Bob Stoops and Urban Meyer faced off just once before.
It was the final game of the 2008 season, the BCS national championship game, when Stoops led Oklahoma and Meyer was the head coach at Florida. The Gators prevailed that night, 24-14, to give Meyer his second national championship at the time.
They’ll meet again Saturday night.
Meyer, now the head coach at Ohio State and Stoops, still at Oklahoma, are two of college football’s coaching titans. The Buckeyes and Sooners are two of college football marquee programs. This is a big deal.
But both men leading their respective teams have been in this position before. Stoops is in his 18th season as Oklahoma head coach. He has racked up a career record of 180-47 with nine Big 12 titles and a national championship to his name. Meyer is in his fifth season at Ohio State — and his 15th overall as a head coach — with three national titles under his belt and a career mark of 156-27.
So, yeah, there’s quite a bit at stake here.
“This one’s real,” Meyer said Monday. “Real, real.”
In the College Football Playoff era, mid-season polls are essentially meaningless; the weekly CFP rankings are really the only thing fans need to pay attention to nowadays. Back in the day, though, polls carried some weight. For the purpose of this story, where we’ll examine how both Meyer and Stoops have fared in top-15 matchups throughout their careers, we’re going to use the Associated Press poll.
| Meyer | Stoops | |
|---|---|---|
| All-time record | 18-10 | 29-17 |
| Last 10 years | 17-8 | 14-11 |
| Last 5 years | 6-3 | 5-7 |
Ohio State is currently ranked No. 3 in the country while Oklahoma is ranked No. 14.
Stoops has coached in 46 games in his career in which both teams were ranked inside the AP Top 15. According to sports-reference.com, Oklahoma’s record in such games under Stoops is 29-17 (.630 winning percentage) and that dates back to Stoops’ first season in Norman back in 1999.
A lot of those victories came early in Stoops’ tenure, however, as over the last 10 seasons — from 2007 to 2016 — Stoops and Oklahoma are 14-11 (.560) in games featuring a pair of top-15 teams.
Conversely, Meyer has been slightly better in these marquee contests. In that same 10-year timeframe — Meyer did not coach in 2011, so his span consists of 2006 to 2016 — Meyer is 17-8 (.680) in top-15 matchups.
So, the two have coached in the same number of games with Meyer possessing three more victories. That’s fairly even for a 25-game sample. But since Meyer’s arrival at Ohio State back in 2012 — a five-year sample — Stoops is 5-7 in such games while Meyer is 6-3.
The numbers aren’t overwhelming, but they certainly favor Meyer. And few would argue the coaching advantage in Saturday’s showdown doesn’t go to the man leading the Buckeyes.
How big a role the coaches really play in Saturday's game remains to be seen, but there's no question this is a matchup both coaching staffs are going to be tested.
“This is definitely a step up in athleticism that we’re going against,” Ohio State co-defensive coordinator Greg Schiano said. “No disrespect to the first teams we played, but this is big boy football now.”
