UW Football | A return to glory, the Sooners' way

When Bob Stoops was hired as the football coach at Oklahoma on Dec. 1, 1998, he didn't plead for patience. He didn't reference rebuilding.

Instead, he said he'd gladly embrace the expectations of one of college football's most traditional of powers.

"There are no excuses," Stoops said. "You succeed or you don't."

Two years later, Stoops went 13-0 and won a national title, the school's seventh, with a team that was 12-22 the three seasons before he arrived.

And in the process, Stoops set a daunting precedent for every other coach who dares take over a downtrodden former powerhouse, such as the man he'll see on the other sideline Saturday — Washington's Tyrone Willingham.

Not that Willingham has overtly asked for patience — he has said he expects this year's team to make it to a bowl game. And asked a question this week about the state of UW's program, Willingham said, "Even the great programs around the country go through ups and downs and hopefully they are minor and short-lived. I hope the one here also will be."

Just as they hoped in Oklahoma in 1998, though those who were there say that shouldn't be held up as an example for everyone else, even if it inevitably is.

"I wouldn't say that is fair," Stoops said. "The circumstances are different everywhere."

Former UW center Ed Cunningham, now an analyst with ESPN, agrees. "What happened at Oklahoma, that's fairy tale land," Cunningham told The Times last year.

A fairy tale starring a coach who is the son of a high-school coach and played at Iowa, where he was a defensive back on the 1981 Hawkeyes team that lost to Washington in the Rose Bowl, 28-0.

He coached at Iowa and Kent State before getting his first big break in 1989 as part of Bill Snyder's new staff at Kansas State. He was co-defensive coordinator for five years as Snyder led one of the most amazing resurrections in college football history. He then spent three years as an assistant at Florida, helping Steve Spurrier win the 1996 national title, before taking over at Oklahoma.

"Snyder is obviously one of those old-school, defense and kicking game, dot every I and cross every T kinds of guys," said Merv Johnson, Oklahoma's director of football operations and the color analyst for the team's radio broadcasts. "Spurrier's more wide open and relaxed around his coaches and players. So I think Bob came here with the best of both and came in here with a definite plan."

Parallel paths


When Washington and Oklahoma meet Saturday, it will be a pairing of two schools whose fall from grace had much in common:

• Each can trace the beginning of its problems to the resignation of a legendary coach because of NCAA probation only a few years after winning a national title — Washington's Don James in 1993, Oklahoma's Barry Switzer in 1989.

• Each was then forced to hire a beloved defensive coordinator to keep the program together — Jim Lambright at UW, Gary Gibbs at Oklahoma. Lambright and Gibbs were each fired after six seasons and almost identical records (Lambright 44-25-1, Gibbs 44-23-2).

• Each strayed outside the family to hire a controversial but charismatic big-name coach — Howard Schnellenberger at OU, Rick Neuheisel at UW. Each hire ended badly: Schnellenberger resigned after one season in 1995 in large part because he was said to have had poor relationships with his superiors; Neuheisel was fired after four years for lying to his superiors.

• Each then hired another former beloved assistant — John Blake at Oklahoma and Keith Gilbertson at UW.

• Each then had its first losing season in decades, forcing yet another attempt to start over.

• Each then hired another outsider — Bob Stoops at Oklahoma and Tyrone Willingham at UW. Stoops won a national title in his second season. Willingham, to date, is 1-0 in his second season.

Like Washington, Oklahoma's struggles began after NCAA controversy forced a coaching change, Barry Switzer getting the boot after the 1987 season. Oklahoma couldn't go to a bowl for two seasons, and new coach Gary Gibbs, a longtime OU assistant, was told to clean things up. He did, but the victories came less frequently: The Sooners didn't win more than nine games in any season from 1988 to 1999.

After a disastrous one-year experiment in 1995 with Howard Schnellenberger, OU called on another former assistant, John Blake.

Blake had three consecutive losing seasons and was fired after the 1998 season, but not before building the foundation of the turnaround.

"Coach Blake did an excellent job of recruiting," said Mike Stoops, the younger brother of Bob Stoops, and the defensive coordinator at OU before becoming head coach at Arizona in 2004. "There was some talent there."

In fact, those looking for comparisons between OU and UW say to stop right there.

Eighteen of the 22 players who started on Oklahoma's 2000 national title team were already in place when Stoops took over, including safeties Roy Williams and J.T. Thatcher and linebacker Rocky Calmus, who all became All-Americans. Few would contend Willingham's cupboard is as full.

But Stoops had to put it together, and his first move was to radically change the offense from its traditional run-oriented ways, hiring Mike Leach, known for an innovative spread passing offense, to be his offensive coordinator. They then found a JC quarterback named Josh Heupel to run it, and OU scored 31 or more points in every regular-season game his first year.

Since then, Oklahoma has won one national title, had five seasons with 11 or more wins and compiled a record of 76-16.

Bob Simmons, UW's tight-ends coach, watched it happen as coach at Oklahoma State and calls Bob Stoops a close friend and gives him most of the credit for the rise.

"Are there comparisons [between UW and OU)]? That's hard to say," Simmons said. "Those are, I think, unusual circumstances [at Oklahoma]. But the University of Washington has the same kind of pedigree. Maybe not as many national titles, but you talk Rose Bowls and those kinds of things and we have a great tradition. Part of what we are trying to do is embrace that tradition, embrace it in recruiting and get the kinds of guys who will bring it in here. And eventually we will get it turned."

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com