Bob Stoops  

Wow. That was an incredible Fiesta Bowl. However, watching it seemed a little deja-vu-ish.

I'm pretty sure I've seen Oklahoma blow a BCS game before. Let's recap.

2003: Get blown out by K-State to end the regular season. Miraculously make the title game, get beat handily by LSU. Also, deprived us of seeing LSU-USC, the real title game (which the Trojans would have won going away).

2004: Get smoked in the title game by the biggest margin in any BCS game, 55-19 to USC.

2005: Finish 8-4, nice win against Oregon, but not an elite bowl.

2006: Lose to Boise St, a WAC team, and surrender 43 points. One of the biggest upsets of all-time.

2007: Get waxed, 48-28 against a WVU team that hadn't beaten a really good team this year, and had lost to Pitt to end the year, and lost their coach. Now, WVU played inspired, but that's still an ugly loss.

Stoops' teams just don't finish the season well. It's time to call him out on it. His teams need to show up for bowl games, AND finish strong.

You can say that it's tough to get up for a bowl game when you don't have a lot to play for, but tell that to, say, USC. Carroll's teams ALWAYS show up for the bowl game, and play hard as hell.
2002: Paste #3 Iowa 38-17.

2003: Dominated #4 Michigan, 28-14 for a share of the national title.

2004: The aforementioned 55-19 drubbing of Oklahoma.

2005: 41-38 loss in one the best all-time games to Texas. Some dumb mistakes, but that game was an absolute war against an incredibly talented opponent.

2006: Blitzed #8 Michigan 32-18.

2007: Crushed #13 Illinois, 49-17.

The most important games to note are the 2002, 2006, 2007 games. Those one were strictly for pride, and USC could have overlooked them, or not cared, or been "insulted" by the matchup, but they showed up and kicked ass in all of them.

Think the USC standard is too high? How about Georgia?

2002: Beat Florida St. 26-13 in the Sugar Bowl

2003: Beat Purdue 34-27 in the Capitol One Bowl

2004: Beat Wisconsin 24-21 in the Outback Bowl

2005: Lose 38-35 to WVU in the Sugar Bowl. Not a good loss, as Georgia was the better team, but at least they showed up and fought hard.

2006: Beat Virginia Tech 31-24, not a marquee game, but a nice win.

2007: Paste Hawaii, 41-10.

Now, this isn't to compare the Georgia-Oklahoma seasons, but how they performed down the stretch. Richt's teams have all played hard, and even in the game they shouldn't has lost, they battled to the end. Maybe their opponents weren't always as good as the ones OU faced, but they never rolled over, or made excuses, or failed to show up. That's the difference I'm getting at.

Bob Stoops has earned his reputation as one of the nation's best coaches, but his teams have a propensity for either getting blown out, or not showing up an awful lot. That's a sign of poor coaching, and that needs to be said.