The Big 12 belongs to Stoops, Brown

DALLAS | The Big 12 has come to be largely defined by these coaches and this game.

Bob Stoops vs. Mack Brown, Oklahoma vs. Texas at the Cotton Bowl.

The best the Big 12 offers to its regular customers.

The Missouri-Kansas battle at Arrowhead Stadium last November was the conference’s most momentous nonchampionship event, and the Jayhawks covered themselves in glory with last season’s basketball title.

But the Big 12 is more football than basketball and — since the arrival of Stoops and Brown, more South than North, making their annual tussle the league’s greatest spectacle.

Saturday marks their 10th meeting, and Stoops holds a 6-3 edge buoyed by a five-game winning streak. The Sooners appear a shade stronger this season, and recent history suggests that Oklahoma wins when the teams appear close to even.

This coaching matchup will be tied for the longest in Big 12 history after Saturday. Ten of the 11 meetings between Kansas State’s Bill Snyder and Iowa State’s Dan McCarney occurred in the Big 12.

Bob vs. Mack will soon top the list. They’re part of the small circle of the nation’s top and best-compensated coaches. They wear national championship rings, as well as some frustrating trends: Stoops has lost four of his last five bowl games, Brown’s frustration is his record in this game.

But they are the highest-profile people at their schools, and they are the constants in the annual attraction.

Brown came to the Big 12 first, for the 1998 season, Stoops a year later, and they both rescued programs.

After winning the inaugural Big 12 title in 1996, the Longhorns slumped to 4-7 the next year, and John Mackovic became the third football coach fired by athletic director DeLoss Dodds in 16 years.

Enter Brown, who elevated North Carolina to second chair in the Atlantic Coast Conference to Florida State. A gifted recruiter, he couldn’t refuse the opportunity to coach the flagship school in a state that produced about 350 Division I football signees.

In 1998 the nightmare continued for Oklahoma, a fourth straight nonwinning season and bowlless year. Fans stayed away from Memorial Stadium in droves, and first-year athletic director Joe Castiglione fired John Blake.

Castiglione hired Stoops, the great defensive mind who shaped units at Kansas State and Florida, before his alma mater Iowa could. And with those new faces, the Big 12’s landscape changed.

Think about this. Since 2003 every North school has won or shared a division title. But only Oklahoma and Texas have won the South since Stoops was hired.

Their influence on the conference has been profound. Kansas’ Mark Mangino, Nebraska’s Bo Pelini and Texas Tech’s Mike Leach worked for Stoops. Iowa State’s Gene Chizik worked for Brown.

The Big 12 owes much of its national reputation to the success of these coaches whose programs inspire each other every day. Oklahoma and Texas measure themselves against each other.

The game that means everything to both sides doesn’t need its protagonists to be nationally ranked first (Sooners) and fifth (Longhorns), though it wonderfully stokes the drama. Oklahoma-Texas has become its own franchise, a game so important that the city of Dallas poured $50 million into Cotton Bowl expansion and improvements even with the Cotton Bowl game moving to the Cowboys’ new stadium in 2010.

It’s happened because Stoops and Brown have positioned Oklahoma and Texas at the top of the Big 12. It’s not that there’s no room for challenges. Just about every other program in the conference has experienced a great season or short run. But none has been as consistently good as Stoops’ Sooners and Brown’s Longhorns, who have done more to shape today’s Big 12 than any other.