We should all underachieve like Bob Stoops.
I'll take my chances with six conference titles on my résumé. Add a national championship. Loads of All-Americans. Then call me "Mr. Unclutch."
That was the headline on one blog summarizing both Stoops' career and the issue of this week's New Year's Eve windfall for the Oklahoma coach.
As a token of its appreciation, the school is cutting a check for $3 million to Stoops on Wednesday, two days before Oklahoma arrives in South Florida for the BCS title game. No strings. No reason, really, except to say thanks. It is being termed a 10-year "anniversary bonus." It brings Stoops' total compensation this year to $5.77 million. Call it an even $6 million considering the other bonuses Stoops is earning for getting the Sooners to their fourth BCS title game in nine years.
And you thought Alabama's Four Million Dollar Man was getting sick money?
This is what happens when the money is perceived to have outstripped the accomplishments -- you're expected to live up to it.
Before gagging on Stoops' compensation, consider that the coach has earned it. Every penny. Without going all CPA on you, in 1998, Oklahoma generated $26.1 million in athletic revenue. Stoops arrived the next season. By 2007, that figure had risen to $66.3 million. The stadium has been expanded, a new football complex was built. Four million from ticket sales alone has been earmarked for academic enhancements. A million was endowed for the library.
Oh yeah, and Stoops has delivered on the field too. Mr. Unclutch? In addition to the accomplishments listed above, he is also the nation's third-winningest active coach. The difference between him and No. 2 is .003. That's the lead Urban Meyer has in career winning percentage (.828-.825). Pete Carroll is No. 1.
What do they all have in common? For starters, national championships this decade, all soon after arriving on campus. It can be argued that Stoops was Patient Zero in that revolution. From the mid-'60s -- when the Associated Press began crowning its champ after the bowls -- to 1999, two coaches won a national championship within their first two seasons at his school. (Barry Switzer, 1974 Oklahoma; Dennis Erickson, 1989 Miami).
Then Stoops did it in 2000, his second year in Norman. Then the dam broke and the profession changed. Stoops was the first of four coaches this decade to win a championship within two years of showing up on campus. Throw in Les Miles and Carroll and six coaches have done it within three years since 2000.
Everyone wants the next Bob Stoops but they don't want to credit the current one. Suddenly, it seems, Big Game Bob isn't. A four-game BCS bowl game losing streak has him at the opposite end of the Urban Meyer Scale -- hot, sexy, quotable, loads of upside.
Stoops? CWTBO.
Can't Win The Big One.
Never mind that he already has won a big one, played for two others and coached up a couple of Heisman Trophy winners. Nice career for most. Stoops, though, might have 15 years left before he steps down. You want to talk trickle down? One big reason why Stoops got that $3 million bonus approved in 2005 was that Florida was interested in him at one point.
"We've never sat around and waited for success to happen before making an investment in our people," Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione said. "Would you like to be a guy who has a sparkling bowl record and never gets there or one that takes his shots?"
The BCS era, among other things, has re-defined "failure." You're either a BCS conference or you're not. You're either in a BCS bowl or you're not. You're either winning it all or you're not. Ask Charlie Weis how he feels about making that $3 million-$4 million each year. He loves winning a lot more than making Stoops-like money. Stoops' legacy helped him get that money -- it can't help the Notre Dame coach get to bowl games.
"We want to have the kind of program that has a chance to play for these things," Castiglione said. "You can't undervalue winning six conference championships in 10 years. That is phenomenal when you do that."
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| The criticism of Bob Stoops is a direct result of his own success. (Getty Images) |
Stoops' sin is that he has been around longer to persecute. Barely. Meyer never paused to be so much as a coordinator before embarking on his remarkable run beginning at Bowling Green in 2001. One (Meyer) has been a head coach eight years. The other (Stoops) has been in his position for a decade. One (Meyer) is 44. One (Stoops) is 48.
Both are aiming for their second national championship this decade. One is "struggling" in the postseason, the other owns it.
"Oklahoma has to define itself by winning this football game," Switzer said. "This is a big game for Oklahoma. To prove they deserve the right to be there in the championship game, they need to win the championship game."
Stoops is part victim of a monster he created. Thanks to his legacy, extensions are being offered like party favors. Coaches get raises now merely for having their name mentioned for another job. ADs, fans and presidents also have less patience. Only 12 of the 120 Division I-A coaches have been at their current job at least 10 years.
Stoops helped change the game, then it turned on him. In the BCS era, there is now an attainable goal each season -- the championship game. Stoops is 1-2 in that game, heading toward championship berth No. 4 on Jan. 8. He has lost four consecutive BCS bowls, which in some minds puts him in an exclusive club that has only one other member: Another native Ohioan, this one with a sweater vest.
BCS fathers talk a lot about unintended consequences of the controversial system. Here's one they never planned on. Pre-BCS: Joe Paterno got jobbed. Post-BCS: Stoops can't get the job done.
Or at least that's the perception in some quarters.
Critics wonder how Stoops has never been able to live up to that magical 2000 season. Then they see a guy making $6 million and wonder if all they're swallowing in Oklahoma is barbeque.
Here's one simple reason why Oklahoma has failed in its past four BCS games: There is another team on the field.
• 2004 Sugar Bowl: LSU 21, Oklahoma 14: It wasn't a disgrace losing to an LSU team playing a "home" game in the Superdome. Saban led the nation's best defense. Jason White was banged up. The result was almost predictable.
• 2005 Orange Bowl: USC 55, Oklahoma 19: Check Roget's Thesaurus. How many different ways can you say embarrassing? OU didn't show up and, in the end, couldn't wait to get it over with. But in hindsight, that was one of the best USC teams of all-time. Maybe one of the best teams of all-time.
Try finding a team that got within 11 points of USC that season. There were only four of them.
• 2007 Fiesta Bowl: Boise State 43, Oklahoma 42 (OT): Everyone seems to forget that Boise was ranked ahead of Oklahoma in the BCS that season. The Broncos had nothing to lose and played like it running trick plays that no other team -- and I mean no team -- had the guts to call.
In the end, Oklahoma lost to the nation's only undefeated team. Look at the number of Broncos on NFL rosters from that squad and tell me Boise State couldn't have played with anyone in the country that night. OU just happened to be in the way when the perfect storm hit.
• 2008 Fiesta Bowl: West Virginia 48, Oklahoma 28: Sure, OU was unfocused. Sure, it had several players with one eye on the NFL and the other on the postgame party. But the Sooners didn't exactly lose to Cumberland.
Pat White turned out to be the Div. I-A career leader in rushing by a quarterback. Steve Slaton is in the NFL. Owen Schmitt was a devastating blocker. Give the Mountaineers credit for getting past the upheaval caused by the departure of Rich Rodriguez.
Continue questioning Stoops, the man who has been to more BCS title games than anyone. That's a 40 percent success rate (four out of 10 since he arrived at Oklahoma).
Big Game Bob? In a cutthroat world he helped create, there's nothing wrong with being Getting To The Big Game Bob.
