More deep dive into OU history.
Switzer was forced to resign, as noted in last entry, for fear of further investigations discovering more embarrassing felonies. He wrote an autobiography, “Bootlegger’s Boy”, where he explained that every charge was the result of some unreasonably hostile person having a vendetta against him, and if he did do anything wrong, it wasn’t anything that everyone else wasn’t also doing.
This is almost, but not quite, the end of Switzer’s story with Sooner football. Despite his all time leading winning percentage as a coach, no major program contacted the (still relatively young) coach for an open job. He was famously napping in the couch when Jerry Jones offered him the job as coach of the young Cowboys team, recent two time SuperBowl champions. His charter was to keep the team steered forward, changing as little as possible. He fucked up his first season, blowing the NFC CG. The Cowboys won the Super Bowl his second season, as team leaders pulled it back together from a near midseason collapse. They lost in the playoffs his third season and then the franchise collapsed.
Troy Aikman did not like Switzer’s slapdash coaching style. Switzer didn’t like that the team’s most important player didn’t like him. Switzer had hired an old crony, John Blake, to be an assistant and running buddy. John Blake decided to prop Switzer up in the locker room by spreading rumors that Aikman was racist and gay. That pissed Aikman off. Luckily, OU needed a coach and Switzer was able to foist Blake off on the Sooners.
There is more- criminals arrests, lawsuits, unseemly allegations. Switzer’s SIL formed a financial alliance with Toby Keith and Bob Stoops, where they prey on OKC money, arranging business ventures where the jock sniffing investors carry all the risk.
I guess I should mention- Gary Gibbs took over as HC after Switzer. He was a solid coach, but with limited cheating, 8-4 seemed to be his program ceiling. He was fired and replaced by Howard Schnellenberger, who was fired after one season. Then, Blake was hired and finally, a new AD, Joe Castiglione, hired Florida DC Bob Stoops.
Stiops was a truly great coach, able to have great success even at the limited level of cheating allowed. He also “wrote” an autobiography, “No Excuses”, the idea being that the secret of his success was his rejection of making excuses for shortcomings and challenges. In the book, he makes an excuse for losing to Florida in the BCS CG (his RB and DT were out injured. He doesn’t mention that they were injured in the B12 CG and he assured the nation’s voters that each would play in the BCS CG, lest they vote for Texas to ascend). He also makes an excuse for Joe Mixon breaking that girl’s face, repeating a debunked allegation that she said something confrontational.
it’s not 100% true that Stoops allowed misbehavior or that he proscribed it. The truth is- average and poor players had zero tolerance. Star players were allowed to get away with anything.
Oklahoma Sooners football, y’all!