Mark Stoops' brother, Bob, wins XFL Championship

On3 imageby:Adam Stratton05/14/23

AdamStrattonKSR

The Stoops trophy room just got a new addition. Bob Stoops, brother of Kentucky head coach, Mark Stoops, and longtime Oklahoma Sooners frontman, won the XFL Championship as the head coach of the Arlington Renegades on Saturday.

The XFL has come a long way since its debut in the late 1990s, back when Vince McMahon had the maniac idea to essentially combine football with professional wrestling. While there is no longer a scramble for a loose ball to replace the pregame coin flip, a practice that actually led to multiple injuries, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson keeps that WWE flare as the co-owner in the league’s third relaunch.

Stoops’ Arlington Renegades, the same organization that used to roster Kentucky kicking legend, Austin MacGinnis, finished just 4-6 in the regular season, but due to the fact there are only eight teams, most of which are located in Texas, they squeaked into the playoffs.

After upsetting the 7-3 Houston Roughnecks in the semifinals, the Renegades faced a tall order coming up against the best team in the league, the DC Defenders, in the championship. The Defenders entered the game 10-1, however, fell to the red-hot Renegades 35-26 in San Antonio’s Alamo Dome.

Stoops said after the game, “[This team’s] hard work and the way we’ve turned our season around. The assistant coaches and the players really deserve the credit. They’ve stuck together, they’ve hung together and here towards the end of the year we’ve really hit our stride at the right time.”

Winning is in the Stoops family’s blood as Bob won the NCAA title with Oklahoma back in 2000, and Mark has taken the Kentucky football program up a tier (or three) since taking over the reins in 2013.

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