Transfer portal? NIL? Early signing day? The coaching carousel?
Count Bob Stoops out — officially.
“I want nothing to do with any of that,” Stoops said Wednesday in a Q&A in Houston while receiving the Paul “Bear” Bryant Lifetime Achievement Award.
A simple Twitter search reveals that as college football job opening proliferated throughout November and December, Stoops’ name frequently came up among fans.
But he retired from college football in June 2017, and other than an interim stint coaching the Sooners in last year’s Alamo Bowl, his retirement seems quite permanent.
“I love coaching the XFL Arlington Renegades,” Stoops said. “We’ve got great ownership. It’s been incredibly fun.”
Stoops, 62, was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame last year after 18 seasons of leading the Sooners to a 190-48 record from 1999-2016. The Alamo Bowl victory raised his win total to 191 and elevated his legacy with Sooner Nation in the wake of Lincoln Riley’s shocking departure to USC.
Stoops hails from Youngstown, OH, and played for Hayden Fry at Iowa. He was a Hawkeyes assistant, then coached at Kent State for a season before joining Bill Snyder’s staff at Kansas State. After building the Wildcats up from 1989-95, Stoops took over as Steve Spurrier’s defensive coordinator at Florida, where they won a national championship in 1998.
The following year, Stoops took over a massive rebuild at OU — the Sooners hadn’t had a winning record for five years — and established a legacy that changed the face of the OU campus and endures today.
“I loved what I did for 18 years as a head coach at Oklahoma, but that’s in my past,” Stoops said. “You know, when I left it, I just wanted my own time. Had a little bit of my own time, a little bit too much of my own time. So, the XFL fills that void perfectly. I love being in Arlington and looking forward to that adventure.”
Stoops first took over the head coaching job of the new XFL’s Dallas Renegades in 2020, but that venture was scrubbed by the pandemic. The league has reconstituted and Stoops is back coaching the rebranded Arlington ballclub.
“I’ve had about 5-6 days of our players coming in and ramping up and onboarding,” Stoops said. “We haven’t been on the field yet. And I’m excited to work with them. It’s going to be a great, fun league.
“We kick off the weekend after the Super Bowl. You got to admit, everybody’s looking for more football after the Super Bowl and we’re going to provide it and it’s going to be fun.”
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