Featured Coach Friday: "Big Game Bob" Stoops

Its not hard to see why Bob Stoops has become one of the highest paid and most well known coaches in college football. Everywhere Stoops has coached winning percentages have increased. It is hard to ignored someone when they make teams win every time they come around. He is so well known that one night when family of mine in Oklahoma knelt to say a nightly prayer their 4 year old daughter gave thanks for Bob Stoops. He began his coaching career at Kansas State in 1989 as a DB coach and then a co-defensive coordinator. In 1996 he went to Florida as a defensive coordinator. With both teams he helped them reach national contention and even was part of the National Championship with the Gators in 96. In 1999 Bob Stoops was hired as a head coach for the Oklahoma University Sooners. Since then the Sooners have only lost 2 home games and have won 1 National Championship, 4 bowl games, and 6 Big12 Championships.

So what is the secret to his success? We see part of it here in an article about the job interview that Joe Castiglione (Athletic Director, OU) had with Stoops:

Castiglione sought out all sorts of details, including game week preparation, recruiting philosophy, the importance of academics, the hiring of staff, what kind of offensive scheme Stoops might favor.

Then Stoops surprised Castiglione.

"One thing I never heard, ‘Give me five or six years.' Never once did he say that or infer it,” Castiglione said. "He said, ‘I don't think I would be fair to the players that we inherit or that we recruit that first year, if I didn't give them the best chance to be successful. (News OK)

Based on what Stoops says here and what we have seen in his career we can conclude that one of the keys to his success is that he doesn't waste time. For him the term "rebuilding process" does not exist, he takes care of business now. It took Stoops just ten years to excel from DB coach to head coach of a big name Division I school and it only took him one year to lead that struggling team to the 2000 National Championship and finish the season undefeated, outscoring 13 opponents by a combined 481-194.