Bob Stoops and the Resurrection of Oklahoma Football

FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. — If Bob Stoops has any interest in coaching anywhere else, this is the time to jump. It's his last chance. You buy low, sell high, and Stoops' stock is high again. And he's 55 years old.

Stoops has brought Oklahoma back for the second time, and he also has brought himself back. Not long ago, Oklahoma was Alabama and Stoops was Nick Saban. Then times changed, the game moved on and Stoops got old.

Remember? That was last year. Now, Stoops and his image are about 10 years younger than they were way back in, say, August before the season started. Oklahoma will play Clemson on Thursday in the College Football Playoff semifinal, and Stoops is anti-aging.

Stoops heard the criticism last year. He and his brother, defensive coordinator Mike Stoops, have come as close to an I-told-you-so this week as manners will allow.

"You know, there's not a lot to say about it," Bob Stoops said. "What we've done is what we've done. It's pretty evident that a lot of that [talk of the game passing him by] isn't true, that we've got a strong program. It wasn't nearly as weak as people wanted to say it was a year ago.

"Again, I had to remind everyone just the year before we had just won the Sugar Bowl and were sixth in the country. You have some bad breaks; you get a few things that don't go your way, and you go 8-5. That isn't our standards, and listen, I'm the one who set the standards. They're not acceptable to me, either, when that happens."

For a guy who said said there's not a lot to say, he sure seemed to have plenty to say. And who can blame him? OU was a fallen national power when Stoops arrived in 1999 and won the national championship a year later. He built this thing back up. In 17 years at OU, he has won nine conference titles.

He'll recite the stats for you. And he's right. But the numbers are lying a little. The program was slipping. It has been good, but not at the mountaintop for eight years.

Gaston De Cardenas/Associated Press

He won in 2000 with the Air Raid offense, which is basically just like the new wave (or at least fad), and then he slipped back into running the ball and pounding it. The Sooners finished 8-5 last year including a 40-6 loss to Clemson in a mid-level bowl game. Meanwhile, Baylor and TCU had modernized offenses and bypassed Old Man Stoops.

Stoops says things weren't as bad as people say, but he certainly did not stay the course. One OU player told me he had noticed Stoops really had an edge this year. But Stoops, with his Youngstown-tough talk, always has an edge, doesn't he?

"You can't fake it," the player said. "You can try, but you can't fake it."

Oklahoma needed an infusion of youth, new blood. The great thing is that it took the coach with the longest tenure in major college football—now that Frank Beamer retired this year at Virginia Tech—to find it. Stoops fired his co-offensive coordinators and brought in 32-year-old offensive hotshot Lincoln Riley, who is basically trying to put the Air Raid back in. In the end, Stoops installed a new offense, replaced four assistant coaches and, under pressure to fire his brother, pushed Mike off the sidelines and up into the press box during games.

That seemed to be the only way to keep Mike from screaming and yelling in players' faces.

The biggest change, though, is Riley.

"Lincoln is incredibly bright," Stoops said. "You can tell he understands his system inside and out, so he's able to make quick decisions...I stay out of it. An offensive play-caller, I am not. And I think when you start trying to interject into a play-caller, that's never a good idea."

Stoops said that it took the team a little getting used to, as it should have. Now, this team also found a togetherness that last year's team didn't have. The players came together to skip practices and protest during the school's SAE scandal, when fraternity men were caught singing a racist song on a bus.

Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press

Stoops said the turning point of the season, though, might have been the night before the Kansas State game when the team was trapped in a tiny airport for 10 hours. Stoops said he sent people out to get food while the flight delay kept being put off one...hour...at...a...time.

With nothing to do the whole time, players started talking with each and getting to know the new coaches. They bonded.

But what about Stoops' future? His name used to come up for all the big jobs, including Notre Dame. Lately, not so much. After last season, some local media in Oklahoma were calling for him to go. I asked him about it before this season, and he said he wouldn't rule out options but that he had high school-aged kids he'd rather not move, and he has had the rare benefit of having just one athletic director, Joe Castiglione, the whole time he has been at Oklahoma.

Those are fine reasons to stay. But Stoops needs to realize that with two more wins, his name will be hot again now, for the last time unless he starts turning Oklahoma into a dynasty. Stay now, at a place where fans were thinking just last year that the game had passed him by, and he will likely stay forever.

Stoops said this team reminds him of the 2000 national championship team, bonding together following a year in which they were beaten down.

In 2000, he was 40. That sounds about right.

But he won't stay young again forever.

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report.