2005: Stoops went 8-4 with Rett Bomar/Paul Thompson 2009: After the bradford injury, Stoops finished 8-5 with a freshman Landry Jones 2014: Stoops went 8-5 with Trevor Knight. So stoops had some 8 win seasons with non "special" qbs (although Trevor Knight was a good QB). Mack Brown won 8 or more games 15 of 16 seasons with Major Applewhite, Chris Simms, Chance Mock, Vince Young, Colt McCoy, Case McCoy and David Ash. Mack won 11 games and finished in the top 5 in 2001 with Applewhite/Simms. I am not sure what your point here was. Yes, Mack won consistently with different quarterbacks. He even beat Stoops and OU with Case McCoy. ' Stoops retiring early does not prove anything. Might Stoops have kept winning? Might Stoops have faltered? We will never know. I think he would have kept winning, and I certainly think Mack would have won at least 8 games in the past four years, but we have no idea. Bobby Bowden's last four seasons: 7–6 7-6 9-4 7-6 ^ Does this somehow make Bobby Bowden a bad coach? Most coaches have bad years and are forced out. That does not offset their accomplishments. Hell, DRK had the following consecutive records between national titles: 6-4 7-4 6-4 His last season he went 5-5-1. I do not see anyone declaring this somehow offset's DKR's accomplishments. Bob Stoops may (or may not) have been smarter than most by retiring while still in his prime, but that really is not relevant to this discussion.
I'll add that my apples and oranges comment stands that comparing Stoops and Brown is like saying, yeah, that 6A guy takes all those teams to the state championship games, but he's 5-5. Look a all I know is Bob Stoops had to go through Mack Brown to get to win all those big 12 titles....
In the above example I was going to compare Bob and Mack to high school coaches in different divisions but got bored with it and forgot to delete.
They're both outstanding coaches in difference manners. Splitting hairs or debating who's the hottest UT cheerleader.