The Loop
Bob Stoops is coaching at Oklahoma this week. Wait, what?
David K Purdy
The last time we saw Bob Stoops, he was patrolling the sidelines as the head coach and general manager of the XFL's Dallas Renegades. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic stuck a fork in the XFL, thus sending Stoops back into retirement.
Ironically, COVID-19 is now bringing Stoops back out of retirement, and bringing him back to his old stomping grounds: Oklahoma. Wait, what?
That's right, Stoops is officially leaving his stoop according to current OU head coach Lincoln Riley, who served as an assistant for Stoops in Norman in 2015 and 2016. The reason? Riley's staff is a bit depleted at the moment due to COVID, so he called upon the six-time Big 12 Coach of the Year for some help.
"It's nice. It's been kind of in our hip pocket this whole time," Riley told reporters on Tuesday. "If we had any staff member that fell off, we've got a Hall of Famer sitting on the bench. That's a pretty good bench when you can call that guy up. More than that, how much he cares about this program. I don't think there's anything he wouldn't do. It was great to have him out there today. It was awesome. Our kids were excited to see him, all of us were excited to see him. I think he had some fun as well."
Oklahoma, which had its game against West Virginia cancelled this past Saturday, is scheduled to play Baylor at home on Saturday night at 8 p.m. Riley says Stoops could stick around until then if the game goes on as scheduled:
This is a move literally no one would be mad at. Actually, it's 2020, so I'm sure some absolute square out there could find a reason to hate it, but they'd be alone. Let's bring more coaches out of retirement to their old haunts while we're at it. Lou Holtz at ND, Steve Spurrier at Florida, Pete Carroll at ... ahhh, never mind.