The Football Brainiacs

Image of Bob Stoops via NewsOK.com

Early this spring, I started thinking about going through all of Bob Stoops’ wins. My desire was to find out what fans really thought were the best wins of the Stoops era. While there is a fair argument to be made that some wins stand far above others, I still wanted to see how the wins would match up. The morning of June 7th, I was working on going through all those wins again for the first time in about a month. And then, several hours later… OU had a new head coach. Now, it seems even more relevant to back through the top wins of Stoops’ career.

My goal with this is twofold. One goal is to determine the greatest wins of the Stoops era. The other goal, and just as important, is to encourage all fans (and myself) to take a journey back through Stoops’ illustrious career and relive some great Sooner Magic moments they may have forgotten. And to clarify “greatest wins,” this can mean whatever you want it to. Trophies, bowls, conference championships, rivalries, highly-ranked opponents, blowouts, great single plays – whatever you wish to classify “greatest” as.

To allow an easy way to go through the wins, I have created a bracket, in which different wins will go up against each other. Then, everyone can vote on the wins for a few days; whichever win gets more votes will move onto the next round. In building the bracket, I did have to stop at a certain amount of wins, so some of my favorites (and possibly yours) didn’t make the list. That’s the pleasant downside to winning as many games as Bob Stoops did. I also randomized the slots as much as possible.

Bracket

For consistency, I made the year for each game the season it happened in, not the calendar year. For example, the Sugar Bowl OU played in against Auburn this January is labelled “OU vs. Auburn 2016.”

As I noted above, I do want this to be a task that gets people remembering games they may have forgotten. As such, I included the Sooner Sports game recap links for all games below. Unless you vividly remember the game, try to give it a quick look. Hopefully, this limit picking a game just because the other one isn’t fresh in your mind. (I recommend opening the game links in a new tab). After you’ve caught up on the wins, vote for which of the two you think was the better win.

This is Round 1 of the tournament. Voting will end Sunday at 3:00 pm (CT). Monday, I will post the results with an updated bracket. Then Friday, we’ll do this again for Round 2. We’ll continue that process each week until we have one win left. Let the voting begin!

(Please vote! No login is necessary, just a click of the mouse).

Game 1

OU Missouri 2008 vs OU TAMU 2000

Game 2

OU WSU 2002 vs OU FSU 2011

Game 3

OU FSU 2000 vs OU Notre Dame 2013

Game 4

OU OSU 2015 vs OU TAMU 2006

Game 5

OU Texas 2012 vs OU KSU 2000 (1)

Game 6

OU Tennessee 2015 vs OU Bama 2002

Game 7

OU Texas 2001 vs OU OSU 2010

Game 8

OU TAMU 2003 vs OU TTU 2008

Game 9

OU Baylor 2015 vs OU Oregon 2005

Game 10

OU Texas 2000 vs OU Auburn 2016

Game 11

OU Nebraska 2010 vs OU OSU 2012

Game 12

OU Nebraska 2000 vs OU Missouri 2007

Game 13

OU TAMU 1999 vs OU Nebraska 2006

Game 14

OU KSU 2000 (2) vs OU Texas 2011

Game 15

OU Texas 2003 vs OU OSU 2013

Game 16

OU Alabama 2013 vs OU FSU 2010