Tulsa World: OU must brush off distractions

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OU must brush off distractions

By DAVE SITTLER World Sports Columnist
Published: 1/3/2009 2:25 AM
Last Modified: 1/3/2009 2:33 AM

MIAMI, Fla. Fort Stoops officially opened for business Friday for Oklahoma's troops.

It might be a wee bit of a stretch to call the Fontainebleau Resort a fort. After all, it's situated on picturesque Miami Beach, with a gorgeous view of the Atlantic Ocean and has just completed a $1 billion renovation and expansion project.

It's also headquarters for OU's travel party, which hit town yesterday to start preparation for the Sooners' Thursday showdown with Florida in the BCS national championship game.

If OU coach Bob Stoops had his druthers, he'd undoubtedly find a way to turn the world-famous hotel into a fortress. Toss anyone not associated with his team out of the 1,500-room resort, build a huge wall around it and develop a bunker mentality for the next six days.

The last thing that the Sooners need is any distraction as they attempt to snap a four-game BCS bowl losing streak while winning the school's eighth national title and the second under Stoops.

But those scantily-clad young women strolling the nearby beach and catching rays at one of the hotel's swimming pools tend to affect the focus of even the most serious-minded college males.

"There's no problem in having a little fun," said OU safety Nic Harris shortly after the Sooners' charter jet touched down at Miami International Airport.

Uh-oh, there's the first hint of trouble. Harris' comment certainly didn't stay on the message delivered in Norman, America, the past three weeks.

Dead, solid, serious was the approach we've heard the Sooners preach about next week's championship showdown ever since they won the Big 12 Conference title to advance to a fourth BCS championship appearance under Stoops.

To a player, the Sooners swore on a stack of OU playbooks that this bowl junket was going to be "a business trip."

That's a good plan. But tough to execute when you're preparing for battle while also spending your down time shacked up at a five-star hotel situated on one of the prettiest settings in the world.

"You just have to make sure that you stay focused," Harris said. "You have to remember the ultimate reason why you're here."

Beach blanket bingo? Or Bowl Championship Series?

Agents are another problem at bowl games of this magnitude. They hang around, hoping for an opportunity to convince players to sign with them.

They'll undoubtedly invade the Fontainebleau, because OU is loaded with NFL-caliber players.

You can also toss Broncos in there with bikinis, babes and beaches as another potential distraction for OU.

That's Broncos, as in the NFL team. Both newspapers in the Mile High City have reported that Stoops is one of the coaches on the shortlist of Broncos' owner Pat Bowlen, who fired Mike Shanahan earlier this week.

Stoops' name always comes up this time of the season, when teams start firing coaches. He's partly responsible for that annual speculation because he has said he'd like to give pro coaching a shot at some point in his career.

Stoops set off NFL panic buttons throughout the Sooner nation a few days after he won the 2000 national title. In Arizona to receive the Football Writers Association of America's coach of the year award, Stoops told the Tulsa World that he might have an interest in the Cleveland Browns' job that had just opened.

Could another national title win next Thursday rekindle Stoops' NFL interest?

OU president David Boren has said that 2000 is the only time he feared Stoops might leave.

Don't look now, but that Browns job is also available if the 48-year-old Stoops, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, is interested in going home.

The door at Shanahan's Broncos' office hadn't even hit him in the backside before people started connecting the dots between Stoops and the Denver job. Bowlen, an OU graduate who has stated his admiration for Stoops, is one of the few NFL owners who keeps his uneducated football nose out of his coach's business.

A friend who works for ESPN.com and is here covering the title game insisted yesterday that the Internet giant's Denver-based writer is convinced Bowlen has zeroed in on Stoops as the man he wants to run what is considered one of the NFL's model franchises.

Why would Stoops, who made $6 million this season, want to take a pay cut? Well, he normally makes $3 million (and change) but doubled that this year with a one-time bonus for staying 10 seasons.

A Houston writer suggested Stoops could be NFL-bound because he's starting to act a little bored with the college game and needs a new challenge.

Stoops didn't address the Broncos situation during a brief press conference yesterday. But he seemed to allude to it when he said he felt blessed to have spent a decade with Boren and athletic director Joe Castiglione.

"I've worked with great assistant coaches and real quality young guys that we've recruited into our program," Stoops said. "It's been exciting and I hope we've got more great years coming."

With that, Stoops headed to the only fort-like place available — the practice field, which is off-limits to the media, bathing beauties, beach-bum agents and apparently anyone named Bowlen.

Read Dave Sittler's blog

By DAVE SITTLER World Sports Columnist

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