Bowlsby, coaches laud Stoops’ legacy
FRISCO, TEXAS — The Super Bowl winner gets the Lombardi Trophy. The NBA Finals champ gets the O’Brien Trophy. The Big 12 football championship trophy does not have a name.
But Monday, you started wondering if the Big 12 might name its most valued hardware after Bob Stoops.
For the first time since 1998, when the internet was in 42 percent of American homes and Murphy Brown still was on network television, Bob Stoops was not at Big 12 Football Media Days. And commissioner Bob Bowlsby paid homage to the conference’s greatest coach.
Stoops suddenly retired on June 7 as the Oklahoma coach. How much the Sooners will miss him is open to debate. How much the Big 12 will miss Stoops is not.
“He’s a loss to the conference, because he’s been so thoughtful and he cares about the game so much and he cares about the Big 12,” Bowlsby said. “He’s a voice that college football needs to hear.”
Someone asked Bowlsby about naming the trophy after Stoops. Bowlsby responded with a laugh, not of absurdity, but of why-didn’tI-think-of-that. You never know. The way Big 12 coaches talked Monday, they might fully endorse the move to honor a coach who won 10 Big 12 championships, nine of them outright, in his 18 seasons.
“Until you’ve sat in a Big 12 meeting and you experience Bob Stoops and Bill Snyder, when those two guys speak, everything comes to a screeching halt and you listen,” said Kansas coach David Beaty. “They were so wellthought out and so calculated when they do talk, and they’ve thought about all the issues so thoroughly. When they speak, things are solved pretty quick.”
We never think about that kind of thing. Bowlsby referenced Big 12 meetings and said Stoops will be sorely missed. His Ohio
frankness. His common sense. His ability to see a big picture beyond what merely was good for Sooner football.
Bowlsby said he ran into Stoops last weekend at a memorial service for former Iowa assistant coach Bob Elliott, and it gave Bowlsby a chance to thank Stoops.
“What I said to him was, I have really been grateful for his care about the quality of the game of football,” Bowlsby said. “He has been a real leader among our coaches. He has been a voice of moderation. He has been a voice for change. He’s been very innovative. The Big 12 is poorer for not having Bob Stoops any longer as a head coach in our league. His legacy is extraordinary.”
Big 12 coaches, no doubt thankful they don’t have to try beat Stoops anymore, were exuberant in their praise of Stoops.
TCU’s Gary Patterson: “It’s hard to lose a guy, what he stood for, not just for Oklahoma, but for the Big 12.”
Iowa State’s Matt Campbell: “I can remember the first (coaching) convention. The first speaker I ever heard was Bob Stoops down in New Orleans. I was so taken back by who he was and what he stood for. I think he’s as respected as anybody in our profession, and that’s hard to find today. He’s a guy that lived it, that breathed it, and had a phenomenal career. I think how he built his own football program and the success they had, it’s a staple, and it’s a beacon — especially us young coaches hope to be able to have a career like what Coach Stoops was able to do at Oklahoma.”
Beaty: “Bob is wellrespected throughout the country. Having Bob Stoops in our conference was something that I was really proud of. To be in the same conference with him, you felt you were on solid ground with him, because of the leadership he provided for our conference.”
The Sooners will miss Stoops. But there’s a chance that Lincoln Riley is a worthy successor. The Big 12 will miss Stoops, too, and there’s little chance that anyone from the conference perspective will fill Stoops’ void anytime soon.