Woe be Mike Stoops
Published: 3/4/2008 4:10 PM
Last Modified: 3/4/2008 4:10 PM
Watching Bob Stoops at his optimistic best today at his pre-spring practice press conference had me thinking about his brother, and how desperate Mike Stoops must be to drum up similar enthusiasm at Arizona.
Mike is 17-29 in four years with the Wildcats, a time marked by tough losses and tougher p.r. The last thing I heard from the younger Stoops was at Arizona's signing day news conference, when he inferred Arizona State had become a junior college their admission standards were so low.
All right to think it, bad idea to say it, especially when an archrival like that is on the upswing you obviously aren't.
I know hope is supposed to spring eternal in every program across the country this time of year. But how hopeful can Mike Stoops be in Tucson?
A sample of his struggles, courtesy of the Arizona Daily Star's Greg Hansen last October:
"Mike Stoops is beating himself up, and you don't have to be Sigmund Freud to sense it... It is the pain only a young coach, 40 games into his head coaching career, can describe. And yet Stoops can't put it into words.
"'There are no explanations and no excuses in this game,' he said. 'Everyone wants one, but there are no good ones.'
"He said if he had any answers for the UA's unexpected problems he would 'be a millionaire.' He is so consumed by his club's awkward, ineffective start that he has forgotten that he is indeed a millionaire. (His career earnings at Arizona will exceed $3 million by year's end.)
"Stoops has not tapped into a network of trusted coaching associates, not his Kansas State mentor, Bill Snyder, nor his Rose Bowl coach at Iowa, Hayden Fry. Both men went through similar anguish, almost identical reconstruction projects, in their early coaching days.
"'I haven't talked to another coach all year,' Stoops said. 'I don't think you feel like talking to a whole lot of people.'
"Stoops has not been a man to alibi; not in past years when his club lost on late-game fumbles to Washington State and Oregon, or when his quarterback kept getting knocked out, and not now.
"'It's not a pity party,' he reiterated.
"So he keeps it inside... He does not seek outside help, except for that from his brother Bob Stoops, Oklahoma's head coach."
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
