A Stoops Family Christmas

Nothing like the holidays to bring even the most divergent of families together. Take for example the annual Stoops gathering in Youngstown, Ohio.

There's Grandmama Stoops, sharing yuletide cheer with the wives and children gathered around her cracklin' fireplace. Eager hands empty platefuls of steamy gingerbread cookies, fresh from the oven, and hoist nutmeg-dusted cups of eggnog for yet another teary-eyed toast. Across the house the husbands sit in front of the big-screen TV, just like they always do, talking football.


It's just like any traditional family holiday. If family traditions include breaking down game film.

See, the Stoops family is to coaching what the Wallendas are to wire. Bob (above) is just finishing his 10th season as head coach of the Oklahoma Sooners. Bob's brother Mike (left), who was once Bob's defensive coordinator in Norman OK, now calls Tucson his home. He took over as coach of the Arizona Wildcats in 2004, leaving one brother and joining another by bringing Mark (below) on board as his defensive coordinator.


And what of Ron Stoops Jr. (below left)? Well, he fell closest to the Stoops tree. Literally. Ron coaches football a mile or two away at Youngstown's Cardinal Mooney preparatory school, as the late Ron Sr. had done for 28 years until his sudden passing in 1988 at the age of 54.

No fiction could better capture the events that occurred on that fateful October night. Cardinal Mooney was facing their arch-rivals from Boardman. The teams fought it out in a steady rain, dead even and destined for overtime. And who was up in the booth coaching Boardman's defense? Why Ron Jr., of course. Ron Sr. left the sidelines late in the game with severe chest pains, and with his son by his side, he took his last breath in an ambulance moments after Mooney's triple-overtime victory.

Ron Stoops' death rattled the Ohio rust-belt community to its very core. It was only natural that RJ jump sidelines, and that is where he's been ever since. Until his son--yup, Ronnie Stoops III--starts drawing up X's and O's and thinks he knows a thing or two more than his old man, that's where he'll stay too.


While these personalities are enough to make Christmas night anything but silent, this year in particular could well turn them into nail-salon regulars.

Mmmm-kay...'ssslike this: Bob's Oklahoma Sooners are gearing up for their New Year's Eve clambake with Stanford down in El Paso's Sun Bowl. And Mike's Arizona Wildcats--Mark's Wildcats too, for that matter--have a date with the Nebraska Cornhuskers in San Diego Wednesday night at the Holiday Bowl.

While Bob might not know the Cardinal like Mike does--or Mark, for that matter--Bob knows Mark and Mark knows Stanford since Mike's Wildcats--and Mark's too, for that matter--play them every year. Likewise, Mike and Mark may not understand the inner workings of your basic Cornhusker--but their brother Bob has a clear understanding of Nebraska, which is understandable since the Sooners tangle with them on a regular basis. Understand?


If ever there were a reason to work on Christmas Day, this family has found one. In lieu of making time and a half, they'll have to settle for shaving a point and a half off the Vegas books as they help each other improve his odds of emerging victorious. Talk about your insider information.

And despite the high school football season being over for more than a month, even Ron Jr. can't help but provide more engaging insight than the oft-forgotten and little-mentioned brother Zeppo (right), who toured with the Stoops Brothers for a season or two but ultimately chose to go his own way. Who knew the talkies were gonna catch on?

Finally! College Football's Biggest Rivalry Means Something Again

This Saturday marks the 110th renewal of college football's greatest rivalry, Army versus Navy. And this time, there's something at stake besides military bragging rights.

Should Army snap the Midshipmen's six-game series win streak and avenge last year's embarrassing 34-0 defeat (the first shutout in 30 years of Army-Navy football), there's an open invitation waiting for them at the Eagle Bank Bowl December 29th in Washington DC to face Temple. A Navy win and UCLA will take their place, leaving the Cadets on the outside.

How significant is that? Imagine a scenario where all three military institions go bowling this season. I don't believe that's happened since the days of Doc Blanchard.

Navy is 8-4, and has already received an invitation to play Missouri in the Texas Bowl New Year's Eve. And as irony would have it, neither of these teams despite their 2009 success, was the pick to play in the Armed Services Bowl. That honor went to the Air Force Academy. And I use the term honor loosely here, since the Falcons will be traveling to Fort Worth, Texas, on New Year's Eve to face a heavily favored 10-3 Houston squad.

Oh, and if things weren't special enough, there's history between the two coaches. Army's coach, Rich Ellerson, was recruited to join June Jones' staff at Hawaii in the early 1990s by current Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo, who was an assistant.

At last, there's a bonafide reason to watch the Army-Navy game this year. Beyond the pageantry and the arrival of George W. Bush, that is.

Ndam That!

If I were vice chairman and head of the invitations committee at New York's Downtown Athletic Club, I would prepare invites to this year's Heisman Trophy ceremony for one quarterback, two tailbacks and one defensive predator.

Predator? Ndam that!

Ndam would be Ndamukong. As in Ndamukong Suh (pronounced En-DOM-ah-ken SOO). As in, the defensive lineman from the University of Nebraska that is so dominating--or En-DOM-a-ken-ating if you will--that he has single-handedly transformed the Cornhusker defense from bottom feeder (they weren't in the top 100 statistically last season) to top-20 nationally recognized menace. The 6'4", 308-pound defensive end deserves a place (or two, or maybe even three) at this year's presentation alongside Texas Longhorn quarterback Colt McCoy, Stanford University tailback Toby Gerhart and senior Alabama tailback Mark Ingram.

A late bloomer in this year's Heisman race, Suh was surely a sight to see on the biggest stage. The part-African (Cameroon), part-Jamaican phenom tossed McCoy around his backfield like a catnip mouse as Nebraska, two-touchdown underdogs heading into last Saturday's Big 12 Championship game, took mighty Texas to the very last second and then some.

Forget the set-up job at the end of the game. Never mind the heavy hands and wringing hands of the vested interests whose act of collective panic not only turned back time, it turned major college football into Saturday Night RAW! What they did to "ensure" a Texas-SEC BCS Championship will have to be the subject of a future rant... er, post.

I'd rather focus on the one player who by himself all but gave the BCS shaken-playoff-formula syndrome.

Ndamukong's interesting name belies a complexity of Heisman support points. (Evidently NCAA rules prohibit amateur athletes from buying a vowel.) Suh has scored twice in his career, two touchdowns off of five interceptions... mundane stats for a DB but extraordinarily impressive considering that he's a defensive tackle. As a down lineman he ranks among the nation's best defensive backs in passes defended. All told, after thirteen games, Suh leads the Huskers with 82 tackles (23 for loss), 12 sacks, 1 interception, 10 passes broken up, 24 quarterback hurries, 1 forced fumble and 3 blocked kicks.

Ndamukong is as unpronounceable as he is improbable. His statistics are like so many numbers of a connect-the-dots picture who on their own cannot possibly illustrate the degree of his impact. Stitched into the fabric is also the fact that each week Suh faces what no other Heisman Trophy candidate must face: the double- and triple-teaming of opposing offensive linemen and linebackers, not to mention the razor-sharp focus of thirteen offensive coordinators. Even with the lack of "sexiness" a lineman brings to the table, the endless multiple-teaming may ultimately serve as proof positive why that bronze running-back-with-stiff-arm award seems forever destined for skill-position players.

Next to Suh, Michigan cornerback Charles Woodson's 1997 Heisman stats ring clear as a bell. However, if you watched the Big 12 Championship game, you undetstand the Ndamukong Effect--though you may well be unable to explain it to anyone who didn't watch it.

Put it this way. Each year the race usually hinges on a candidate's performance vaulting him into the lead and leaving his competitors in the dust. This is the first year that I can remember where one Heisman candidate literally destroyed another's campaign through his play. McCoy was an erratic 20-of-36 for 184 yards with zero touchdowns and three interceptions. Suh sacked McCoy 4 1/2 times and although he didn't actually pick off any of his passes, he gets three assists just by being on the field. The Suh Ledger from Saturday's game: 12 tackles, 7 tackles for loss, 4 1/2 sacks, 202 total yards allowed.

Okay, once more with feeling. 202 total yards allowed. 202 yards from a Texas Longhorn offense led by (until Saturday) the Heisman front-runner and two-time Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year. In his previous 12 games McCoy had completed 3100 of 432 passes for 3,328 yards and 27 touchdowns. That's more than 277 yards a game through the air alone. Add to that another 368 rushing yards (30.6 per game), and you'll see that McCoy alone accounts for nearly 310 yards of Longhonoffense per game.

With Suh leading the Nebraska defense, McCoy and his Longhorns gained just 202 yards of total offense all night.

At season's end, Suh leads the Huskers with 82 tackles, 23 tackles for loss, 12 sacks, 1 interception, 10 passes broken up, 24 quarterback hurries, 1 forced fumble, and 3 blocked kicks. To me, it's hard to justify a claim that McCoy is the best player in the nation when he wasn't close to being the best player on the field yesterday. Now many experts say that Suh is clearly the most outstanding college athlete in the nation. Hey, doesn't the plaque attached to the Heisman Trophy say the same thing?

As for who's going to win the hardware then... I say Mark Ingram. Oops, sorry. I meant to say FLINT'S OWN Mark Ingram.

Why Ingram? First, his THREE rushing touchdowns and 189 all-purpose yards against the top-ranked Florida Gators, the biggest performance of the season's biggest game. Second, his 1,542 yards rushing and 15 touchdowns, which led Alabama to a 13-0 season, the nation's #1 ranking and a berth in the BCS Championship Game. Lastly, most importantly and most astonishingly, the fact that no Crimson Tide player has ever won the Heisman Trophy before.

Think about that for a minute. The crimson and cream has brought college football such superstar names as Joe Namath, Ken Stabler, Don Hutson, Johnny Musso, Major Harris, David Palmer and Shawn Alexander, among others (and those "others" by the way include Lee Roy Jordan, Ozzie Newsome and Derrick Thomas, not to mention Steve Sloan, who quarterbacked the Tide to back-to-back national championships in the 1960s). Yet not one bust resides within the halls of the Downtown Athletic Club. No Alabama player has even finished runner-up (the closest was David Palmer's third-place finish in 1993, 'Bama's last national championship season).

Look for that trivia to be forever rectified Saturday night.

The perks of forced retirement

How does a 6-6 football team get into a New Year's Day bowl? Disguise themselves as band members? Drop the name Salahi at the players' entrance?

Nope. All they need to do is have a coaching legend retire.

Florida State's Bobby Bowden (center, back row) announced Thanksgiving weekend that he will step down following the Seminoles' upcoming bowl game. To be technically accurate, the University "retired" Bowden, relieving him of his duties the way a family takes the electric knife and relieves grandpa of turkey detail. Just days earlier, the 80-year-old walking definition of Florida State football mentioned that he'd like the swan song of a final season to walk along the sidelines at Doak Campbell Stadium. Next thing you knew, the legendary coach was at his press conference, calling it quits with all the free will of an American hostage in Iran.

One more season? Hmm. Let's see...

o You've coached the Seminoles for 34 seasons, amassing a record of 315-97-4 while in Talahassee. That's a winning percentage of 75.9%. In other words, since you took over in 1976 your 'Noles have won three-quarters of their games.

o Your 388 career wins are second all-time in college football history to Joe Paterno's 393.

o You led the Noles to two NCAA national championships, in 1993 and 1999.

o You're already in the College Football Hall Of Fame.

o Since joining the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1991 you've won 12 of a possible 19 conference championships, including nine straight from 1992-2000.

Ummmm sorry, coach. Unrealistic request. But cheer up, dad gummit! You're still one of The Anointed Few... so a handsome retirement gift is right around the corner.

Remember how we took care of Tom Osborne? Forget the gold watch--he was given a share of the 1997 national championship. And while a few na'er-do-wells didn't appreciate such generosity (namely the Michigan Wolverines, who became the first unanimous #1 team ever to win their bowl game and drop in the rankings), most thought it was a fair and fitting present (in particular the two coaches who had to drop 12-0 Michigan to third behind your one-loss Seminoles to make it all happen).


You're in the same beloved fraternity as Osborne, Bobby. How else do you explain that Coupe De Ville of a 1993 national championship you received? Remember that? Florida State and Notre Dame each had a single loss, and you guys lost to them head-to-head that November. Yet you miraculously leapfrogged the Irish and unbeaten West Virginia for the chance to play for the national title.

So stop sniveling, geez. And no you're not being treated like a Big Ten coach, you're in good hands.

Being that you finished the 2009 season at 6-6, We just can't pull the strings and get you into a BCS bowl. The guys would really bust our balls on that one. Not that we wouldn't swap Florida State for Boise State in a heartbeat--trust me, you'd be unbeaten too if you played in that conference. It's just, you push it and pretty soon people start getting those crazy playoff ideas in their heads. Then you might as well kiss the whole old boys club goodbye!

Sewwwww... how bout this. New Year's Day. Sunny Florida. And a date in the Gator Bowl. Heck, Jacksonville is practically a home game for you boys. We've even found an opponent as winnable as any you could find: West Virginia. Remember? The team you once coached (see pic), decades before you leapfrogged them for the national title?

Oh, and just to show there are no hard feelings, we'll hand-pick your very own officiating crew, just the way you like it. What else could an 80-year-old retiree ask for? I know. Depends.