Title/Author:
“No Excuses: The
Making of a Head Coach” by Bob Stoops and Gene Wojciechowski
Tags:
Football (American),
college, coaching, memoir, Oklahoma
Publish date:
September 10, 2019
Length:
320 pages
Rating:
3 ½ of 5 stars (good)
Review:
When Bob Stoops took over the
football program at the University of Oklahoma in 1999, the program was only a
shell of what it was during its glory days in earlier decades. In two short
years, the Sooners were the national champions. While this memoir certainly talks
about that extraordinary accomplishment, it is far from the only event of his
life that Stoops writes about with pride in the book.
While Stoops does write with
fondness about his siblings, parents and childhood, the book doesn’t feel like
it has a personality of its own until Stoops enrolls at the University of Iowa
and plays on the defensive side of the football. It was there that Stoops realized that he stands
little chance to play professional football and if he wants to have a career in
the game, he has to turn to coaching.
Starting as a graduate assistant under
Hayden Fry in Iowa, the reader is taken on the journey Stoops undertakes on his
way to Norman, Oklahoma. Stoops makes sure to praise all the mentors he had
along the way for working as an assistant coach at Florida and Kansas State, where
he was especially proud of being part of the staff that made the Wildcats a
prominent program. Stoops does a good job
writing about his coaching career in great detail.
However, the detail doesn’t delve
greatly into either the life of coaches who work extremely long hours and there
isn’t a lot of X’s and O’s during the football talk – instead he writes more
about his family life, his players and his personal reflections. Some of them are touching, such as when he
talks about fellow coaches, whether on his staff or elsewhere. Others can leave
the reader as either angry or at least confused, as I was when he was trying to
explain why he suspended running back Joe Mixon in 2016 after being charged
with assaulting a woman instead of permanently removing Mixon from the team. He
wrote about this in the same manner as everything else he writes about – with total
honesty.
While it is clear from the book that
Stoops is an honest man, he is a family man and has a coaching record that
speaks for itself, this book only came across as a decent one for me. Hardcore fans of college football, especially
those who follow the Sooners, will love reading Stoops’ stories, but if not, it
will be one that will is okay and interesting but not one that will stand out
as one of the best – fortunately for Stoops, no one will ever say that about
his coaching abilities.
I wish to thank Little Brown and
Company for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an
honest review.
Book Format Read:
E-book (Kindle)
Buying Links:
I enjoyed reading about his upbringing in Youngstown, Ohio. I did not grow too far from him in Beaver County. It reminded me a little bit of my own childhood although I was not a player, my father was not a ball coach and we did no watch games projected on our refrigerator.
ReplyDeleteLoved his interactions with former Florida head coach Steve Spurrier.
Would have liked to see more of his thoughts on the future of college football.