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Posted (edited)

I have questions, and I need old timers help.

1) Why did Emory Ballard suddenly leave aggy?

2) Who was or who hired the OU spy? Switzer acknowledged there was a spy, but it was on Chucks’ staff. Who was Chuck?

3) Any more color on RC’s secretary driving on to the practice field would be greatly appreciated. Pretty fucking funny. 

Edited by billfromlaketravis
  • billfromlaketravis changed the title to Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout The Good Ole Days)
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, billfromlaketravis said:

I have questions, and I need old timers help.

1) Why did Emory Ballard suddenly leave aggy?

2) Who was or who hired the OU spy? Switzer acknowledged there was a spy, but it was on Chucks’ staff. Who was Chuck?

3) Any more color on RC’s secretary driving on to the practice field would be greatly appreciated. Pretty fucking funny. 

Well, as to 2), the OU spy was not DC Larry Lacewell, but was arranged by Larry Lacewell.

And Lacewell was on Chuck Fairbanks' staff before Switzer came.  But he followed Switzer to the Cowboys, so he was pretty firmly a Switzer guy.  I was wrong about that, he was with the Cowboys under Johnson and stuck under Switzer.

 

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Posted (edited)

I know the answer to Question 1. One of the spring DCTFs, of that era, answered it. 
 
Aggie boosters pressured Bellard to take Tom Wilson on his staff as OC, to modernize the offense with pro style passing. Bellard took Wilson on staff, but kept running the wishbone. The Ags faltered a little, and the seat heated up. Bellard said, “Fuck this, I’m out of here” and Wilson took over as HC. 

Edited by statsman
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Posted
23 minutes ago, statsman said:

I know the answer to Question 1. One of the spring DCTFs, of that era, answered it. 
 
Aggie boosters pressured Bellard to take Tom Wilson on his staff as OC, to modernize the offense with pro style passing. Bellard took Wilson on staff, but kept running the wishbone. The Ags faltered a little, and the seat heated up. Bellard said, “Fuck this, I’m out of here” and Wilson took over as HC. 

And Wilson modernized the offense, and aggy prospered greatly. Right? Right?

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Tex Long said:

And Wilson modernized the offense, and aggy prospered greatly. Right? Right?

Wilson was fired for not winning enough and Bum Bright hired Jackie Sherrill to come in and cheat like hell on the recruiting trail. 

Posted
13 hours ago, billfromlaketravis said:

2) Who was or who hired the OU spy? Switzer acknowledged there was a spy, but it was on Chucks’ staff. Who was Chuck?

Chuck Fairbanks routinely used spies to glean information from his opponents' closed practices. He tried the same thing against Colorado in 1972 and got caught red-handed.

Quote

Colorado Has Last Laugh on Sooner Spy

BOULDER, Colo. (UPI) – So much for the intelligence career of Steve O'Shaughnessy. He is, or at least was at last notice, a law student at Colorado—and a former Oklahoma cornerback. During the week before the CU-OU game, O'Shaughnessy's roommate, who could live with the secret no longer, went to the Colorado athletic department and told it that O'Shaughnessy had been scouting the Buffs’ practice sessions and reporting nightly to Oklahoma head coach Chuck Fairbanks. O'Shaughnessy was apprehended, the case was made public and the reaction around Boulder amounted to roughly three times the national outrage over the Watergate case. "The information that O'Shaughnessy supplied was of a general nature," Fairbanks maintained after the game. "You know, how does CU look? What's their spirit like?” The presumable answer: High. "This spy thing proves the questionable worth of spying on the opposition," said Colorado coach Eddie Crowder, who refused to shake the hand of Fairbanks before the game. "The incident did much more for us than it did for them." It did indeed, as the ensuing 20-14 Colorado victory would prove to be Oklahoma’s first loss of the season. After the game Saturday, Crowder was told that some of the Oklahoma players had complained about a wet and slippery field. "With all they know about us, I thought they would know it rained here Friday night," he said.

The furore began when a Colorado University law student informed Crowder last Thursday that his roommate was spying on the Buffaloes' practices with binoculars from a point near the practice field. The Colorado coach set a trap and discovered O'Shaughnessy using binoculars and making notations in a notebook while the practice was in session. Crowder said he also discovered that O'Shaughnessy had been making telephone calls to the Oklahoma coaching staff in Norman on a daily basis since last Monday. Crowder met with Fairbanks prior to the game and there was an exchange of heated words over the incident. Crowder said O'Shaughnessy had been calling an assistant coach on Fairbanks' staff, and demanded that his name be divulged. Fairbanks said he had discussed the situation with the parties involved and felt "the significance of this is out of proportion. After all, Colorado has open practices.” An unappeased Crowder threatened to lodge an official complaint with Big Eight Conference commissioner Chuck Neimas. But after the game, Crowder said he and Fairbanks "agreed to forget it” (the spying incident). "As far as the public is concerned it's a closed issue for us. We'll sit down after the season and talk about it," he said.

 

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Posted
2 hours ago, statsman said:

Wilson was fired for not winning enough and Bum Bright hired Jackie Sherrill to come in and cheat like hell on the recruiting trail. 

I remember the uproar when Sherrill was hired for something like 250k per year.  People couldn't believe a head coach making more than the university president.  At least aggy was on the cutting edge of something.

Posted

Regarding item 3, I think you've mixed some of it up.

Slocum was having an affair with his secretary. His wife discovered it somehow, while Slocum was running a fall practice. She drove up to the field, got out and started dumping a bunch of his clothes and personal belongings onto the grass. Then she told him not to come home and tore off in her car. 

Slocum spent awhile after that on his office couch, or his secretary's place, who knows? Eventually, he reconciled with his wife and moved back home. 

Slocum is one of those public personalities that gets a lot more credit in various ways than he should. Of course the aggies all talk about him in a hagiographic manner, but regular ol'college football talking heads will also celebrate the guy when he comes up or stops by somewhere.

Slocum was Sherrill's lead bagman. He was a fucking cheater if there ever was one. He was a driver in taking them to the brink of the abyss (death penalty). Those idiots should wake up everyday and thank God that SMU was even more craven and pathetic. 

After all of that, and when Slocum was in control, he continued to push the cheating. ATM was banned from bowls and television in the fucking 90's, for Christ's sake. It wasn't until the last embarrassment in the mid-90's that ATM got religion about cheating until they entered the SEC. 

Slocum also gets a lot of credit as some sort of terrific coach. I respect his defensive scheming at the time with how they ran their version of the 3-4 and how well they did it. That said, a lot of idiots can be awesome at something when they're cheating and most of the competition isn't, or not nearly to their levels. Gene Chizik won a national title. Les Miles won a national title. Ed Orgeron won a national title.

Beyond that, the guy was actively damaging to his offenses as a head coach. It was often great comedy to watch that dumb motherfucker sell "opening up the offense" during the offseason around the state and then the aggies online and in your neighborhood would lap it up. 

After he was shitcanned but stayed forever an aggie, he went out of his way in multiple seasons, once on the board of the Harris poll, in trying to fuck Texas over from top 2 contention in the BCS. He was actively working against Texas in 2008, publicly even! 

He is also an alleged repeat offender as a philanderer. 

So, sure, great guy. When he dies, even people on here will offer kind thoughts and prayers and all of that shit. Just show me the location of his grave, so I can drive over to it and spit on it. 

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Posted
36 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

He is also an alleged repeat offender as a philanderer. 

So, sure, great guy. When he dies, even people on here will offer kind thoughts and prayers and all of that shit. Just show me the location of his grave, so I can drive over to it and spit on it. 

Slocum...

 

Posted
1 hour ago, closetojumping said:

 

Slocum was Sherrill's lead bagman. He was a fucking cheater if there ever was one. He was a driver in taking them to the brink of the abyss (death penalty). Those idiots should wake up everyday and thank God that SMU was even more craven and pathetic. 

 

That era was wild and kept the NCAA compliance office busy and often with bullshit violations like a coach gave a player a quarter to use the pay phone type of stuff.  I figured after watching the SMU 30/30 special “Pony Excess” that A&M was more in arms race with SMU than we were which was set off by losing Eric Dickerson the way they did.    If there were two other schools in that era that deserved the death penalty, it was aggy and OU.  Both should thank their lucky stars SMU got it first and the backlash kept them from pulling that trigger ever again.  

Posted
2 minutes ago, Nueces River Rat said:

That era was wild and kept the NCAA compliance office busy and often with bullshit violations like a coach gave a player a quarter to use the pay phone type of stuff.  I figured after watching the SMU 30/30 special “Pony Excess” that A&M was more in arms race with SMU than we were which was set off by losing Eric Dickerson the way they did.    If there were two other schools in that era that deserved the death penalty, it was aggy and OU.  Both should thank their lucky stars SMU got it first and the backlash kept them from pulling that trigger ever again.  

There was no way the NCAA was ever going to apply the Death Penalty to a large school such as OU or even ATM.   Hell, OU basically stared down the NCAA with the Big Red Automotive scandal and once schools started hiring that law firm out of either KC or Chicago the NCAA was basically toothless if you wanted to fight them.  

SMU made it easy for them being complete dumbarses by continuing to pay players and alums such as the fucking Governor not backing down.  I would suggest to the OP the book "A Payroll to Meet: A Story of Greed, Corruption, and Football at SMU" which was the source material for the 30 for 30 special.

If I recall correctly, Houston was penalized,  ATM, SMU, TCU,  and Baylor had some issues with FIxx so there was plenty of shit going on in the conference.

 

 

Posted

If you really want to talk about the good ole' days of cheating in college football we need to go back to when there was a conference signing date (where it was common for players to sign with multiple schools from different conferences) and then a week or so later a national signing date.

I am sure there were no discussion  between those dates say, when Billy Simms signed with OU in the Big 8 and Baylor in the SWC and then on the national date with Simms signed with OU.  

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