2020 Vision — The Coaches: Bob Stoops' coaching staff had a powerful bond and checked their egos at the door

Mark Mangino, Chuck Long and other assistants were young, but brought chemistry, toughness and talent to an Oklahoma team that needed it

This is the second in a series in 2020 exploring the origins of Oklahoma’s 2000 national championship and its significance two decades later.

Oklahoma’s last national championship — now 20 years in the rear view mirror — unfolded like a series of events more unlikely than the one before.

The Sooners showcased myriad plays that season that ultimately delivered a seventh national title trophy to Norman. But perhaps no single play was more emblematic of this new Oklahoma — a championship Oklahoma — than an almost incomprehensible call against Kansas State that was born out of a plane ride home from Kentucky.

Josh Heupel’s option pitch to Quentin Griffin.

“Might have been call of the year,” said Chuck Long.

The play worked because it was so shocking in its nature. This new Sooner squad, loaded with underrated but athletic receivers, triggered by a junior college left-hander who threw the ball over the yard, running the option in a key moment of a championship game?

This upstart, undefeated, rag-tag bunch, dusting off a page from Barry Switzer’s wishbone days with a passing quarterback and a spritely running back?

No one saw it coming. Especially Kansas State.

“We were there to try to stop the sneak,” K-State coach Bill Snyder said that night. “It was a guessing game and we didn’t guess correctly.”

“That was just some Oklahoma football of old,” Bob Stoops said at the time. “We haven’t forgotten totally about the option.”

Mark Mangino and Bob Stoops  / OU Athletics

But the play also worked because of the unique chemistry on Stoops’ coaching staff. That was the real magic behind the sudden turnaround. 

Stoops came to Norman almost two years prior to that night at Arrowhead Stadium, and he proudly offered “no excuses” for why the Sooners couldn’t resurrect things.

But from his very first hire in December 1998 (Florida strength coach Jerry Schmidt) to his first assistant coach (Bobby Jack Wright) to retaining someone to rebuild and oversee the recruiting database (Merv Johnson) to his offensive coordinator (Mike Leach) to the patience he showed in waiting to raid Snyder’s K-State staff (Mike Stoops, Brent Venables and Mark Mangino), Stoops hired all the right guys and pushed all the right buttons. He hired old Iowa teammate and NFL tough guy Jonathan Hayes to bring an NFL mindset and build up the special teams . He hired Steve Spurrier Jr. to help spread some of his dad’s offensive genius and swagger. He hired former Sooners Jackie Shipp from Alabama and Cale Gundy from UAB to remind everyone what OU football was supposed to look like.

And just days after Leach left to take over the program at Texas Tech, Stoops brought in another old Hawkeye to coach Sooner quarterbacks: Chuck Long.

That night in Kansas City, in the 12th game of the year, it all came together with one bold call.

As the Big 12 Championship wound down to the fourth quarter, the Sooners and Wildcats were deadlocked at 17. For both teams, a trip to the Orange Bowl hung in the balance. For OU, which in 1999 posted its first winning record in six years and hadn’t competed for a national title since 1987, it meant a shot at a national championship.

Heupel, battling a bad elbow, threw three interceptions on the night, but also threw two touchdowns. He was sharp on the go-ahead drive, finding Trent Smith for 28 yards. He then got a 12-yard pass interference call to the K-State 39. But as the third quarter ended, the drive stalled, leaving the Sooners with a fourth-and-1 decision.

Stoops decided he wanted to go for it and turned it over to his offensive staff. During the quarter break, everyone threw in their two cents. Gundy chimed in. Spurrier chimed in. Mangino was the offensive coordinator and called the plays, but he let Long coordinate the passing game, and long had significant input on the play structure.

Long wanted to run an “8-route,” or a pick play at the line of scrimmage where Heupel throws a quick slant to an outside receiver.

“It’s an easy throw, and Heupel’s really good at it,” Long told SI Sooners. “I used to call the 8-route a bunch with Heupel because he just, he loved them and he’s good at it. OK? So I went with Heupel’s strength.

“And Mark Mangino says, ‘No! We’re not running any of those. We’re gonna run the option.”

The headphones fell silent.

“I go, ‘Mark. Are you sure?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, we're gonna run the option.’ So he tells Josh Heupel. The option? Now, keep in mind, Heupel was not an option quarterback. Right?”

But Mangino was insistent.

“He said, ‘You guys shut up,’ ” Long said, “‘I’m gonna call the play right now. Goodbye.’”

Heupel executed it perfectly, shocking the bunched-up Wildcat defense with a sprint to the left, then delivered to Griffin a perfect pitch. Griffin hit the sideline and cut up, and finished with a scintillating 22-yard gain. On the next play, Heupel threw a 17-yard touchdown dart to Andre Woolfolk, and OU led 24-17.

“So usually when there’s a timeout, everybody's chiming in, and you’re listening, because, you know, I don’t have all the answers,” Mangino told SI Sooners. “But usually, you know, somebody’s got to make the decision. It’s me, and I made up my mind at that spot that the way they were blitzing linebackers and safeties, if we could walk them off and get the back side on the option, we have a chance for a big play on it, and it turned out that way.”

There was more game left, of course, an entire quarter. But during the Sooners’ late game-clinching drive that produced a 46-yard field goal by Tim Duncan, Mangino had the nerve to call another option play — this one resulting in a 29-yard gain by Griffin. Duncan’s field goal made it 27-17, and the Sooners held on to win 27-24.

Mangino’s shocking call was “one of the handful of plays that saved the season for us, yeah,” he said.

Long explained that the option was always an option for OU play-callers after Leach left.

“We just kind of dressed it up, you know, we just kept it kept it alive in the playbook every week,” Long said. “It’s a nice little goal-line play for man coverage, it’s a nice little fourth-down play if they’re in man coverage. But if they’re not man coverage, you got problems.”

Mangino’s firm, fearless call in a stressful moment — a championship moment — shows the inner workings and the chemistry of the OU staff in 2000. Stoops made the decision to run a play on fourth down, and he delegated to Mangino. Mangino had let Long call some plays, and they heard suggestions — probably good ones — from Gundy and Spurrier. But in crunch time, Mangino executed his authority and went against the grain to call a winning play.

“Yeah, just, it was a kind of that way with our staff,” Long said. “All your gut feelings about things like that, you know, you just kind of get a gut feeling, and Mark went with it.”

For Mangino, growing up in New Castle, PA — only 30 minutes from where Stoops grew up in Youngstown, OH — it was just how he learned to do things over the years. He started his coaching career at his high school alma mater in 1981 and coached at high schools and small colleges in Ohio and Pennsylvania before Snyder hired him at K-State in 1991. Under Snyder, he learned how to delegate, how to listen, and how to make decisions.

“One of the things I did as a coordinator at Oklahoma is, I wanted to be a good listener in the staff room,” Mangino said. “I listened to ideas and everything, but, you know, at the end of the day, if I liked it, we did it, and if I didn’t, we didn’t.

“There can only be one chief. But I had a process in the staff meeting room: I let guys, you know, talk about what they liked and, and things of that sort. … If you want a dictatorship, then everybody else in the room loses their creativity, and you need creativity. You need to always be on the cutting edge. So my guys were always highly involved in the staff room.”

Long, the 1985 Heisman runner-up to Bo Jackson (the second-closest voting margin in Heisman history), a College Football Hall of Famer and an eight-year NFL quarterback, had been a college coach for just five seasons — all at Iowa — when Stoops hired him ahead of the 1999 Independence Bowl.

He was basically the new guy with virtually no play-calling chops, but Mangino turned those duties over to him because, coaching offensive line, Mangino said, made it tough to see defensive pass coverages and blitz schemes all at once from the sideline. 

It obviously worked.

But Mangino’s call for the option in the Big 12 Championship Game was almost a decision that came a year earlier, when Mangino and Long flew to Lexington to visit with Kentucky head coach — and father of the Air Raid — Hal Mumme.

Mumme was Leach’s boss at Kentucky, and through the years at Valdosta State (GA) and Iowa Wesleyan, they had polished the system to a blindingly bright sheen. It wouldn’t have felt right to hit up Leach for tips since he was now at a conference rival, so they asked Mumme for some pointers on continuing what Leach had started in Norman.

Mumme and Leach breathed life into the Kentucky program behind prolific quarterbacks Tim Couch and Dusty Bonner. Mangino said Mumme was “really classy” and gracious to “spend the whole day with us” and is “a good guy” with “a lot of good ideas.”

But as they watched film with Mumme, Mangino kept noticing the Kentucky quarterback on the ground.

“I look at Chuck and Chuck looks at me,” Mangino said. “I said, ‘Hal, how many sacks did you have this past year? And I think he said something like 56 or something like that. (It was 54.)”

Oklahoma had only yielded 11 QB sacks in 1999, but Mangino also wanted to beef up the OU run game. He knew that Leach had done some amazing work in one season in Norman, but Mangino also realized then that not all Air Raid principles would work for the Sooners.

“When we got on the plane, I said, ‘Chuck, if we have (54) sacks this year. Bob’s not only going to fire me, he’s going to escort me out of town.”

So they resolved that day that the OU offense, operated by the Air Raid wizard Heupel, would also feature a powerful running game — another reflection on the ability and willingness of Stoops’ staff to evolve.

Bob Stoops was 39 when he took the job. Mangino was 43 when Stoops hired him. Wright was the staff’s elder statesman at 49. Mike Stoops, Hayes and Shipp were all 37. Venables was 28, Spurrier was 27 and Gundy was 26. Long was 36 when he came on board.

Long is certain that 40 percent of the coaching staff having roots at Kansas State, where Snyder had pulled off the greatest rebuild in college football history, added an element to the OU staff that other teams couldn’t match.

“That was, I thought, really key when Bob put the staff together,” Long said. “They were hungry. You know, and Bob needed that. He knew how to do it but he also knew that … we just had really good chemistry, I mean he had a great blend of guys.

“Jackie Shipp was a guy who knew Oklahoma. He and Cale, they knew the backyard element. Bob did a good job of hiring those guys, and they were two really good recruiters. And then Jonathan Hayes, having no coaching experience, that was a bold move to hire Jonathan. Jonathan gave you that great special teams element, and that NFL mentality. And then, Jonathan just brought an element of toughness to him as well.

“And Mark, you know, checked his ego at the door. He’s the coordinator, but he let me call the plays. And you know, and he protected me. The beauty of Mark was, he wanted me to call the plays … but if it wasn't a stellar game, he would protect me in the media. You know, he would say everything went through him and he said that, like, quite often: ‘Everything goes through me, so if you’re going to get at anybody get at me,’ and I really respected him for doing that.”

Long said Mangino could reach Stoops on a level that other coaches, except for maybe his brother Mike, just couldn't.

“Mangino, he was very integral,” Long said. “I thought he was really good for Bob, you know, just the experience that they had together, to bounce things off. And Mark, you know, Mark wasn't afraid to say, ‘Hey Bob it’s not a good thing to do.”

Said Mangino, “You know, maybe Bob would allow me to suggest or correct or do something that perhaps maybe some of the other guys on the staff wouldn’t have. … But that’s because Bob and I had strong trust in each other.”

Of the assistants on that 2000 staff, four went on to become head coaches. Two others became coordinators.

Long said Stoops told the staff early on not to worry about other jobs, that “if we’re good enough, they’ll come find you.”

“We all checked our egos at the door,” Long said. “You know, it’s one thing to preach it and say it, but there’s a lot of guys on staffs that that look to elevate themselves. I mean, they'll get on the telephone and stay networking and, you know, they want to get to another level, whether it be a higher pay scale or a coordinator level.

“That staff never did that. … We checked our ego at the door we checked our personal ambitions at the door for the good of the team.

“But yeah it was just a magical staff to be on. Absolutely. One of my favorites of all time. You know, we’ll get together 20 years from now, hopefully, and talk over the good times over a beer. I still love tell the stories of that year.”

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