One Word Comes to Mind When I Think of Bob Stoops: Respect

I’m going to miss Bob Stoops.

It feels good to admit that. I know I’m probably supposed to unfurl my football field-sized Crazy Pete flag and run it up and down my street like a mid-summer spirit run, but Bob Stoops was one of the best things to ever happen to Oklahoma State.

Unfortunately for OSU, he was also one of the best things to ever happen to OU.

Stoops went 190-48 (excuse me while I LOL) in his 18 years at the helm in Norman. He won more Big 12 Championships (10) than the other nine schools currently in the Big 12 have won … combined (9). He won more conference titles (10) than he lost home games (9). He kicked Oklahoma State’s ass all over Payne County which sucked a lot while it was happening, but it also served to make OSU into what it is today.

The necessity of trying to build a team to overthrow a superpower like OU drove Oklahoma State to be one of the best teams in college football over the last 10 years.

Big 12 titles

Bob Stoops: 10
Other 9 teams currently in the conference: 9 (collectively)

— Pistols Firing (@pistolsguys) June 7, 2017

Stoops (re)built a program that gave the Cowboys something to shoot for every college football season. When the benchmark for success in your industry is 10 states away and operating outside your circles, it’s easy to dismiss that entity. When that same touchstone is conducting business 70 miles down I-35 and recruiting the same guys you’re chasing and making the same bowls you want to make and winning the same titles you want to win, you have something to strive for up in your face nearly every single day of your professional life.

Mike Gundy entered the coaching world in the thick of it. He lost as many games in his debut season (7) as Stoops had lost in the last five. Stoops was just a few years removed from a national championship and on his way to playing for more. But Gundy hung in after a bumpy couple of years and truly rolled with OU over most of the last decade of Stoops’ tenure despite only beating him twice.

These are the two teams’ records since 2009.

• Oklahoma State: 77-27
• Oklahoma: 81-24

The flip side of this is that maybe OSU wins several more Big 12 titles without OU’s dominance. Who knows? You’ve heard Boone Pickens talk. It chaps his ass that OU is great at the most prominent sport in college athletics and Oklahoma State is not on its level. Would OSU have ascended to where it has without Stoops’ excellence? Maybe, but most great contenders have great foes in the throes of their dominion. It keeps you honest. It keeps you grounded.

All I know for sure is that Oklahoma State football was made better because OU football was so great.

There were bumps for Stoops, no doubt. The most notable one 20 years from now will be the Joe Mixon saga, but there were others (Frank Shannon, DGB etc.) as well. No college football coach who hangs around the same place for two decades is without them. They aren’t footnotes. They are part of the story. But for Stoops they are a small part.

I don’t get real caught up in the whole “he’s a great dude” thing because the majority of us barely know our best friends well enough to say definitively whether they would or would not do something, but Stoops certainly gave off the appearance of legitimacy. Great coach, bigly in the community and a strong ambassador for the state. And I’m supposed to hate this guy?

Always thought this quote from former #Sooners captain @Just_JD38 nailed Bob Stoops. pic.twitter.com/IwTFp4MUwv

— Guerin Emig (@GuerinEmig) June 7, 2017

No, I don’t hate Bob Stoops. I admire his work and am glad for what he elicited out of Oklahoma State. Whenever Mike Gundy responds to the news — likely when he gets back from his armadillo hunt in Tahlequah — I think he will say the same.

Bedlam will also feel different now. Even though Gundy is nearly 10 years Stoops’ junior, it always felt like they came up in the state together. Gundy and Lincoln Riley squaring off in November? It just won’t be the same.

“I think what’s encouraging for the state of Oklahoma is that for a considerable number of times over the last six years, these two schools have gotten together to decide a conference championship, and I don’t think we can ask for anything else,” said Gundy last December before playing Stoops for the conference crown for the fourth time in the last six years.

So the only thing that comes to mind when I see Bob Stoops exiting stage left is thanks for punting again, Bob respect. For building OU. For being the rising tide to lift Gundy’s steamboat. For ejecting while you’re still on top with a lot of life left in front of you. Stoops was not the most dynamic, electric coach the Big 12 has ever seen (to say the least), but he was the best. Respect. Loads of it.