Another Conference Title

[Soonerwake]

#4 is interesting..

http://cfn.scout.com/2/1028664.html

:pop:

[swardboy]

Yes, nice read. Thx.

I tend to forget how highly rated WV was until their last game of that season....doesn't make me feel any better.

A BCS bowl win this year and a national championship next year will help though. :D

[IB4OU2]

Good article...I hope Bob stays here a long, long time.

[delhalew]

Any writer that claims we didn't deserve the B12 championship in '08, loses all credibility at that moment.

[Mississippi Sooner]

Any writer that claims we didn't deserve the B12 championship in '08, loses all credibility at that moment.

Yep. It was a good article overall, but then he had to throw in that bit of nonsense.

[OUNC06]

He is trying to give Bob Stoops a compliment, but the whole article is poorly written and it an insult to Oklahoma.

Comparing Oklahoma to Virginia Tech and saying Oklahoma hasn't won as many big games recently as Boise is retarded. Virginia Tech has played in one National Title game in the history of the program and lost. Boise hasn't played in any big games. Sure they beat a very average Oklahoma team in 2006. However, if beating the 2006 Oklahoma Sooners is the biggest win in your programs history you haven't really played in big games. Oklahoma has beaten at least two top 5 ranked teams since that debacle.

[BetterSoonerThanLater]

^this....he was doing ok til that, and then i started skimming, rather than reading...

[soonercastor]

He is trying to give Bob Stoops a compliment, but the whole article is poorly written and it an insult to Oklahoma.

Comparing Oklahoma to Virginia Tech and saying Oklahoma hasn't won as many big games recently as Boise is retarded. Virginia Tech has played in one National Title game in the history of the program and lost. Boise hasn't played in any big games. Sure they beat a very average Oklahoma team in 2006. However, if beating the 2006 Oklahoma Sooners is the biggest win in your programs history you haven't really played in big games. Oklahoma has beaten at least two top 5 ranked teams since that debacle.

I'm pretty sure it said BCS games

[Jmorales22]

It was definitely a backhanded compliment towards Stoops. Most analysts agree that Beamer is not in the same class as Stoops, and that Boise St hasn't done anything to deserve to be in that tier of thought. He should be comparing Stoops to Tressel, Meyer, and Saban. This is definitely a case of being punished for losing to good teams.

[Sooners78]

Any writer that claims we didn't deserve the B12 championship in '08, loses all credibility at that moment.

This. Based on the rules that were in place, we did deserve it. When he writes something like that, he needs to be clear that it's his opinion and he bases that opinion on something specific such as OU losing the head-to-head matchup. Weak journalism!

[OUmillenium]

Firewalled...who can copy/paste?

Thanks

[meoveryouxinfinity]

Any writer that claims we didn't deserve the B12 championship in '08, loses all credibility at that moment.

exactly. Rules are rules. Sorry if you don't win under 'em.

Then he goes on to say that the REAL tally is Stoops 6, Brown 3....

THENNNN there's this...

There are many debates to be had about Bob Stoops and Frank Beamer. Do they measure up in bowl games? No. Do they win on a national level the way Boise State does? Not recently. Could they use better offensive coordinators? Most assuredly so. Were they perhaps praised too lavishly earlier in their careers, giving rise to a "build-up-and-tear-down" narrative cycle that's all too common in sports journalism and sports talk radio? Yes, and that's something which needs to be given a lot of attention in this discussion.

Better than who? NOONE? Or better than Indiana coach Kevin Wilson?


Beamer's name is not in the same realm as Stoops. Beamer and VT play in a POOR conference. That FSU team you just beat without Christian Ponder? Yeah, we killed them healthy. Miami? Got us on a lucky year and barely got a win last year. Georgia Tech? Didn't they get beat by that abortion of a team KU fielded this year?

Stoops is more liken to Tressel than Beamer. But again, the Big XII has been slightly better overall, I'd say.

And as for being a has-been, what does this guy expect? Are his expectations as high as the fans' expectations. All glory and holiness that is "Saint" Nick Saban has led his Crimson Tide to a 3 loss season. And don't even begin to talk about Urban "I'm retiring" Meyer.
Look, it happens. Teams rise and fall. If you have to rebuild and not reload, you're going to get a 3-5 loss season.
But NOBODY, not even Tressel has had such a stranglehold on his conference like Bob Stoops has had on the Big XII.

**** off.

[meoveryouxinfinity]

Firewalled...who can copy/paste?

Thanks
here

4. Oh yeah, ANOTHER conference title

By Matt Zemek

College football discussions - like those in any sport or, for that matter, any topic under the sun - can get very complicated in a short amount of time. Making one statement in one limited realm of activity should not be interpreted as being an overly expansive or far-reaching verdict on other similar but not identical issues. Such is the case with any debate about the careers of two men who did what they normally do on Saturday night: win conference championships.

Bob Stoops of Oklahoma and Frank Beamer of Virginia Tech are very much one and the same person on certain levels, especially over the past six seasons. They've lost a lot of spotlight games and have fared poorly in BCS bowls. With the exception of Stoops's 2008 offense and Beamer's 2010 offense, the two coaches have had to endure a great deal of inconsistency on that side of the ball. In the wake of their more painful defeats since the 2005 season, both Stoops and Beamer have been laughed at and derided on the national stage.

The vehemence with which OU got buried by fans and media following the 2008 Fiesta Bowl loss to West Virginia - "Jokelahoma" and "Chokelahoma" became trendy terms - was pronounced and unmistakable. Virginia Tech didn't do itself many favors by tripping in the 2005 ACC Championship Game, stumbling in the 2008 Orange Bowl against Kansas, and then falling to both Boise State and James Madison at the beginning of this season. The national avalanche of derision hurled at the Hokies after the James Madison loss was understandable in a narrow and immediate context: of course a power-conference team will catch flak when it loses at home to an FCS team (even if it's on a very short week after a holistically-draining four-hour war with Boise State). Nevertheless, the anti-Virginia Tech sentiment witnessed (and easily heard) in the college football world on Saturday, Sept. 11, was still noticeably fierce. You'd have thought the Hokies were just as much of a joke of a program as UCLA with Rick Neuheisel, or Clemson under Dabo Swinney, or any of several other programs that truly embody what it means to underachieve.

Now, roughly three months after that awful six-day stretch in September, here the Hokies are, champions of the ACC for the third time in four years and the first team ever to go 9-0 in an ACC season (Florida State went 8-0 in 2000 but did not have the ACC title game available as a platform for a ninth league conquest). The Hokies - who joined the ACC in 2004 - have now won the league in a majority of the seasons they've participated in the conference (four out of seven). They've won their division four of six times, and the two programs that briefly interrupted their run in the ACC Coastal - Wake Forest and Georgia Tech - did the big fade after winning their respective division crowns. Virginia Tech is a model of consistency at a high level - maybe not the highest level of all, but a very lofty one indeed.

And what about Oklahoma? Yes, Landry Jones was an incredibly inconsistent quarterback this season. Yes, OU's defense was gashed at Missouri, and yes, Stoops himself coached horribly in the fourth quarter of that contest, but if we're in the business of looking at a man's larger body of work, the truth is unassailable: In a sport where at least two-thirds of a regular season is spent playing within a conference, Bob Stoops has won his conference seven times in the past 11 years. For the sake of comparison, Texas has won only two Big 12 titles in that same span of time. (Colorado and Kansas State won league championships and were not able to sustain their places of prominence for very long, much like Wake and Georgia Tech in the ACC Coastal.) The Nebraska program Oklahoma defeated on Saturday night at Cowboys Stadium won only one Big 12 championship during Stoops's tenure in Norman, and that came in Stoops's get-acquainted maiden voyage in 1999. Every subsequent season has been defined by the Oklahoma-Texas axis of power, and while Stoops has struggled in recent head-to-head meetings against Texas, he's regularly piloted the Sooners to the Big 12 finish line first. Sure, he didn't deserve the 2008 title Texas should have had, but even if you factor that into the mix, the Big 12 scoreboard would still read OU 6, Texas 3, in the realm of conference titles.

There are many debates to be had about Bob Stoops and Frank Beamer. Do they measure up in bowl games? No. Do they win on a national level the way Boise State does? Not recently. Could they use better offensive coordinators? Most assuredly so. Were they perhaps praised too lavishly earlier in their careers, giving rise to a "build-up-and-tear-down" narrative cycle that's all too common in sports journalism and sports talk radio? Yes, and that's something which needs to be given a lot of attention in this discussion.

However, when all is said and done, the core element of college football coaching quality is indeed the level of success one attains in his conference. In college basketball, the non-conference season occupies a month and a half, and it substantially affects one's RPI rating and schedule strength in advance of Selection Sunday. In football, at least eight games out of 12 - nine out of 13 for teams that play a conference title game - come against conference foes. If you are winning conference titles, you are carrying your weight in the part of the season that really matters, against the teams who know your tendencies and understand your own operation more intimately than anyone else. If you are winning conference titles, you are justifying the outpouring of effort that goes into each and every season. Bob Stoops and Frank Beamer might be overrated in certain nuanced ways, and they have room for improvement in games against teams outside their respective leagues, but let there be no mistake about the matter: Few men have done better jobs than these two over the past decade. If you want to deride the OU or Virginia Tech programs and view the Sooners and Hokies as underachievers, where does that leave the UCLAs, Clemsons and Ole Misses of the world?

College football debates need to have their proper form, focus and function. If you think Bob Stoops and Frank Beamer haven't done enough over the years and you've been very adamant about saying so, you might be technically correct as a pure academic exercise, but you've also been wasting too much energy criticizing coaches who do their jobs better than 95 percent of their colleagues in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

[SoonerTony]

Yes, * derserved to win in '08 because they beat OU head to head.

But wait,,, * lost Tech so I've changed my mind Tech should have won because they beat * head to Head. Yes, Tech should be the Champs!

Hold on a sec,,,,,, We beat Tech? Crapola now my head to head hurts. How did that work again?

So confusing no wonder the media has a problem with this.

Never mind just checked the NCAA website we won that year.

[85sooners]

:pop:

[SoonerMom2]

How does the writer know that Texas would have won the Big 12 Championship Game -- to say the win should have been another one for Brown is leaving out the fact that Texas had to play the game.

We won fair and square and any writer who buys into the Mack Brown crap has zero credibility. Rules are rules!

[SoonerNutt]

He is trying to give Bob Stoops a compliment, but the whole article is poorly written and it an insult to Oklahoma.

Comparing Oklahoma to Virginia Tech and saying Oklahoma hasn't won as many big games recently as Boise is retarded. Virginia Tech has played in one National Title game in the history of the program and lost. Boise hasn't played in any big games. Sure they beat a very average Oklahoma team in 2006. However, if beating the 2006 Oklahoma Sooners is the biggest win in your programs history you haven't really played in big games. Oklahoma has beaten at least two top 5 ranked teams since that debacle.

Well said, sir!

[Mississippi Sooner]

How does the writer know that Texas would have won the Big 12 Championship Game -- to say the win should have been another one for Brown is leaving out the fact that Texas had to play the game.

We won fair and square and any writer who buys into the Mack Brown crap has zero credibility. Rules are rules!

That is the very reason the * was so stupid, in my opinion. Even if the rules would have given * the south title, how does that automatically give them a win over Missouri?

That whole concept is so stupid and arrogant, I can't get my mind around it.

[rekamrettuB]

In Eugene and Auburn, they’re celebrating a perfect season, and justifiably so. Everywhere else on the college football landscape, however, fans are feeling a little cheated after getting virtually no drama in the BCS title chase since the middle of October. Here’s hoping that the game on Jan. 10 pitting Auburn and Oregon is far more entertaining than a race to Glendale that had all the twists and turns of an airport landing strip

No drama? This dude must not have seen the numerous 2nd halves of these two teams.


Also, my head hurts after reading that. Did the writer have a thesaurus near by while writing that thing?