On Monday, Bob Stoops and two of his captains offered reflections on competing against and their interactions with Brown.
"You've got to credit Mack for the consistent success for such a long period of time," Stoops said, "and I've got great respect for how he's worked his program. He's always done it in a first-class way and he's always done it the right way."
In his first season at Texas, Brown beat John Blake's final OU team 34-3. The following year, he beat Stoops' first team 38-28, overcoming an early deficit to do it.
But Stoops took ownership of Brown's psyche for the next half decade, matching Oklahoma's longest winning streak ever against the Longhorns with five consecutive victories.
But it wasn't even that Stoops won five in a row. It was how he and his teams won during that stretch.
In Oklahoma's 2000 national championship run, OU won 63-14 in an all-timer. In 2001, against a UT team ranked fifth, the Sooners triumphed 14-3, highlighted by Roy Williams' Superman act. In 2002, against a Texas team ranked No. 3, OU won comfortably 35-24. In 2003, it was another thrashing, 65-13. And in 2004, in what would be Vince Young's final college loss, a 12-0 shutout.
One began to wonder if Stoops would ever lose to Texas again. Surely, he'd never lose to Mack Brown again.
"I don't know," Stoops said of the run of complete domination. "Certain games, certain days, you just get hot and you played well, you know?" (More at Tulsa World)
