Stoops' punt at Mizzou paid off after all
Published: 11/29/2010 9:25 PM
Last Modified: 11/29/2010 9:25 PM
Remember this?
October 23. Oklahoma ball, fourth-and-10 from its own 7-yard line at Faurot Field in Columbia. Missouri leads 36-27.
OU punts.
"A concession speech," the Columbia Daily Tribune's Joe Walljasper called it, "or an effort to keep the score down."
That didn't sit well with everyone in Sooner Nation. The most competitive coach ever to stalk Owen Field's sideline conceding? There had to be some sort of explanation.
There was.
"To avoid allowing a touchdown that would have turned a nine-point loss into a 16-point loss, Stoops surrendered his team's last chance at victory. For this, I don't blame Stoops. I blame the BCS," Andy Staples wrote for SI.com. "There are numerous coaches' poll and Harris Interactive Poll voters who didn't watch the Oklahoma-Missouri game. Stoops knew the voters would look at a 16-point final score, assume the Sooners got their butts kicked and send Oklahoma plunging in the polls."
Keeping the score reasonable kept OU in decent BCS position. At the time, that also kept the Sooners in the national championship picture.
And while Texas A&M ended OU's national aspirations, the Sooners' BCS position paid huge dividends when it came time to break the Big 12 South's three-way tie. OU plays for a conference championship Saturday because its BCS ranking (No. 9) is higher than Oklahoma State's (No. 14) and A&M's (No. 18).
Looking back at one of his least popular decisions as a head coach, Stoops now says: "I felt solid about it when I did it. Regardless of what anybody wants to say, it was a certain point where we hadn't shown any life. The first three downs prior to that, we didn't even sniff a completion. I probably wouldn't have done it had we been out at the 20- or 30-yard line. I know I wouldn't have. But in the situation we were in, I felt it was the right thing to do. Whether it was right or wrong, everybody can have their opinion.
"But right now, it's worked out OK."
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
