By Clay Horning
It’s not like Bob Stoops refuses to let it go.It’s more like only the print media showed up at practice Monday and, with everybody due at Tuesday’s weekly media luncheon — print, television, radio, even some of our news counterparts (including one television guy who referred to Oklahoma as “we” in a question to the coach) — what do you think they wanted to talk about?
Not that Stoops was about to give back the opportunity.
He’s still plenty mad.
He laid out the obvious.
“It’s undeniable that the result of the officiating mistakes changed the football game. It’s not like it happened with 10 minutes to go … and a lot could have happened,” he said. “If we could successfully taken a knee for three downs, we’re done and we win by six as an underdog on the road.”
And he laid out the righteous.
“The satisfaction going home on the plane, the satisfaction in the locker room, though not perfect, (of) winning the football game, was taken away from us,” Stoops said. “The rankings and all of that is affected by it. So our situation drastically changed in those moments.”
And he explained why he was speaking out.
“I say all this because I feel it’s right to stand up for my football team.”
And stand up he did.
It may not be Stoops’ finest moment because it’s hard to beat coming out in the wishbone on the very first play of his very first spring game, or explaining after the national championship victory how his program had a long and successful history at the Orange Bowl as though it were his history, too, or the way he once referred to some of Les Miles’ comments as “dialogue,” as though it were part of that old saying, “When the dialogue hits the fan.”
But it was up there.
Now there’s no good reason to beat this horse for the rest of the season and Stoops would be wise not to. Because as long as the Sooners win, somebody else will do it for them. Or, maybe better, OU can become that big red elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about because it’s got one loss and everybody knows it’s a sham.
Yet given a national stage, which is exactly what he has every time he strides to the podium, he struck all the right chords.
He admitted there was plenty OU could have done to take it out of the officials’ hands. He did not whine. And he came out against any retribution beyond the scope of the Pac-10 Conference.
“I believe no one individually should be publicly ridiculed or threatened or harassed,” he said. “On behalf of myself and this football team, we don’t want that to happen to any individual.”
But he was defiant and proud.
He was genuine.
And Stoops has always done genuine well.
For whatever reason, up to becoming the victim of what might be the biggest officiating blunder in the history of the college game — bigger than Tech last season, bigger than Colorado’s fifth down, bigger than Keith Stanberry’s non-interception, bigger than that little end zone kick that made a loser of Missouri and a winner of Nebraska — Stoops’ public persona this season has been not quite pretentious, but hardly forthcoming.
In a word, cranky.
But thrown for one big Pacific Northwest loop, he has returned to finer form.
For himself, for his team, for his university and maybe for the integrity of the game, he struck a hard and real pose, which is so much better than the I’d-rather-be-anywhere-but-here pose.
Monday, David Boren looked out for the Sooner Nation.
Tuesday, in his way, Stoops did the same.
Bravo.
All that’s left is the rest of the season.
Thanks in part to the last two days, the Sooners won’t be forgotten.
Clay Horning366-3526cfhorning@normantranscript.com
