All In the FamilyGene Frenette
Florida Times-Union

On December 1, 1998, Bob Stoops broke from family tradition and finally reached an inevitable position that many viewed as practically his birthright: he became a head football coach.

Not at your run-of-the-mill program, but at Oklahoma, a school where fans have grown accustomed to their coaches becoming icons and winning nearly every time they step on the field. After more than a decade as either a defensive coordinator or assistant coach, the same career path followed by his three brothers and their late father, Ron Stoops, Sr., the second-oldest of the Stoops boys made the jump to the boss' chair.

In leaving his secure, comfortable position as the University of Florida defensive coordinator, Bob Stoops takes on the challenge oftrying to rebuild a program that flourished under Bud Wilkinson andBarry Switzer, then crumbled to a three-year low (12-22 record) under former Sooners player John Blake.

"I don't know what I'll bring to Oklahoma that will be differentthan them,'' said Stoops. "I'm one of those guys who says, 'We'll see.'

What's given me the chance to be in this position is being aroundincredibly good people along the way.''

Stoops has learned working for, and with, some of the best headcoaches in the business. A group ­ Hayden Fry, Steve Spurrier, BillSnyder, Barry Alvarez and Dick Crum ­ not just used to winning, but one that a young coach can benefit from because of their diversity in philosophy and approach.

"I owe a lot of people, especially Bill Brashier, who was Iowa'sdefensive coordinator under Fry,'' Stoops noted. "He was probably the biggest influence on me other than my own Dad.''

Inevitably, any career reference point for a Stoops always tracesback to the family and its patriarch. In 1988, Ron Sr. tragically passed away from a heart attack at age 54 while coaching a Cardinal Mooney High School game against Boardman, where his oldest son ­ Ron Jr. ­ is still on the staff.

While the father never lived to see Bob attain one of the most coveted jobs in the business, there's little question about the role he played in making it happen.

"I'm strong in my faith and I believe my father does see this day,just in a different way than we do,'' said Bob. "It's a role (head coach) he didn't want for his life, but I think he'd be glad I'm tryingit and giving it a shot.''

Stoops' performance will not only impact OU's ability to become a national contender again, but on a more personal level, it puts the Stoops family in a bigger spotlight than ever before. Mike Stoops, Bob's younger brother, was hired as OU's co-defensive coordinator, reuniting a Brother Act that worked successfully for four seasons at Kansas State (1991-94) under Bill Snyder.

So the stakes are considerably higher now for a tight-knit coaching fraternity that could justifiably be called the first family of defense. With Bob Stoops in such a high-profile position, any success at OU may catapult Mike and the youngest coaching brother, Mark ­ a secondary coach at Wyoming ­ up the professional ladder as well.

"It's hard to get into college coaching these days even as a graduate assistant,'' said Ron Stoops Jr., the oldest of the four brothers and a co-defensive coordinator at Boardman High in the family's hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. "It was made easier for Mark because of Bob and Mike's success along the way. For me, college coaching isn't something I ever aspired to.''

Don Bucci, the head coach at Cardinal Mooney since 1966, worked alongside Ron Stoops Sr. in different capacities for 27 years. He has watched the evolution of the Stoops brothers. From babies in diapers, to boys learning to ride their first bicycle, to football stars under his guidance, to young men following in their father's coaching footsteps. He has seen them at their highest and lowest moments and almost everything in-between.

Bucci's teams won four state championships with a Stoops eithercoaching or playing for him. He has little doubt that the second-generation of this coaching tree will continue to blossom.

"As soon as Kansas State started to become successful when Bobby was there, I knew he was destined to be a head coach,'' said Bucci. "Going to Florida, that made it just a matter of time. There's no fear of success or failure with Bobby. He took people that weren't as talented at Kansas State and made them successful. Doing the same with better talent at Florida, you're going to get picked up.

"Mark will have to bide his time at Wyoming. Mike has already got people talking about him (as a future head coach). It won't be long. Especially if things get turned around quickly at Oklahoma.''

One thing about the four Stoops brothers seems certain. Coaching football, whether it's in college, high school or wherever, is in their blood. And it's a passion they'll likely never find in any other line of work.

"I guess I'm not totally surprised that all of us are in coaching,'' said Ron Jr. "If you're in my family, coaching is a natural.''

Mark Stoops, who turned 32 in July, says in matter-of-fact fashion:

"I can see all of us coaching for the rest of our lives.''

Brother See, Brother Do

Ron and Evelyn Stoops raised four boys and two girls in a small,three-bedroom house on the south side of Youngstown. They insisted on living by certain rules and rituals, among them that the family attended Catholic mass together at St. Dominic's Church.

All the kids in the Stoops' neighborhood basically understood there'd be zero tolerance for anything less than honoring God, motherand father on a regular basis. The steel mills in Youngstown, located 80 miles south of Cleveland and 20 miles west of the Pennsylvania border, were either gone or on their way out when the Stoops children were growing up. But certain things like family, respect and honor never became outdated.

Another thing that never went out of style, especially on Detroit Avenue in Youngstown, was the fierce, competitive nature of the kids who lived on that street. Not just those in the Stoops household, but the four Bearduce brothers next door and the five Braydich boys just two doors down.

It didn't matter whether it was football in somebody's backyard. Or pickup games of baseball and basketball down the block at Pemberton Park. Age was also irrelevant. All four Stoops boys learned quickly that respect was no gimme in their jocks-dominated world.

I had to fight for some respect in that house,'' said Mark, who was 4-10 years younger than his brothers. "There were definitely some scraps. Nothing really bad. It's just that the atmosphere you grew up in in our town, you had to fight to stick up for yourself.

"I found myself fighting with all of them from time to time. My brother Ron knocked my tooth out once. I probably deserved it.''

Life was simple in blue-collar Youngstown during the 1960s and'70s. The Stoops boys always lived in the same house, played with the same kids and gravitated toward the same interests. One unforgettable ritual was watching their father come home during football season from Cardinal Mooney, where he taught American and world history, and getting out the 8-millimeter, black-and-white projector to study game films.

"I can still remember Mr. Stoops having that projector going andusing the refrigerator (door) as the screen,'' said Jim Braydich, a neighbor who still lives in Youngstown and remains good friends with the family to this day. "He'd watch the same play over and over again.''

That didn't leave much of an impression on his four sons until they were older and more understanding of Dad's work ethic. Once they suited up for the Cardinals and began playing that aggressive, in-your-face style defense, they had a greater appreciation for the game and the homework that went into preparing for an opponent.

Accounts vary as to which of the Stoops boys was the best at which sport in high school, but the consensus is that Mike was the best all-around athlete, Mark had the best football skills and that Bob might have been the scrappiest competitor. All three went on to play football at Iowa, but only Mike flirted with pro ball, making it to the last cut with the 1986 Chicago Bears after they won a Super Bowl.

"We're splitting hairs here, but Bobby was probably the toughest of the boys as a football player,'' said Bucci. "Bobby would love it when a tight end caught a ball and he'd come up and try to split their head open. Bobby would time it so he'd let them catch the pass. They might catch one or two a game, but after that, they were looking for Bobby.''

Perhaps not intentionally, but Bob Stoops did start a trend withinthe family and his younger brothers just naturally followed. The head-hunting defensive back who would become Oklahoma's head coach accepted a scholarship to Iowa as a strong safety, became a graduate assistant under Hayden Fry, then made his professional breakthrough as the architect of Kansas State's defense.

Mike took the exact same route before joining Bob's staff at OU as co-defensive coordinator with Brent Venables, another defensiveassistant off Snyder's K-State staff.

"I wasn't a blue-chip player and I felt I could excel at Iowa,'' said Mike, who led the Big Ten in interceptions in 1983 and earned All-America honors the following season. "Bob being two years in front of me and being happy at Iowa had an impact on me. I was his backup for two years and he used to fake a lot of injuries when we were up two or three touchdowns so I could get in the game.''

Bob and Mike can't seem to get away from each other. Bob stayed on as a graduate assistant and volunteer coach under Fry while Mike finished his collegiate playing days. They coached at Iowa together for two seasons. Then in 1992, three years after going to Kansas State, Bob was elevated to co-defensive coordinator and Mike joined the Wildcats' staff as a secondary coach.

When Bob left for Florida, guess who got his job at K-State? Nowthe brothers are reunited in Oklahoma.

"Certainly Mike and I are close,'' said Bob. "Family is important to both of us. He felt he needed to help me, wherever that would be. It wasn't a done deal from the start, though. There are nepotism laws at some places. He had to make sure I could pay him what he was worth. I think he figured let's be together and try to get something done.''

Mark Stoops is entering his third season at Wyoming, a job he took, in part, because head coach Dana Dimel worked at K-State and likes the same style of defense that the Stoops brothers ran in Manhattan.

While the perception may be that the Stoops brothers are merelyfollowing Bob's lead, Mark disputes any notion of his brothers allowing family to take precedence over professional ethics.

"The bottom line is Mike put himself in the position to do what he wanted because of his success at K-State,'' said Mark. "It wasn't like he needs Bobby to take care of him. They're together again because they run the same pressure-style defense and they enjoy working with each other.''

While Ron Jr., like his father, is content as a high school defensive coordinator and being at home in Ohio with his four kids, Markwants a different kind of football coaching life. He makes no secret that his desire is to move into major college positions like the ones Bob and Mike have at Oklahoma, though not necessarily with them.

"We've never been a family that felt like we had to match each other's success on the football field,'' said Mark. "It's not a competitive situation in that way. With the success Bob and Mike have had, I'm cheering them on.

''But it's not like I'm feeling I have to go out and immediately get to where they are. I just want to progress and learn. But if there'sone thing I try to model after them, it's the way they have a great relationship with players and being very demanding of them at the same time. A coach who can do that has got something special.''

Passing the Torch

The first true love in the life of Ron Stoops Sr. wasn't his wife, Evelyn, better known as "Dee'' to her friends, or football. Before anything else, he was smitten with baseball.

It was a sport where he was good enough to not only sign as a shortstop in the Washington Senators' farm-league system ­ playing one year in Nebraska before family obligations forced his return to Youngstown. But Ron Stoops Sr. also kept playing baseball for the rest of his life on local sandlot teams. Fast-pitch softball, too.

"My father never sought the limelight or wanted attention, but he was still very driven,'' said Bob. "He enjoyed his life the way it was. He played baseball and softball until the day he died. The man could still beat out a bunt.''

That's what made the events on the night of October 7, 1988 so incomprehensible and shocking to those who were at the Cardinal Mooney-Boardman game. Just as Mooney scored the game-tying touchdown in the closing minutes, then missed the ensuing extra point that sent the contest into overtime, Ron Stoops Sr. came over to Bucci and felt so ill that he had to lay down.

Within minutes, Ron Stoops Jr., who was up in the pressbox calling defensive plays for Boardman, was being called down to assist his father. An ambulance soon followed.

"I knew they wouldn't call me down just for a stomach ache,'' said Ron Jr. "I didn't know what to say when I got there. I was scared, just trying to make him smile. He was conscious, but very white and not looking good.''

Unbeknownst to everyone, the patriarch of the Stoops family, who had no questionable medical history, was having a heart attack. The team doctor and his daughter, Maureen, rode with him in the ambulance. But Cardinal Mooney's defensive coordinator, a role model for his sons and a lot of young men who came through that high school, was gone before he ever got to the hospital.

"I was in my dorm room at Iowa, getting ready for a home game the next day against Wisconsin,'' said Mark. "There was a knock on my door from a friend of mine around midnight. We had security on the floor, so I knew something had to be up. It was a scary feeling from the moment I heard the knock. It was a hard knock.''

The devastating news floored a lot of people in Youngstown. Nonemore so than the sons Ron Stoops Sr. left behind.

"Without question, that was the toughest thing I've ever had to deal with,'' Bob said. "To experience that in such a drastic, sudden way. . . . Nothing ever heals it but time, and that doesn't completelyheal it.

"But I smile now when I think of him because of all that he gaveus and the times we had. A lot of people don't get that time with theirfather. I'm grateful for what we had. We got a lot of good memories to hold on to.''

Ron Stoops, who never drank or smoked, was more than just a baby-boomer father who punched a time card. Above all else, he was a teacher, one who said far more with his actions than his words.

During the summers, he did anything from selling insurance to painting houses with his sons to keep food on the table and spending money in their pockets. He was Mooney's head baseball coach, official basketball scorekeeper and all-around humanitarian.

"My Dad died of a heart attack when I was 7-years-old and my Mom raised five boys by herself,'' said Jim Braydich. "The Stoops family would take me along on their summer vacations. Mr. Stoops would take the neighborhood kids to the gym in the winter and play basketball with us.He rarely said no to us. He was a cool guy.''

Each of his sons carry different memories of the man they'd grow up to emulate in more ways than one. None remain as special as simply the gift of his time, like the 10-hour drives from Youngstown to Iowa City that he'd often make after many Cardinal Mooney games to watch his three youngest sons play college football.

"He was such a special person, just his demeanor and lifestyle was a positive influence on us,'' Mark said. "He didn't have to sit down and talk to us about how to do things. He just did the right thing. More than anything, he taught us how to be good, Christian people.

"A couple days after my father's funeral, I blew out my knee on the first series against Michigan. I came back my senior year, but itwas never the same. The nice thing was my father saw me play as a starting strong safety five times before he passed away. He couldn't have been happier. I'm glad he got to see that.''

Ron Stoops Sr. got to see a lot in his 54 years. He watched the joy as four of his football teams won state titles, including the 1973 Mooney squad of which Ron Jr. was a member. He lived long enough to see four children find callings in his profession ­ three sons becoming coaches and a daughter, Kathy Stoops-Drummond, an elemenary school teacher in Youngstown.

"My husband was definitely a silent, quiet leader,'' Evelyn Stoopssaid. "He had that approving smile and he'd put you in your place ifyou had it coming, but it was quickly forgotten after that.

"He taught the kids to play by the rules, live by the rules and success would come. Our life together was a great journey. I guess I have to say that I didn't know what a good teacher my husband was, but now that I see the results of it, it's much clearer to me.''

As difficult as his sudden passing was on the family, Ron StoopsSr. left a lasting legacy that is being felt on school campuses all overthis country. In Iowa, Kansas, Florida, Wyoming, and especially still,in Ohio.

"He left a great example that probably makes you more determined to be successful,'' said Mike. "It was tough love to a certain point, but more than that, it was his overall attitude toward life and friends. That'll last in our family and probably Youngstown forever.''

The 'Black Sheep' Rises

Bob Stoops has carefully plotted his coaching career. He showedremarkable poise by staying long enough at most stops to demonstrate loyalty, but seizing opportunities when the promotion and environment felt right.

Before accepting the Oklahoma job, he flirted with Iowa and thechance to succeed Fry at his alma mater. After helping UF win its national title in 1996, he rebuffed an offer from Minnesota, understanding that a top coordinator job at Florida was better than jumping at the first Division I-A head coaching position.

"The difference with Bob and what really separates him from a lot of coaches is confidence,'' said Mark. "He knows what's right for him and that's why he was so patient before taking that first head coaching job.''

Bob's only bold move, if it can be called that, was leaving Kent State in 1988 after just one season for what was then one of the nation's worst programs in Kansas State. But that proved to be an ingenious decision, paving the way for Stoops to become a hot commodity in the marketplace.

When Florida's Steve Spurrier went shopping for a defensive coordinator after the 1995 season, he cared more about who got results than who he knew. After seeing that perennial loser Kansas State was among the statistical leaders in several Division I-A categories, he gave Stoops a call and ended up offering the job to a total stranger.

Stoops won over Spurrier like no other defensive coordinator before him at Florida or Duke. He didn't just turn the defense over to Stoops, but prepared him in other ways to become a head coach, most notably by giving him post-game forums with the media. That enabled Stoops to work on what many perceived to be his one shortcoming as a future head coach ­ dealing with the public pressures of the job.

"Handling the media and the perception you put out there is a bigpart of being a head coach,'' Bob said. "Coach Spurrier was incredible how he prepared me for that. He pushed me in front of the media and gave me that opportunity. Not everybody would have done that.''

Florida winning a national title in his first season as defensivecoordinator put Stoops in the enviable position of being able to let jobs come to him. And if an opening wasn't at a school with a strongfootball tradition, he could certainly afford to wait one out.

Hayden Fry's retirement prompted rampant speculation in Iowa that Stoops would be his successor, but the Stoops derby played out far different than many Hawkeyes anticipated. The Oklahoma job, which offered greater tradition and more money, had opened up with the firing of John Blake and, surprisingly, OU seemed much more eager than Stoops' alma mater to get him on board.

"I talked to Hayden Fry, who is a good friend of mine, and he told me right out that he felt Bobby should be the next head coach at Iowa,'' said Bucci. "But for some reason, the school dragged their feet and didn't go after him the way Oklahoma did. I think that's the reason he didn't end up at Iowa.''

Of course, it didn't hurt that Oklahoma, besides luring Stoops with a five-year contract worth $3 million, also boasted a tradition of 34 conference titles and six national championships.

"I went into the whole process totally open-minded,'' Bob said. "You can't get tied in that because I played somewhere, I should focus on just that. There's no question that Oklahoma was quick and decisive. I was the guy they wanted. As a head coach, you need that support and the history of this school is incredible.

"For whatever reason, it just didn't work out with Iowa.''

Stoops intends to make things work at Oklahoma by revitalizing the stale offenses it had under Blake and recruiting players who can play the attacking style defense that earned him such acclaim at Florida and Kansas State.

"Probably the best thing I've been able to do is hire guys that have had success wherever they've been,'' he said.

In addition to his brother and Venables running OU's defense, Stoops brought in Kentucky's Mike Leach, the same coach who tutored No. 1 NFL draft pick Tim Couch in the controlled passing game that energized UK's once downtrodden football program, as his offensive coordinator,. Leach will try to do the same for projected starter Josh Heupel, a transfer from Snow (Utah) Junior College.

There's little doubt that OU is making every effort to throw the ball, as evidenced by the pass-run ratio of 105-34 during back-to-back scrimmages in April. OU's receivers are being monitored by Steve Spurrier, Jr., another coach with bloodlines who should know something about jump-starting an offense.

However, Sooner fans are more enamored with winning than passing. And if OU is going to challenge Nebraska, Texas, Colorado and Kansas State for Big 12 supremacy any time soon, it's going to be up to a Stoops who seemed like anything but head coaching material as a young kid in Youngstown.

"Bobby was definitely the black sheep of the family as a teenager,'' Mike Stoops said. "He was strong-willed, felt like everybody was against him. He felt the most outcast of the family.''

Now two brothers who had their share of disagreements as coach's sons in Ohio must be on the same page as adults in Oklahoma. The stakes are enormous. Not just for the rebuilding of a proud and elite progam, but for the Stoops coaching legacy to continue rising in stature.

"It's kind of like your second wind,'' said Mike. "I know we havea great task to build a program here that has been down and know it can be strong. But at Kansas State, there was tremendous pressure there, too. It was just different. Nobody could truly understand what we went through to get to where we were.''

Bob Stoops, the black sheep, has finally arrived as a head coach.How well he fares at Oklahoma may also determine how marketable his younger brother becomes as a potential head coaching candidate.

In the Stoops family, coaching is not just an option. It's almost apredestination. And it may not stop with this Stoops generation. On June 16, Bob's wife, Carol, gave birth to twin boys.

"You don't think about your career when you're growing up,'' said Ron Stoops Jr. "But once the ball started rolling, I guess coaching just became easy and natural for all of us.''