Thanksgiving — it’s my favorite holiday of the year, one in which commercialism isn’t prominent… not until the day after, at any rate.
Thanksgiving is a time when we celebrate the gift… not of jewelry or cars or toys, but the gift of being alive. Thanksgiving is a time when we celebrate the ability to be with people we love (or at least tolerate). We break bread. We argue. We watch football. Thanksgiving is a time for family and friends and simply being together.
For the Stoops family, Thanksgiving weekend did not exclude or avoid a particularly difficult moment, but for two-thirds of the men in high-profile positions, this past Saturday worked out great. As a result, this particular college football clan has taught us all about being thankful.
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We all aspire to do great things as human beings… or at least, we have aspirational inclinations hard-wired into our bodies. Those inclinations don’t always stay. For some of us, they get eroded or eliminated by difficult circumstances or unfortunate events. For many of us, we make do with what life gives us. We always hold out hope that we’ll get a big break, but the demands and responsibilities of everyday existence force us to manage expectations and cultivate contentment with our given job or station.
For a smaller subset of human beings, aspirations lead to big opportunities, but once those opportunities arrive, we find that the magnitude of the work or the weight of the experience is greater than what we can handle. This doesn’t make us lesser people; that kind of journey simply shows us that at a given point in time, we weren’t ready for a mammoth task or gig. Maybe in a few years, that failure will enable us to succeed if we get a second chance. For many, though, the realization that a pursuit was too big for us enables us to settle down and accept a less stressful endeavor.
The key point: We at least DID aspire. We DID test ourselves at a higher level of work or activity. We gave it a whirl, and it didn’t work out. Human beings can sleep peacefully when that occurs. Never getting a chance to prove oneself at a higher level creates a restless and regret-filled life.
This is all a way of saying: Mark Stoops has nothing to be ashamed of… and he can ask Mike Stoops what that feels like.
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Mark Stoops is the head coach of the Kentucky Wildcats. Big Blue squandered a 24-7 lead to Louisville this past Saturday, once again falling short of a 6-6 record and a guaranteed bowl bid. Stoops has recruited well by most accounts in Lexington, but his teams keep coming up short on Saturdays. We’re at a point where Stoops needs to get to a bowl game in 2016, or he could very possibly be fired. The job isn’t too big for him… but if nothing changes in the next 12 months, it will be reasonable to arrive at that conclusion. Time and opportunity are dwindling for Mark Stoops at Kentucky.
Mike Stoops very nearly became a thoroughly successful head coach… but not quite.
At Arizona, Stoops was THISCLOSE to beating Oregon in 2009 and putting his team in position to make the Rose Bowl. The Wildcats have never played in Pasadena on New Year’s Day (or Jan. 2) in the Arroyo Seco. Making the Granddaddy in Tucson would have made Stoops a star and a local legend near the Old Pueblo. However, a late rally by Oregon enabled Chip Kelly to go to the Rose Bowl instead, and Stoops’s tenure at Arizona flamed out shortly thereafter.
Beaten and stung, Stoops went back to the family… to Bob, for whom he had previously worked in an earlier stint at Oklahoma. Over the past few seasons, Mike Stoops had struggled to put the pieces together for Oklahoma’s defense. OU was flatly embarrassed by Baylor last season, with the Sooners being so conspicuously passive on defense in just about everything they did.
Oklahoma’s salad days under Bob and Mike Stoops (and Brent Venables, who is rocking it at Clemson and, as a result, might soon get the head-coaching opportunity Mark Stoops has right now) were built on a few pillars. One was having a dynamic quarterback as the trigger man for a loaded offense. The other and — I’d argue — bigger pillar was a nasty pass rush, a front seven that took no prisoners.
Saturday night, in the blowout of Oklahoma State which catapulted the Sooners to their first Big 12 title since 2010, OU looked like OU again, cut from the cloth of the 2002-2008 glory years. The Sooners bull-rushed the quarterback and largely overpowered Oklahoma State’s offensive line. The swagger, the ruthlessness, the unreserved aggression which marked a Stoops Family operation at its best were all in evidence.
Mark Stoops might be struggling at Kentucky, but Bob and Mike have resurrected the Oklahoma program and revived their own careers.
Bob knows he can still cut it as a head coach. Mike, though, can know that while he never fully made it as a head coach, he’s still in possession of his fastball as a defensive coordinator and tactician.
If Mark fails in the Bluegrass next year, he can look to his brother and know that life as a very successful and able coordinator isn’t bad. Even if Mark doesn’t make it at Kentucky, he has something very good to look forward to — maybe not at the highest level, but certainly in a position where he can succeed and gain an ample amount of praise… the praise which is flowing to Mike Stoops (not just Bob) this week.
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This past weekend was a Stoops Family Thanksgiving. It was a celebration which — while not free of pain — offers a very reassuring lesson about the flow of life and the value of finding a level of work which challenges us and satisfies us but is not too big for us to handle.
Chances are that each of us — whether we relate to Bob, Mike or Mark Stoops — can take some meaning and value from the ways in which different members of a distinguished college football family are carrying on witih their lives.
