Letter from the Publisher

\'Don\'t tell me coaching doesn\'t matter...\'
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Sometimes media pundits will make the comment that "coaching is overrated." These same geniuses will say that it is simply a matter of the team with the most talent wins. "Look at Florida State University," they say, "anyone could win there."

Well, anyone involved with football will tell you there are hundreds of games each season where one team will get beat by a team with inferior talent because the staff on the opposite sideline developed a superior game plan and coerced their players into believing they could carry it out. Each of us can point to high schools across the nation that produce few college players, but compete for state titles year after year.

Coaching does matter. Just look at the first half of the 2000 college season and see the difference several coaches have made in their programs. Chuck Amato, at NC State, Lou Holtz, at South Carolina, Nick Saban, at LSU and Mike Leach at Texas Tech, have all instilled new attitudes into teams with less than stellar talent. However, no coach has done a better job of infusing life into a dormant program than Bob Stoops at Oklahoma; and make no mistake about it, even if the Sooners win the national championship, this is not a great group of players (most felt like it would be 2001 and 2002 before Stoops was able to field a really talented team).

But, Bob Stoops gets it. He understands that the job of the coach in the year 2000 is much more than X's and O's. Stoops knows the current state of college football is such that the duties and responsibilities of a head coach are far more than zone blitzes and spread offenses. The head coach must now serve as a CEO of mini-corporation, all the while setting a philosophical lead for the team that says, "We can do it and we will do it. No excuses."

In 1996, Dr. Thom Park said in our magazine, "Sports sociologists have called contemporary football coaches 'the high-priests of modern secular society.' Lionized by their faithful, revered by alumni in success, and battered by the media in failure, coaches must be surrogate parents, educators, father confessors, community icons, fund-raisers, university PR men, strategists, celebrities, politicians, role-models, recruiters, managers, businessmen and organizational leaders." This statement is exactly the role coaches play on their campuses, and I believe few "get it" like Bob Stoops.

From the day he took over in Norman, Stoops refused to accept losing or tired old ways of thinking. He brought in his attack style of defense that helped turn around Kansas State and won a national title for Florida, and utilized a high-octane offense that was a serious deviation from OU's heydays with the wishbone. But more importantly Stoops brought in an attitude of confidence and swagger that had been missing from the OU campus for too long.

At his initial press, he indicated that there would be no waiting to recruit "his" players. These were his players. As soon as the ink was dry on the contract, the players at OU were Stoops' squad, and belonged to no one else. He asked the players to trust and believe in his staff not because he demanded it, but because they had all been a part of championships and knew how to win. He demanded excellence both on and off the field, and developed an expectation of victory.

To put in the simplest of terms, Stoops taught his players how to win, and that is the most basic element of coaching. Thousands of coaches know every X & O imaginable, but few know how to win. Stoops knows, and now so do his Oklahoma players.

Sincerely,

Barry Terranova
Publisher

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