One is the son of a football coach, built his reputation on a stingy, aggressive defense and puts forth a straight-laced persona that rarely cracks.
The other started out admiring the game from the stands, got his law degree before rising in the coaching ranks and then constructed the most productive offense of the past decade. Until his team’s first legitimate bid for a national championship this year, his quirky love of pirates and assortment of non-football interests made him something of a class clown in the Big 12.
Their paths intersected for only a year, but it left a profound impact on both Stoops’ program at Oklahoma and Leach’s at Texas Tech. The two meet again Saturday in a game loaded with national title implications.
Second-ranked Texas Tech (10-0 overall, 6-0 Big 12 Conference) can clinch the Big 12 South crown with a victory and move a big step closer to the Bowl Championship Series title game.
The No. 5 Sooners (9-1, 5-1) can get back in both races if Stoops can beat his former offensive coordinator for the fifth straight time in Norman.
Stoops and Leach united in 1999 to turn around an Oklahoma program that had fallen on hard times. Stoops, who had helped Steve Spurrier win a national title as the defensive coordinator at Florida, would need to hire his first offensive coordinator and among the things he considered was who he’d had the most trouble defending.
He came up with Hal Mumme, whose offenses had smashed records at Kentucky.
“I couldn’t get him to come with me, so I figured I might as well try the guy that’s been with him the longest and try and to do the same things here,” Stoops said. “There wasn’t anyone else that I had seen that was like that, and I felt it would be different here as well, that it would give us an advantage maybe that people weren’t familiar with.”
Leach, who’d been with Mumme - a former Copperas Cove coach - through early days at Iowa Wesleyan and Valdosta State before spending two years as his offensive coordinator at Kentucky, was caught off-guard when Stoops came calling.
“I was pretty surprised,” Leach said. “And it all happened pretty fast, though, because he got the job pretty quickly and I didn’t have any idea that he’d call me.”
The two knew each other mainly through pregame conversations when Kentucky and Florida would play, but together they started something special at Oklahoma.
Leach instituted his spread offense opposite Stoops’ sturdy defense, and the Sooners were almost instantly back on the map. Even though Leach left after only one season to take over at Tech, OU was headed in the right direction - and quickly. In 2000, Stoops won his only national title with the Sooners.
Among the keys to maintaining that instant success was the stable of quarterbacks that Leach was able to attract to Norman with his wide-open attack. Josh Heupel, Nate Hybl and Jason White - who won the 2003 Heisman Trophy - were the quarterbacks for Stoops’ first six seasons at Oklahoma.
The Sooners still use a few elements of Leach’s offense and practice plan, although much has changed through three offensive coordinators since Leach left.
Stoops’ influence lingered in Lubbock, too, as Leach took the Red Raiders to bowl games for eight straight seasons for the first time in school history.
“I got to see how he put together the program, some of the pitfalls and just how to put it together and how he responded to things,” Leach said. “It really helped me as I came to Tech and did the same thing just a year later."
