Stoops to Notre Dame... still?
Published: 11/23/2009 9:35 AM
Last Modified: 11/23/2009 9:35 AM
On the way out of Lubbock -- a liberating feeling, by the way -- I figured there was one thing Oklahoma fans could feel good about in the wake of that 41-13 debacle -- Bob Stoops' name would be coming off Notre Dame's board.
An easy deduction. The Irish were 6-5 after falling to UConn. The Sooners were 6-5 after laying down at Texas Tech. Right?
Well...
I popped on the Fanhouse Web site Sunday morning, where longtime Chicago sports columnist Jay Mariotti wrote: "It should shock no one if Bob Stoops is introduced, sooner than later, at a campus news conference. Stoops has topped out at Oklahoma, where his championship days are over and 'Big Game Bob' is 6-5 after a 41-13 stomping by Texas Tech. He meets the two major criteria -- Irish (check), Catholic (check) -- and he's an Ohio native whose recruiting tentacles will reach across the Midwest. Jon Gruden would have been my choice, but he has chosen to sign an extension at ESPN."
(For what it's worth, in the same column Mariotti said Rich Rodriguez was all but done at Michigan, when Wolverines AD Bill Martin told the Detroit Free Press "he will be our coach next year" after Saturday's 21-10 loss to Ohio State.)
Over at CBSSports.com, Dennis Dodd continued to tout Cincinnati's Brian Kelly as Notre Dame's guy. As for Stoops, Dodd wrote: "All you need to do is duck in on Stoops' weekly press conferences to know why he is staying. The coach gets annoyed at probing questions from the relatively small Oklahoma media contingent when his team is 11-1. It's hard imagining Stoops taking questions each week from the Chicago and national media while trying to rebuild Notre Dame."
Interesting. I figured that media frenzy was a big reason why Stoops would never fly in the NFL, but had never applied that logic to South Bend.
Let's bring in one more national writer. Here is the Notre Dame pecking order favored by Los Angeles Times college football columnist Chris Dufresne:
1. Urban Meyer
2. Kelly
3. Stoops
4. Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald
5. North Carolina coach Butch Davis
6. Temple's Al Golden
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
