Oklahoma Sooners head coach Bob Stoops’ name comes up routinely in connection with other job openings. It happens so often – we’ve already been through it once this year, when Stoops rebuffed the Florida Gators for the third time in the last 10 years – that you’d think it’s just written into the professional speculators’ coaching search story templates in Microsoft Word.
He’s still wearing the crimson and cream 12 years after being named the coach at OU, and yet every time, my reaction is always the same.
Maybe.
I mean, I don’t know Stoops, and I’m not going to pretend I’ve got a clue as to what makes him tick. Also, while I understand the conventional rubric behind the hierarchy of coaching jobs, I believe the beauty of every opening is really in the eye of the job candidate.
So I guess I can envision a scenario in which taking over the soon-to-be-smoldering ashes of Ohio State football would be appealing. After all, Stoops did rebuild an Oklahoma program that was still reeling nearly a decade after getting slammed by the NCAA. It’s plausible that kind of Humpty-Dumpty job would interest him.
Of course, that’s my answer. The better answer is that the chances Stoops will be coaching the Buckeyes in 2012 are about as high as the odds of Andy Katzenmoyer having ever picked up a check at a Chili’s in Columbus.
Listening to Stoops talk, he sounds far closer to retiring in two or three years than coaching another 10. Make no mistake, as evidence in the OSU case piles up, that could be how long it takes to get the Buckeyes back up to speed once the NCAA has had its way.
You can never say never, but… Screw it – not happening.