Bob Stoops evaluates state of college football, calls for new leadership group

The state of college football has been a common topic of conversation for current and former coaches throughout the offseason as NIL legislation and transfer portal controversies dominate the headlines and complicate the job of many leaders.

Former Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops, who stepped in as interim head coach during the 2021 bowl season after the departure of Lincoln Riley to USC, has many thoughts and a unique perspective on the current state of college football and the future of the sports’ leadership.

“The bottom line, be careful what you wish for,” Stoops told KREF Sports. “All the sudden, it may be totally different from what – it’s heading that way – totally different from what we’ve been used to. In my opinion, we need a new leadership group. The NCAA and the way it’s been has really failed overall. I don’t know who goes by any rules anymore and how they enforce it.

“It just seems so ambiguous and so – look at Oklahoma State, what their basketball program, what happened to them. How wrong, how brutal, just so wrong and so late. So insignificant to the people who actually did it. And then other teams, nothing happens to them. And I’m not pointing fingers at anyone, it just happens in football too. So I’ve been very disillusioned for a long, long time on the NCAA. Just through my football years and how they enforce things or don’t.”

Bob Stoops on college football

After talking about the issues faced by the NCAA as it fails to accomplish its goals as a governing body, Bob Stoops proposed a huge shift for college football in the future. While he does not know how to accomplish the potential change, it would certainly alter the way everything happens across the sport.

“So who knows, maybe we need to have a new league of Power Five teams that have their own league with their own whatever it be, commissioner and, or governing board,” said Stoops. “You may have to put a salary cap on everybody, who knows. I don’t know. Again, I’m not living it like these other people are. But from afar, it looks like now nobody has control over anything. So it’s just, have at it and I don’t know if that’s ever good. Even the NFL has some rules, restrictions, guidelines, salary caps, right? All of that. And I don’t know right now if college football has any of that.”