Cross Post: Bob Stoops one huge failure at Oklahoma
The Bill Parcells quote is: “You are what your record says you are.” Bob Stoops retired yesterday after achieving real, genuine football greatness at Oklahoma. His record in 17 seasons was 190-48, with a national title and 10 Big 12 titles to his name. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest football coaches of his generation.
Also, while he was at Oklahoma, Bob Stoops botched multiple cases involving violence against women involving players at the University of Oklahoma, and set an awful example by doing so for the university and the sport as a whole.
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Anyone properly summing up his career should return the favor. When writing the full account of his long tenure as the head coach at Oklahoma, note that Stoops failed. Like Tom Osborne at Nebraska before him, Stoops failed badly when confronted with violence against women.
That should always be part of his story. Writing it through in the name of tribute would not just be dishonesty, but a disservice to the victims of those incidents, and to everyone working to change cultures and institutions within college athletics that often make heinously negligent allowances for athletes committing violence against women. Stoops was a failure as a leader at OU when it came to the issue of violence against women. His record is what it says it is, and even Stoops has sort of admitted to regretting that.
It’s also necessary to remind people of it because it will try to disappear — something people in the media and college athletics will be more than happy to help along. The memory hole for coaches’ failures off the field is real, especially for someone as successful and generally beloved in his community as Bob Stoops. It’s not just that people will forget; they will sometimes not even attempt to write things as they actually happened in the first place.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/120470640
FWIW it's nice to see journalists finally acknowledging and speaking about this problem, instead of just ignoring it.