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Stoops Attributes Sooners' Success To Solidarity Shown During SAE

Sterling Shepard, Ty Darlington, Zach Sanchez, Bob Stoops, Charles Tapper, Trevor Knight, and Eric Striker walk arm-in-arm to protest campus racism in March 2015.
Thant Aung
/
The Oklahoma Daily
Sterling Shepard, Ty Darlington, Zach Sanchez, Bob Stoops, Charles Tapper, Trevor Knight, and Eric Striker walk arm-in-arm to protest campus racism in March 2015.

The University of Oklahoma takes on Clemson University in the Orange Bowl Thursday evening. The rematch of the 2014 Russell Athletic Bowl is the first of two national playoff semifinal games on New Year’s Eve.

The Sooners are two wins away from an eighth national championship, and a second for head football coach Bob Stoops. He attributes some of the team's success to an incident off the field before the season even began, when the Sooners were coming off a 40-6 shellacking at the hands of the Tigers.

Back in March, members of OU's chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity were filmed singing a racist chant on a charter bus. Days later, the football team decided to skip practice as a form of protest against campus racism.

“Even though this happens around the country, we have it captured," Stoops said during Wednesday's Orange Bowl press conference. "Because we have it captured, we’re strong enough to do something about it. And that was their stance, and they did a great job.”

Stoops says the players met privately, and decided that as a team, they were capable of joining together to do something about it.

“Eighty percent of our team is probably minority," Stoops said. "And they felt strongly that this is something that they needed to stand up against because it relates to them so closely.”

Stoops says that solidarity and the relationships forged out of those experiences carried over to gridiron this season, when the Sooners faced adversity after losing to the University of Texas, and were down 17-0 before an overtime comeback win over the University of Tennessee.

The Sooners have won seven in a row since the October 10 loss to Texas, and a lot of commentators wrote the Sooners off. Stoops says the team’s turnaround started the very next week, when players bonded during flight delay on a road trip to Kansas.

“It’s funny when you’re stuck somewhere for 10 hours, crammed in there, everybody’s relating to one another, and everybody kept their cool about it," Stoops said. "And then we went out and played one of our best games the next day.”

The Sooners beat the Kansas State Wildcats 55-to-zero in Manhattan, and have only scored fewer than 50 points twice since October. The team then closed out the season in dominating fashion against its toughest opponents, with wins over Texas Christian, Baylor, and Oklahoma State - all teams in the playoff hunt the Sooners lost to in 2014. That run was compared to the "Red October" stretch of 2000, when the Sooners defeated 11th-ranked Texas, 2nd-ranked Kansas State, and top-ranked Nebraska en route to a seventh national championship. Stoops says he sees similarities between this year's squad, and the team from 15 years ago.

"Kind of young. Started the year a little bit inexperienced, but grew," Stoops said. "And playing better than everybody thought they would. We were probably ranked in a similar position to start the year as well.”

Both the 2000 and 2015 teams started the season ranked 19th by the Associated Press. Thursday will be the fifth time OU has faced Clemson. They also lost to the Tigers in the 1989 Citrus Bowl - Barry Switzer's final game as the Sooners' head coach. OU defeated Clemson during the regular season in 1963and 1972.

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Brian Hardzinski is from Flower Mound, Texas and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. He began his career at KGOU as a student intern, joining KGOU full time in 2009 as Operations and Public Service Announcement Director. He began regularly hosting Morning Edition in 2014, and became the station's first Digital News Editor in 2015-16. Brian’s work at KGOU has been honored by Public Radio News Directors Incorporated (PRNDI), the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters, the Oklahoma Associated Press Broadcasters, and local and regional chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists. Brian enjoys competing in triathlons, distance running, playing tennis, and entertaining his rambunctious Boston Terrier, Bucky.
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