindset entering the season. “Nothing’s changed. Now we just want to get Coach Riley a national championship ring.”