By GUERIN EMIG Sports Writer on Mar 4, 2013, at 8:10 AM Updated on 3/04 at 8:10 AM
OU SPORTS
I don't mind admitting I walked out of ASA Hall of Fame Stadium feeling good Tuesday night.
It's not often you get ...
Bob Stoops hasn't gotten a lot of sympathy since his perceived slapdown of the SEC.
Sorry.
His perceived slapdown ...
Phil Steele, who I honestly believe eats his soup with a chin strap instead of a spoon, has already released his All-Big ...
I owe today's blog to "Mike in Norman," an astute college football fan who recently emailed SI.com ace Stewart Mandel something startling: Oklahoma's sudden underachievement in terms of poll position.
Mike used data gathered by Chris Stassen (of football.stassen.com). Stassen totals "points" from 23 different polls to track teams from beginning of seasons to their end.
Twenty-three seemed like a pretty high number to compile to me, so I narrowed it down to one – the AP poll – but found the numbers to be no less revealing.
What follows is OU's AP ranking at the start and finish of each of the past 13 seasons...
2012
Preseason: No. 4
Final: No. 15
2011
Preseason: No. 1
Final: No. 16
2010
Preseason: No. 7
Final: No. 6
2009
Preseason: No. 3
Final: unranked
2008
Preseason: No. 4
Final: No. 5
2007
Preseason: No. 8
Final: No. 8
2006
Preseason: No. 10
Final: No. 11
2005
Preseason: No. 7
Final: No. 22
2004
Preseason: No. 2
Final: No. 3
2003
Preseason: No. 1
Final: No. 3
2002
Preseason: No. 2
Final: No. 5
2001
Preseason: No. 3
Final: No. 6
2000
Preseason: No. 19
Final: No. 1
You can't help but draw a conclusion or two from the numbers. The Sooners haven't truly overachieved under Bob Stoops since his second year on the job. By this measure, they have underachieved in three of the past four seasons, and in four of the past eight.
Does Stoops deserve credit for the consistency of the other eight seasons? Absolutely.
But there's no hiding the fact that the program has slipped. The number of losses in 2009, 2011 and '12 make that so, and so do these revealing rankings.
Stoops didn't need this data to decide he needed to fire three assistant coaches. Still, it does seem to validate the belief that his program had become stale, and that he could only fend off critics with Big 12 championships for so long.
When Stoops shook up his staff, his supporters cried, "The old fire is back!" They missed the young vibrancy of 2000, when OU's swashbuckling coaches took the preseason No. 19 to a national title. That's nothing like the start-to-finish records of OU teams of late.
Perhaps the new coaching blood can help do something about that.
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