Blake/Stoops article in New York Times.....

[Salt City Sooner]

Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops bristles when asked about his recent failures in Bowl Championship Series games.

He proudly rattles off his team’s successes in the Big 12, including appearances in seven of the last nine championship games with six victories. What he does not mention is that his teams have lost four consecutive times in the B.C.S., including the national title games at the end of the 2003 and 2004 seasons.

Nor does Stoops, whose team plays Florida for the title Thursday, point out that his only crystal trophy for winning the B.C.S. championship game bears the fingerprints of his predecessor John Blake.

The only black head football coach at Oklahoma, Blake recruited more than half of that championship team’s 22 starters, including future N.F.L. players like safety Roy Williams and linebacker Rocky Calmus.

The mere mention of that fact seems to agitate Stoops, who did recruit quarterback Josh Heupel, tailback Quentin Griffin and linebacker Torrance Marshall, all vital players in Oklahoma’s 13-2 victory against Florida State for the national title at the end of the 2000 season.

“You’ve got to go there after all these years?” Stoops said in a telephone interview last month. “Are you kidding me?”

But the matter is no joke to Blake, an associate head coach at North Carolina. A defensive tackle for Oklahoma from 1979 to ’82 under Barry Switzer, he was later an assistant for the Sooners and the Dallas Cowboys. He returned to his alma mater in December 1995 for his first head-coaching job, taking over after the Sooners went 5-5-1 in Howard Schnellenberger’s only season as the coach.

“I’m happy for Bob because sometimes one man’s sacrifice is another man’s gain, and I really believe that,” Blake said last month in a telephone interview. “Through the process, I sacrificed a whole lot and took a whole lot of negative things. But if it’s for one man to gain the glory, then I’ll just accept it. That’s fine with me.”

Although Blake’s contributions to the Sooners’ 2000 national title is barely a footnote nationally, it is known in Oklahoma. It is still occasionally fodder for sports talk radio stations and Internet message boards.

“It’s probably a no-win situation for Bob,” Al Eschbach, a longtime sports radio host in Oklahoma, said in a telephone interview. “He doesn’t want to say that John had nothing to do with it. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to give John all the credit, either, because the program was in pretty bad shape when he took it over.”

Still, Blake wonders what might have been had he been able to coach a fourth season at Oklahoma. Instead, he was fired in November 1998 after posting a 12-22 record during the worst three-year stretch in the program’s history.

“I really felt that we had the recruiting class and young talent to turn the program around,” Blake said. “I just needed another year.”

Less than two weeks later, Stoops was hired from Florida, where he had been the defensive coordinator. In his first season, the Sooners went 7-5 and lost to Mississippi in the Independence Bowl.

The next season, Stoops claimed his first and only B.C.S. title.

“We weren’t even a couple of years away,” Blake said.

A decade after Blake was fired, his name still elicits groans from Oklahoma fans, who remember inept offenses, undisciplined teams that were frequently penalized, and players who went on to stardom under Stoops when they were moved to the other side of the ball.

“John will never be appreciated by the Oklahoma fans because of what happened,” Switzer said in a telephone interview.

After Oklahoma beat Texas during Oklahoma’s national title run in 2000, Blake said he called Stoops and congratulated him. That was the last time the two spoke, he said.

“Thank you,” Blake recalled Stoops telling him. “Appreciate it.”

Years later, Blake is hardly acknowledged by Stoops. When asked about Blake’s contributions to his national title team, Stoops rapidly recited the names of six starters whom he recruited.

“Listen, there were three coaches here before me,” Stoops said. “You can research all of what they had done.”

Switzer knows all about winning a championship with someone else’s players. In his second year as the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, they won the Super Bowl in the 1995 season. Stoops, Switzer said, should not be defensive because he has had significant accomplishments at Oklahoma.

“Coaches get jobs and they go in and do the best they can with what was there,” Switzer said. “Bob was fortunate that there were some pretty good players. He went and recruited some players to go along with it.”

But by losing national title games with more talented teams than the 2000 squad, perhaps Stoops is right to question the Blake connection.

“I don’t understand the correlation,” Stoops said.

But until he wins another B.C.S. title, some may.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/sports/ncaafootball/05sooners.html?_r=2

[UberSooner]

Dear Gawd, how many times can this crap be rehashed. Apparently at least one more time.

[fadada1]

if we still had blake, we'd be texas a&m and drowning in mediocrity.

[Vaevictis]

Geh. Please.

Blake -- zero winning seasons, period.
Stoops -- nothing but winning seasons, four national championship game appearances with his players, or with someone else's.

I think it's pretty clear that the difference here isn't the players, it's that Stoops knows what the **** he's doing.

[TheUnnamedSooner]

“I’m happy for Bob because sometimes one man’s sacrifice is another man’s gain, and I really believe that,” Blake said last month in a telephone interview. “Through the process, I sacrificed a whole lot and took a whole lot of negative things. But if it’s for one man to gain the glory, then I’ll just accept it. That’s fine with me.”


Amazing

[Hot Rod]

What other kind of old crap can we start talking about to shake things up?

[StoopTroup]

Dear John...

We wish Bob could have kept you around to recruit players for us but your ego couldn't handle it.

Sorry.

The Sooner Nation

[Scott D]

the only interesting thing any newspaper can do regarding John Blake in my opinion is to follow him while he recruits an individual player to North Carolina.

[OUDoc]

“Are you kidding me?”
That says it all.

[boomermagic]

Blake was a horrible head coach... Nuff said !

[A Sooner in Texas]

It's one thing to recruit great players...it's altogether something entirely else to actually coach them to success. Bob can do both; Blake, not so much.

[oupride]

Dear Gawd, how many times can this crap be rehashed. Apparently at least one more time.
Until Bob wins with own recruits.

[Jacie]

. . . the Sooners went 5-5-1 in Howard that old drunk’s only season as the coach.

Always good to read about someone getting some long overdue recognition . . .

As for Blake's wonderings about staying another season, had he coached the Sooners in 1999 I am guessing it would have gone something like this:

Indiana State 10 - Oklahoma 17 (1-0)
Baylor 21 - Oklahoma 24 (2-0)
Oklahoma 21 - Louisville 42 (2-1)
Oklahoma 14 - Notre Dame 41 (2-2)
Texas 45 - Oklahoma 20 (2-3)
Texas A&M 17 - Oklahoma 28 (3-3)
Oklahoma 20 - Colorado 31 (3-4)
Missouri 10 - Oklahoma 27 (4-4)
Oklahoma 24 - Iowa State 28 (4-5)
Oklahoma 28 - Texas Tech 42 (4-6)
Oklahoma State 10 - Oklahoma 31 (5-6)

[CrimsonJim]

Dear John...

We wish Bob could have kept you around to recruit players for us but your ego couldn't handle it.

Sorry.

The Sooner Nation

If John cared as much about the Sooner program as he let on, he would NOT have taken ALL of his recruiting information with him, leaving Bob high and dry when he stepped in. Bob got a late start his first year, with NOTHING to work with as I recall - and I'm a perty sure I'm a recallin' correct. :mad:

[virginiasooner]

I'm never cheering for the Tarheels again! Geez, John Blake, GET OVER IT. Yeah, half the players were yours, but you (and your coaching staff) were unable to motivate them! Did you have Josh Heupel on your radar? Or anyone else that Stoops recruited? Give it a rest already!

[Collier11]

So should Urban Meyer be thanking Ron Zook? Should the NYT be writing an article about Zook and how he recruited Meyers title winning players? This is retarded

[TUSooner]

That artticle is conclusive proof that there is too much time between the end of the regular season and the BCS.

But here's the deal: If OU wins, that sort of talk fades away or at least becomes even less relevant to the present reality than it already is. If OU loses, we get to hear more and more of the same old horse****.

[Toronto Sooner]

Why is John Blake or anyone else even bringing stuff like this up. John Blake was the single greatest embarrassment in the entire Sooner football history, end of story:

"he was fired in November 1998 after posting a 12-22 record during the worst three-year stretch in the program’s history."

[OklahomaTuba]

If Blake is so good, why hasn't any other school given him a shot as their head man????

Some people are not made out to be leaders, and he is one of them. Good luck otherwise.

[soonerboomer93]

John Blake, well, atleast he wasn't Schnellenberger

[Soonersince57]

I'm never cheering for the Tarheels again! Geez, John Blake, GET OVER IT. Yeah, half the players were yours, but you (and your coaching staff) were unable to motivate them! Did you have Josh Heupel on your radar? Or anyone else that Stoops recruited? Give it a rest already!

Those players were his in '98 when they had another losing season. I would argue by reviewing the scores that with a few more unlucky bounces that we would have been 5-29 in his career.

[Toronto Sooner]

The only team that John Blake, with a record like that, can survive on (on God's good earth) is the Detroit Lions. John, I highly recommend that you give up your shameless attempts in trying to grap onto Bob's shirt tails, and go apply for the Detroit Lions coaching job - it's your dream job, and a program that will embrace you with open arms.

[Hotrod3157]

Watching OU football under the drunk and then Blake was just sickening. Undisciplined mistake after mistake made it so hard to watch the games and be a fan. Anybody can say they can recruit talented players but if you can't coach them it doesn't do any good. The difference between watching the last year of Blake and the first year of Stoops was amazing. The players were in the correct positions the stupid penalties disappeared and all of a sudden it was OU football again. To finish, winning National Championships in todays college football is HARD it takes some serious talent, coaching, and then some luck too. Bob has one title and going for another Thursday with his own players and Blake isn't on anyones head coaching radar wonder why that is?

[fadada1]

i'm pretty sure they didn't give blake a national championship ring after the 2000 season. maybe blake should think about that before opening his pie hole.

[texas bandman]

John Blake is a Sooner and although he was head coach during a dismal, dark time, I won't trash him. He did wear the crimson and cream and because of this he has my respect.

On the other hand, Smellyburger can rot in hell! :D

[NCAAISAJOKE]

Stoops was responsible for the most important player on that team which was Josh! Without him, we wouldnt have been the same team. Also, how many players did stoops move to totally different positions?? Woolfolk, brandon daniels are just a few that I recall.

[Collier11]

Blake needs to look at what he is saying which is this in a nutshell "I recruited those players that Stoops won a natl title with" which in essence actually means this "I couldnt coach if my life depended on it so this other guy took my players and made them good"

[SOONER STEAKER]

John Blake was a great player and recruiter for Oklahoma, other than that, he was a total failure.

[KingBarry]

John Blake, well, atleast he wasn't that old drunk

No, he wasn't. The old drunk had a better record in his one season than Blake ever did in three.

Could Blake have equaled, or possibly surpassed, Stoops' 7-5 record in 1999? It's certainly possibly, but the wins would have been much closer and the losses would have been by much larger margins.

And Blake would likely have turned in little better than .500 in 2000.

And for him to cry otherwise after all these years is not an insult to Coach Stoops, it is an insult only to Blake himself.

And the NYT missed it. Stoops doesn't get defensive about being compared to Blake, he gets offended because he thinks Blake was an embarrassment of a coach and doesn't like to be put in the position of either falsely defending the man, or looking like an a**.

Stoops, as I recall, was right up front back in 1999-2000 that his differences with Blake as a coach were that Blake allowed his players' morale to be run down so that they had no confidence in themselves or in their team. That's a pretty serious indictment of one coach by another.

[deweydw]

I remember an article that was published not long after OU won the title. When Stoops took over, he brought in a conditioning coach (Jerry Schmidt). That coach took the team through their first work out. After the first hour the players were beat. Saying that was a hell of a work out. The coach replied "That was just the warm up." Blake brought the players in, but Stoops whooped em into shape.

[stoops the eternal pimp]

Dear John,

You need help. Get it soon.

sincerely,

Reality

[bri]

That article was for da keeds!

F*ck John Blake. Go cry, emo kid.

[stoops the eternal pimp]

I remember Roy Williams talking about when Coach Stoops got there, he was shaped like a pear

[deweydw]

I got it wrong. Here's the article.

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1020980/1/index.htm

And the quote from Schmidt.

The Sooners' suffering had only begun. Among Stoops's more inspired hires was highly regarded strength coach Jerry Schmidt, who worked the previous four years at Florida. Schmidt was unimpressed, to say the least, by the fitness of the Oklahoma players he inherited. Not long after arriving in Norman, says Schmidt, "I took a bunch of guys out on the field for a little warmup. Pretty soon about 15 of them were throwing up. This was a warmup!"

[oudivesherpa]

Worst coach and best recruiter in Big XII History. It's like a guy at a single bar who ends up with all the hot chicks, but when they go home with him, they find he is like Rock Hudson and all he wants to do is tease their hair.

It left the fans feeling the same way, we'd get all the hot players but all Blake did was tease us because he could not do anything with them.

Coaching Impotencey left us with a score of limp seasons.
__________________

[fadada1]

I got it wrong. Here's the article.

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1020980/1/index.htm

And the quote from Schmidt.

The Sooners' suffering had only begun. Among Stoops's more inspired hires was highly regarded strength coach Jerry Schmidt, who worked the previous four years at Florida. Schmidt was unimpressed, to say the least, by the fitness of the Oklahoma players he inherited. Not long after arriving in Norman, says Schmidt, "I took a bunch of guys out on the field for a little warmup. Pretty soon about 15 of them were throwing up. This was a warmup!"

i remember the article well.

this was a symptom of the team and coaching staff as a whole. lack of caring, lack of accountability, lack of motivation, lack of a knowledge on how to win, lack of discipline, etc...

it would be too easy to blame the players for sucking on the field. it is, however, correct to blame the coaching staff, blake in particular, for allowing the players to behave/think/play like that.

all i know is this - regardless of the outcome on thursday, bob stoops might be the best thing that has EVAR happened to OU football. there are 118 other 1A (yes, still 1A) football programs out there and only a handful (more like 5) can even sniff our success in the past 10 years. as i said before, without bob stoops, we'd be texas a&m in the big 12 south - lots of expectations with even more disappointment.

hip hip horay, for bob stoops!!!

[MikeInNorman]

PEOPLE!!!

John Blake was NOT a great recruiter for OU, and demonstrably not even a good one. He was usually able to get a couple of highly ranked guys and the rest of the class would look like a Baylor class. Every year during the Blake disaster we fought Aggy and Kansas State over Oklahoma recruits and LOST.

JOHN BLAKE AS A GREAT RECRUITER IS A MYTH.

I wrote some lengthy and detailed posts on the old board proving without question this is true by analyzing each year's class. I saved these posts to fight the MYTH. If anyone would like, I can copy and post.

Myth, people, myth.

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

i saw this on huskerpedia the other day and was just going to let it die

http://64.131.67.10/vbbs/showthread.php?t=63935

notice that most of the list of players he got wer 3* or less. lucky was 5* and dillard was 4* and i'd say some of the 3's performed much better.

what they lament is that blake was the same at nebraska as he was at OU (which i argued til i was blue in the face). he would spend 90% of his time getting commitments out of guys who had zero chance of qualifying and then would go get some guys who no one else was recruiting that would end up turning into really good players. its like he is the mr magoo of recruiting, stumbling onto guys like andre woolfolk who had zero D1 offers while spending most of his time on guys who scored -2 on the ACT.

[tulsaoilerfan]

i saw this on huskerpedia the other day and was just going to let it die

http://64.131.67.10/vbbs/showthread.php?t=63935

notice that most of the list of players he got wer 3* or less. lucky was 5* and dillard was 4* and i'd say some of the 3's performed much better.

what they lament is that blake was the same at nebraska as he was at OU (which i argued til i was blue in the face). he would spend 90% of his time getting commitments out of guys who had zero chance of qualifying and then would go get some guys who no one else was recruiting that would end up turning into really good players. its like he is the mr magoo of recruiting, stumbling onto guys like andre woolfolk who had zero D1 offers while spending most of his time on guys who scored -2 on the ACT.

LOL, that's a pretty good comparison JKM; hell he stumbled onto Roy by accident, didn't he?

[bri]

Yep. As I recall, Roy's aunt worked in the cafeteria and basically asked Boo to recruit him as a favor.

Every time that quivering pile of fail opens his mouth, I hate him a little more.

[NYC Poke]

I got it wrong. Here's the article.

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1020980/1/index.htm




How do you stop Oklahoma senior quarterback Josh Heupel? Simple. Nail him with pepper spray. All right, smart gay, let's see you go through your reads now.


WTF?

[SouthFortySooner]

John Blake, "I just needed one more year". One more year and the Sooners would have become a byword.

[BigRedJed]

IN the same vein as that Sports Illustrated article, I remember that in one of the excercises Schmitty had them do, they were all supposed to yell "NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP" at the same time. The players all laughed at him. Blake's own players didn't believe that THE ****ING UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA could compete for a national championship, IN ****ING FOOTBALL!! As far as I'm concerned, that says it all.

[Salt City Sooner]

LOL, that's a pretty good comparison JKM; hell he stumbled onto Roy by accident, didn't he?
Welcome to John Blake's recruiting "prowess":


But Oklahoma had an in -- Roy's aunt, Valetta Robinson, who worked in the OU athletics dining hall. One afternoon, she stopped then-Sooner assistant Joe Dickinson as he went through the line. "My nephew in California is someone you need to recruit," she said. Dickinson didn't take the tip too seriously. The next day, as Dickinson moved his tray through the line, Robinson handed him a copy of the recruiting magazine SuperPrep. "That," she said, pointing to the cover, "is my nephew."

http://espn.go.com/magazine/vol5no08williams.html

[Ban One Sooner]

If John cared as much about the Sooner program as he let on, he would NOT have taken ALL of his recruiting information with him, leaving Bob high and dry when he stepped in. Bob got a late start his first year, with NOTHING to work with as I recall - and I'm a perty sure I'm a recallin' correct. :mad:

I remember this. He also sat around playing playstation instead of recruiting as he knew he was getting canned. He encouraged Parker to leave early, not sure Parker could have returned anyway due to grades though. I remember Rex Ryan got in on the act too and made some comments about how great the next coach would look due to all the talent. I have never respected him since, I don't care how good of job he's done in Baltimore.

Also, some of those players on the 2000 team were Shnelly's (maybe Ryan Fisher?) as I recall, better thank him too by Blake's logic. Blake should thank Schnelly for recruiting Demond Parker in the first place since all Blake's offense ever consisted of was hand Demond the ball and let him run against eight man fronts since Blake didn't hire anyone that knew anything about passing the football. I still see Justin Fuente trying to run the option against Nebraska in Lincoln and the Huskers putting 70 on us.

Ahh, the joy of the 90's. I want to vomit just thinking about some (mostly all) of those games.

[SoonerShark]

John Blake was a great player and recruiter for Oklahoma, other than that, he was a total failure.

As a matter of fact, our kick-off team this year has dedicated its season to John Blake.

[Sooner70]

It's one thing to be able to recruit the talent, but sometimes quite another to be able to put it together into a winning team. I think John Blake is a good man/wonderful human being, a good assistant, a good recruiter, but apparently a not so good overseer/head coach. I remember listening to OU games cheering for a series of 4 downs without any penalties. A field goal was an accomplishment. A TD was something to cheer about.

Bob Stoops came along at the right team, assembled a great coaching staff and made it all click, with Heupel and the others he brought on board. Sure, give Blake his due, but it's disrespectful to Stoops & Co. to hint that the entire, sole reason for the 2000 NC was Blake & Blake only. That's just not right. He did recruit some key players, but so did Stoops. Maybe Bob should be a little more acknowledging, but I can kinda understand why he bristles sometimes.

Bob Stoops is by nature kinda prickly by nature when it comes to media anyway.

[Dio]

And if Boo would have been give another year, Jason White would have been a 'Cane. <shudder>

[The_Red_Patriot]

Dear John Blake,

You were a hell of a recruiter but you could not coach your way out of a paper bag. You had one of the most undisciplined teams/Crap offensive teams I have ever seen. Bob took your players and actually evaluated their talent and put them in the right places to win.

You’re an idiot and every time you spout this crap off you lose more and more respect from the people in Oklahoma.......but there is hardly any respect to start off.

I wonder if previous coaches to Jim Tressel at Ohio St or Nick Saban when he was at LSU talked the same garbage your talking after they won their titles in a short period.

We got rid of you.....Please stay away.

Thanks,
The kid who you pissed off time and time again when he was in 6th through 8th grade.

[No1Better]

Blake...sigh, shake head, repeat

[MamaMia]

Anyone can walk into a fully equipped kitchen, but not everyone would know how to prepare a feast.

[Ground_Attack]

who was gonna play QB for Blake in his magical 4th season? Daniels? whoever was standing on the QB spot on the twister mat?

That article and point of view is garbage. Urban Meyer is a legend, but didn't he win with Zook's players? Did Les win Saban's players? Bottom line is, Blake lost with Blake's players.

[MamaMia]

It's one thing to be able to recruit the talent, but sometimes quite another to be able to put it together into a winning team. I think John Blake is a good man/wonderful human being, a good assistant, a good recruiter, but apparently a not so good overseer/head coach........




......Sure, give Blake his due, but it's disrespectful to Stoops & Co. to hint that the entire, sole reason for the 2000 NC was Blake & Blake only. That's just not right. He did recruit some key players, but so did Stoops. Maybe Bob should be a little more acknowledging, but I can kinda understand why he bristles sometimes.

Bob Stoops is by nature kinda prickly by nature when it comes to media anyway.Are you not aware of the fact that before he left, Blake trashed the head coaches office and took all of the paperwork involved with recruitment?