The announcement last week that Stoops' Sooners and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish will meet on the football field in 2012 and 2013 is just more proof of it.
Strength of schedule is something Stoops likes to talk about — and did so again last Monday at Big 12 media days in San Antonio.
"I feel that strength of schedule has been diminished and doesn't carry the weight that it used to,” he said. "Therefore, there's not as much incentive to have these exciting games early in the year.”
While his premise is a little off, his motive is not.
No, strength of schedule is not an individual component in the BCS equation anymore. But it still plays its part sufficiently.
The computer ranking systems factor in schedule strength. So do many of the voters in the human polls.
Is it as much of a factor as it used to be? It's impossible to say.
And the answer is irrelevant — to Stoops and OU athletics director Joe Castiglione, anyway.
Stoops doesn't believe schedule strength is a big enough part of the equation, yet he and Castiglione continue to add big-name programs to the schedule more than a decade in advance.
Florida State, Notre Dame, Tennessee.
LSU in 2019? Stoops' sons might be his coordinators by the time that game actually gets played. But Stoops keeps lining up big games. At least one a year, along with a mid-level team, like Tulsa or Cincinnati, and a cupcake or two.
"We've always been that way,” Stoops said. "We like to have exciting matchups early in the year for our fans and for college football and just for overall recognition of the league as well.”
The Sooners have been a little lucky — or unlucky if you're talking about strength of schedule — in facing some of those teams in a cyclical swoon.
Alabama was struggling in the 2001 and 2002 seasons when OU beat the Tide. Same with Washington last year, and it appears to be the same with Miami this year.
But at least Stoops is trying. He isn't waiting for the BCS to put schedule strength back in the formula. And he wishes other programs would follow his philosophy.
"I've said that every year,” he said. "Maybe you just need to have inter-conference (series). We're just gonna draw from a hat and we're all gonna play each other.
"I don't know. You need something. You need to have a little more balance in scheduling.”
