No Excuses

Introduction

Legacy

Friday, April 13, 2018

I’m standing on a small stage in the middle of the Bennett Event Center at the State Fair Park in Oklahoma City, my wife, Carol, and our three children alongside me. And the truth is, I don’t know what to do with my hands.

I’m not an event center type of guy. The football field has always been my stage. From childhood through adulthood, I’ve lived large parts of my life within the confines of that field: 53 and 1/3 yards wide and 120 yards long from end zone to end zone. Its dimensions have never changed, but I have. And so has the college game—and all that surrounds it.

I’m fifty-seven years old, and I’m 99 percent sure I will never coach football again. That realization hadn’t hit me like a helmet to the underside of the chinstrap until recently. I love football, and football has loved me back. But it was now time to quit. It was time to do what so few people in my profession—or any profession—ever get to do: write my own ending, control my own coaching time clock.

Right now, I wouldn’t care if the ghost of Vince Lombardi knocked on my door and asked if I’d coach the Green Bay Packers. I wouldn’t care if an athletic director tried to money-whip me into a return. At this exact moment—except for that 1 percent of uncertainty—I’m done. Finished. Content. But I’m also a little unsettled, a tiny bit scared, and, at times, a complete mess on football Saturdays. Mostly confident and comfortable with my decision, but still unsure of the future.

How did I get to this place in my life? What caused me to walk away from the game I still love, from the players I adored coaching, from the assistants and staff that had become my second family, from the three-plus-hour jolt of electricity I got from being in the middle of the mayhem, from the competition I craved, from the kind of money that makes knees buckle—from the wins, and even the losses?

The college football media experts say I could have coached another five or ten years, easy. My boss wanted me to stay, and my family wouldn’t have minded if I had kept coaching. The fans didn’t want me out. My accountant was for it. So why? Why leave when nobody was showing me the door?

That’s the reason I’m writing this book—to explain how I got from point A to point R—as in “resignation.” And, along the way, how I somehow got from the steel town of Youngstown, Ohio, to the University of Oklahoma, a place that values what I value: consistency, integrity, loyalty, and winning.

The record book says I’m the seventeenth winningest coach by percentage and the nineteenth winningest by total victories in the history of major college football. It says I’m OU’s winningest head coach ever. But I know that my success was all due to the work of our players, our coaches, and our staff. I was just part of the equation.

I was lucky enough to be a link in an OU football chain that began in the late nineteenth century and resulted in 896 victories (number seven on the all-time list), forty-eight conference titles, seven national championships, and seven Heisman Trophy winners. Say “OU” to college football fans from coast to coast, and they’ll know what you mean. It is the university of Bs: Brian Bosworth, Barry Switzer, Sam Bradford, Billy Vessels, Baker Mayfield, Bud Wilkinson, and Billy Sims.

The easy decision would have been to stay at OU. But there was an intersection between the evolution of college football and the evolution of my own life. And when I got to that intersection, I saw the sign—a metaphorical stop sign—and I knew I had fulfilled my purpose at OU.

The recruiting. The travel. The late-night phone calls you hope never come. The early-morning wake-up calls. The cheaters. The agents. The renegade boosters and alums. The mind-numbing and mind-boggling NCAA rules that often defy logic. The hours. The toll it takes on your family. The media. The social media. The social issues—racism, #MeToo, academics, player rights—that rightfully deserve and demand your attention. The uninformed expectations. It all became a Molotov cocktail of reasons that it was time to leave.

I wasn’t beaten down by the job; I loved it. That’s why I was so lucky. I got to choose the when, the where, and the how. So many coaches have those decisions made for them. They get fired—or sometimes they just stay too long, which is almost worse. I’ve never been fired, and I was determined never to stay too long.

So I’m standing on a stage in the same building where they have trade shows and car auctions—and I decide this isn’t the time or place to explain to the more than twelve hundred people seated at 120 tables across a six-acre facility why I’m no longer OU’s football coach.

Instead, this is supposed to be a night of celebration, an evening of thank-yous. Me to them. Them to me. But I can’t shake the idea that it also feels a little bit like a wake—except that I’m not dead. I’m just moving from this stage… from point R to another part of my life. And I’m good with that.

I recognize nearly every face in the crowd. There are University of Oklahoma dignitaries, hundreds of former OU players, dozens of former and current assistant coaches, big-money boosters and influential alumni, national and local media representatives, bowl game officials, athletic directors, cheerleaders and band members, a contingent of family and friends from my hometown of Youngstown, Heisman Trophy winners, and athletic department staff members.

Even the event center waitstaff has quit clearing dessert plates in anticipation of the big moment. Police and security details poke their heads into the vast room as the band begins to play the OU anthem: “Boomer Sooner.” On some sort of invisible cue, the entire audience rises and applauds.

Across the way—maybe a thirty-five-yard pass from my small stage to his large stage—is my longtime friend Toby Keith, the megastar country singer from nearby Moore, Oklahoma. He has his right cowboy boot planted atop a black speaker box, his guitar resting on his knee. Like everyone else, he is waiting for me to say something… anything.

During my eighteen seasons as head coach at Oklahoma, I gave hundreds of speeches, did thousands of interviews, made countless public appearances. I call it “Being Bob Stoops.” There’s Bob Stoops the husband, the father, the brother, the son, the friend, the guy who loves nothing better than sitting on a beach drinking a cold beer pulled out of a $3.99 Styrofoam cooler, or grilling steaks in the backyard, or trading stories with buddies on the golf course, or sitting in the bleachers watching his kids play sports, or going to church, or stopping by the OU Children’s Hospital, or playing with the dogs, or simply sharing a laugh with Carol while watching TV in the family room.

And then there is the Bob Stoops, who happily and proudly represents all things Oklahoma. I love the state, love its people, love its work ethic and sense of community, love its competitiveness, love its devotion to the University of Oklahoma. But that version of me has to get outside my comfort zone. I’m not an introvert, but I’m not an extrovert, either. I’d rather eat green flies than do a media interview. I’m not a schmoozer. Small talk isn’t my strength. In a perfect world, I’d rather not be the center of attention.

But you can’t live life in a vacuum, which is why I’ve tried to embrace “Being Bob Stoops.” After all, it isn’t difficult to be nice to people, especially when they’ve been so nice to you. So you shake every hand extended, you pose for every photo, you look each person in the eyes and listen, really listen, as they tell you why OU football matters to them. And on occasion, you grit your teeth as a well-meaning OU fan tells you how and why you screwed up a game.

But now, as I squint into the lights hanging from the metal stage piping overhead, as I feel Carol’s hand against mine, as my children—Mackie, Isaac, and Drake—stand nearby, as I catch glimpses of my former players looking up at me from stage’s edge, I suddenly can’t speak. A thousand thoughts, but not a single word. I’m not an emotional person by nature, but this is different. Everything is different.

When you’re a high school senior growing up in blue-collar Youngstown and you see a Rust Belt city fall to its knees on Black Monday in 1977—when the steel plants started to close and tens of thousands of people lost their jobs, and then you hear the worry in the voices of your own parents… you never think that forty-one years later, you’re going to be here on this stage, the centerpiece of a “Salute to Stoops” gala.

When your fifty-four-year-old dad suffers a fatal heart attack on the sideline while coaching a high school football game in 1988 and your life is turned upside down by the loss of your hero, of the toughest, most honorable and honest man you’ve ever known… you never think that thirty years later, you’ll have an out-of-body experience and watch people stand in line to get their photos taken with a life-size cardboard cutout of you. You never imagine looking into the gala crowd and seeing your mom trying to make sense of the Bob Stoops “Bob”blehead to the right of her water glass.

I’m holding a microphone, but there is only the hiss of feedback as I stand there, overwhelmed by a moment I never saw coming eighteen-plus years earlier—or, for that matter, ever. I’m fidgeting. It all seems so surreal. Behind me is the just-unveiled, nearly forty-five-hundred-pound, more than thirteen-foot-high statue of the winningest coach in Oklahoma’s 124-year football history. More wins than the man sitting at table 44: Switzer, whose badass swagger and fearlessness had earned my attention and admiration as far back as high school. More wins than the incomparable Wilkinson, who once registered forty-seven victories in a row. More wins than Bennie Owen, whose OU teams had few peers in the early 1900s.

I glance back at the bronze statue… a statue of me. This can’t be possible. Stoops bobbleheads and signature white visors for each person at the gala… a Bob Stoops statue towering behind me. My former players in front of me. My family to the side of me.

“I got to tell you,” I say to the crowd, “I love my players.”

I start to say something else, but it’s no use; I have to compose myself. I have to get this right. I hand the microphone to Carol, the rock of our family. She’ll know what to say. She always knows what to say.

“There is no statue if not for you,” she says, glancing down at the former players. “It happens to look like Bobby, but it’s you.”

Yes. Exactly! There is no statue, no 190 career victories, no national championship, no conference championships, no coach-of-the-year awards, no number-one rankings, no bowl game wins, no losing seasons in eighteen years… no nothing without those players, who left bits and pieces of themselves on football fields across the country for OU and me—who trusted me.

After Carol finishes her lovely tribute to all those who helped us during our journey, she looks at me as if to say, “OK, I’ve done my part.” She hands me the microphone. It’s time.

I take a deep breath.

“Yeah, where do I begin—this huge journey,” I say. “It starts back in Youngstown, Ohio.”

I tell everyone about my parents, Ron Sr. and Dee. Our family didn’t have any money—football coaches and teachers at Catholic high schools don’t make much—but we had everything else. We had love. We had discipline. We had loyalty. We had pride.

I talk about the old neighborhood: working-class families, sons and daughters of immigrants, people trying to survive after the city lost nearly 60 percent of its population and more than half of its tax revenue in the decades after the steel plants went belly-up. We were closer to Pittsburgh than Cleveland, but the Browns were our team. Football was our sport. Fighting—our street in the neighborhood versus another street three blocks away—was our pastime. And, just so you know, in Iowa and Youngstown, they still call me Bobby.

I talk about Iowa offering me a scholarship when no other major program in the country was interested.

I talk about my accidental coaching career and the men I worked for and learned from: Iowa’s Hayden Fry (who gave me my coaching start)… Hall of Famer; Kansas State’s Bill Snyder… Hall of Famer; Florida’s Steve Spurrier, who is one of my closest friends and has had a huge influence on my life… Hall of Famer. And then there is my OU consigliere, Switzer… Hall of Famer. Do you know how intimidating, how daunting it was to walk into a building named the Barry Switzer Center and see his coaching records on the wall (157–29–4, three national championships)?

I talk about taking the Oklahoma job in late 1998, when OU was a shadow of its former dynastic self. I stood on the steps of Evans Hall and promised no excuses and hard work. I even remember what I told the OU faithful on that day twenty years ago: “If it happens where we’re back where we’re supposed to be, it won’t be because of me.”

And it wasn’t. It was because of us: the administration, the coaches, the support staff, the fans, and the players. It’s always about the players.

I got paid $650,000 that first year. I might have done it for free, or close to it.

I look down and see Tommie Harris, one of thirty-seven first-team All-Americas I coached at OU. Harris, a defensive tackle from Killeen, Texas, played for me from 2001 to 2003, and he was impossible to block. I almost felt sorry for opposing offensive linemen. Almost.

I pause. I have to compose myself again.

“Funny,” I say, “nothing gets me emotional, except looking at them.”

I’m in awe of what Tommie did on football fields, but I cherish what he did away from them, too. So I tell a story to the crowd about the day Tommie’s dad visited one of our practices and later left a note with my administrative assistant. The note read, “I love you, and I’m praying for you.”

The next day, I had walked up to Tommie during the team stretching exercises and tapped him on the cleats with my foot. “Hey, your dad left me a nice note yesterday. Tell him I said thanks.”

Tommie smiled. “Coach, that wasn’t my dad. That was me.”

Those are the moments that mean more than any win, any award, any paycheck.

I see former OU All-America defensive tackle Gerald McCoy, now a six-time Pro Bowl player for the Carolina Panthers. He first came to my OU football camp when he was thirteen or fourteen years old. He was from the south side of Oklahoma City, which can be a tough place to live.

Gerald says kids like him didn’t usually make it out of south Oklahoma City to OU. Gerald not only made it, but he made an impact. He was just nineteen and a true freshman when his mother, Patricia, died of a heart attack only a few weeks before his first game. She was in her fifties when she died—just like my dad. Our entire team attended her funeral. We were part of their family; they were part of ours.

I talk about my athletic director Joe Castiglione, the man who hired me; outgoing OU president David Boren; my staff and assistant coaches, who worked with me, not for me. It was Castiglione who addressed the crowd during my introduction on December 1, 1998, saying, “This is an incredibly important day in OU history.”

Well, it was important to me and my family. And, in retrospect, I hope it was important to the OU community.

I talk about Carol, my college sweetheart and the love of my life. Whatever we are as a family, it’s because of Carol. During the tough times in my personal and coaching life—and there have been plenty—it was Carol who helped get me through the rough spots.

“With my kids,” I say, “did the best I could. Carol, she’s the best. Tough. Has courage. Encouraging. A great leader.”

Many a morning, before the sun had even thought about coming up, I’d quietly slip out of the bedroom and head to work. But before I left, there’d almost always be an encouraging Stick’Ems note on the bathroom mirror. And whenever I’d question myself, or feel sorry for myself, or simply be down after a tough loss, Carol would ask a simple question: “Why do you do this?”

And the answer would always be the same: “Because I love the competition, I love coaching, I love my players and staff.”

“Well, then?” Carol would ask.

And she was right. You can’t embrace competition without embracing the risks of losing. You can’t love coaching without learning to love its challenges and sacrifices.

For fifty years of my life, I either played football or coached it. I played the game in front of our house at 865 Detroit Avenue, in the streets and backyards of my neighborhood, and at Pemberton Park in Youngstown. I played it for my dad at Cardinal Mooney High School, played it at Iowa with no ligament in one of my knees, coached it at Iowa, at Kent State, Kansas State, Florida, and Oklahoma. And the truth is, it’s like I never worked a day in my life. I feel like I should have paid those schools for letting me coach.

There’s a statue of me now. Talk about surreal. And it’s right across from Coach Switzer’s statue.

I’ve met US presidents. I’ve played in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am. I’ve traveled around the world. I’ve hung out backstage with the greatest country singers in the world. I’ve met movie stars, television stars, World Wrestling Entertainment stars, and rock stars.

More important, I’ve been able to spend time with kids at the Children’s Hospital at OU Medicine, kids that will melt your heart with their smiles and humble you with their courage.

I’ve met tornado victims. Special Olympians. Doctors. Nurses. Soldiers. Police officers. Fire fighters. Heroes.

Me? I’m just a former football coach.

Anyway, can you believe it? Can you believe any of it?

Years ago, I made a promise to myself. I wasn’t going to coach into my seventies. I wasn’t going to ignore reality or heredity. After all, my dad died of a heart attack, and I’ve had my own heart issues during my adult life. Maybe Coach Spurrier had it right when he said I didn’t want to go “from the sidelines to the graveyard.” And I wasn’t going to contort that promise, even if it looked like I might have a great team, a Heisman Trophy candidate, or that I could win a national championship.

But now I’m done. Visor and whistle retired for good. I became part of Oklahoma football history on June 7, 2017. That’s when I resigned. That’s when I took a leap of faith into the next part of my life, whatever that might look like.

I’m where I want to be. With my family. With my friends. With my former players. With the people who matter most to me. And not that it was ever a hardship—in fact, it was an honor—but I don’t have to “be” Bob Stoops anymore.

Now I’m just a dad and a husband, which are damn good things to be. One of my sons is on the OU football roster. I’m a guy lucky enough to see Jason White, the first player I ever signed at OU—and the first Heisman winner I ever coached—around town here in Norman.

All I ever wanted to do was help the OU program. I’d like to be remembered as someone who was a good steward, who stood up for what was right.

Earlier in the night, I had chatted with about fifteen local media members, many of whom I’d known for years. As we wrapped up the session, one of them asked if I was going to write a book.

While I still was coaching, the answer would always have been no. A minute spent working on another project would have been a minute less spent making OU better. Call it Catholic guilt—or Youngstown work ethic—but that’s how I always felt.

But all that changed in June 2017.

I may no longer be coaching, but I still have something to say, something to pass along. Resigning didn’t change that. In fact, it makes the next phase of my life possible.

Yes, I’m out of coaching and out of the confines of that 53-and-1/3-yard by 120-yard field, but I’m not out of football. Football is, and always will be, a part of my life.

So I stand on a stage and say thank you, but not goodbye. I remind everyone that I’m not dead; I’m just not coaching again. I’m ready for the future, but I understand the value of the past.

How did I get on this stage? Why is there a statue of me? Why do I owe so much to so many?

In my case, the past holds the answer. Always the past.

Chapter One

Family

Two parents. Six kids. One dog. One three-bedroom, thirteen-hundred-square-foot Cape Cod house. Working-class blue around all of our collars.

Four brothers stuffed into one bedroom upstairs. No bathroom up there, so we made the basement bathroom ours. Gaping holes in the bedroom wall from our wrestling battles, the occasional bloodstain on the blue shag carpeting. Two sisters in a downstairs room. Mom and Dad in theirs, also downstairs. Wally, our jet-black shepherd/Labrador mix, adding to the chaos.

Neighborhood kids walking in and out of our front and back doors like they were family—which they were. The Bearaduces on one side of us. The Browns and then the Braydiches on the other side. The Mastrans, of course, had the best backyard for a playing field.

A detached garage just big enough to squeeze a car into. A side driveway. A small front porch with a brick wraparound exterior. A modest front yard.

Mass and grade school at St. Dominic’s. Little League. Pop Warner. Baseball. Basketball. Boxing. Wiffle ball. Soccer. Swimming.

We had very little, but we didn’t know it. And we didn’t care. Life was simple and good if you were a son or daughter of Ron and Evelyn Stoops of 865 Detroit Avenue, Youngstown, Ohio.

I am the third of those six children. Born September 9, 1960, Robert Anthony Stoops—or Bobby to family, friends, and, later, Iowans. My middle name honors my maternal grandfather, Tony. My first name honors my dad’s youngest brother. In fact, my uncle Bob likes to tell people that he’s the real Bob Stoops. I’ll give him this much: he’s the original. We always called him Super Bob, or Sup for short.

So if you’re keeping track, it goes like this: Ron Sr. and Evelyn (Dee to family and friends), and then Ron Jr. (born in 1957), Kathy (1958), me (1960), Mike (1961), Maureen (we call her Reenie—1963), and Mark (1967). Six kids in ten years.

My dad was a history teacher and coach at Cardinal Mooney High School, which is on the south side of the city. He taught American history as well as physical education classes. In the fall, he was the defensive coordinator, and in the spring, he was the head baseball coach. In between, he officiated intramural basketball games and was the official scorekeeper for the varsity basketball team. To help make ends meet, he also painted houses during the summer. It became the family business.

My mom was a housewife, and later, when we were all old enough for school, she worked at an optometrist’s office and eventually in the front office at Mooney.

For years, even decades, there was some kind of Stoops presence at Cardinal Mooney. All six of us kids got our diplomas there. The school was named after Cardinal Edward Mooney, who had been raised in Youngstown and later became the archbishop of Detroit. In 1957, he gave the benediction at the second inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower.

Former San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr. is a Mooney alum. So is current 49ers co-owner Denise DeBartolo York. Then there are the boxing champion Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini (he lived behind us, on Cambridge Street), the Pelini football brothers Bo and Carl, former NFL team executive Carmen Policy, former Michigan Wolverine and Los Angeles Raider Ed Muransky (he lived five houses away on Zedaker Street), Texas offensive coordinator Tim Beck and former teammate Myke Clarett, who died in 2012 and whose son is former Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett.

The school’s motto left no room for confusion: “Sanctity, Scholarship, Discipline.” Those words fit my dad’s sensibilities. He adhered to his core beliefs, and he made damn sure we adhered to them, too.

He had sayings like, “If you’re going to do it half-ass, then don’t do it.” Or, “If you’re going to do it, do it right.” It was boilerplate Greatest Generation stuff, but it was true and authentic—and the sentiment applies as much today as it did back then.

Dad didn’t have a lot of rules for us. He didn’t care if we grew our hair over our ears or if we cranked up the volume on our Bruce Springsteen (Born to Run), Bob Seger (Beautiful Loser or Stranger in Town), or Stevie Wonder (Songs in the Key of Life) albums and eight-track tapes. He taught by example, not with a series of lectures out of a parenting handbook. He was the kind of guy who would stay up late to shine our school shoes.

Almost by osmosis, we embraced his values of honesty, compassion, integrity, commitment, devotion, and perspective. He was our family’s North Star.

We learned hard work from Dad. He was very detailed in anything that he did. He was a perfectionist. Even the way he kept his baseball scorecard or basketball scorebook—it was done in different colors and everything printed just so. It was the same when he painted houses, so much attention to detail. You could see the amount of pride he took in a job well done.

—Mike Stoops

The guy would mop locker rooms, pick up dirty towels, make sure it was perfectly clean. Mr. Stoops had an incredible way. He was nice to the All-Americans, the All-City, the All-State kids he coached, but he would gravitate to the kid who didn’t play, who was trying hard but might not have the necessary talent.

—Jerry Williams, Cardinal Mooney teammate

I played Pop Warner with Bobby and Michael, and high school football, of course… Going into my junior year, I was slated as the starting tailback. We were doing summer sessions, and I weighed a buck thirty-two. But I wanted to be a fighter from day one. I finally told Mr. [Don] Bucci, “I’m not going to play football no more. I want to be a fighter.”

Second period in school was my free period, so I’d go to the gym and work out. Mr. Stoops saw me and said, “Hey, Ray, you going to give up football?”

I told him I was.

He said, “Then, Ray, you go out and be the best fighter you can be, and you make us proud.”