Tales from the Oklahoma Sooner Sideline

by Barry Switzer

  Despite the Sooners’ lack of immediate success, they stuck with the triple-option attack over the next 16 seasons, winning three national titles during that span.

  Policing the Athletic Dorms

  One semester there was a problem with thefts occurring in the athletic dorms. Several items had come up missing from various players’ rooms, and it was cause for concern among the Selmon brothers, who were the self-appointed authority for the Wilkinson Center.

  Lucious, Dewey and Lee Roy were determined to find out who was stealing from their teammates, and they set out on an in-house crime investigation.

  A few days later during roll call for one of coach Barry Switzer’s team meetings, a certain halfback from Houston was curiously missing. Switzer called out the kid’s name several times and then began to inquire about his whereabouts.

  “One player stood up and said, ‘He’s on a bus back to Houston, Coach,”’ explained Switzer. “I asked why and the kid said Lucious, Lee Roy and Dewey took him down to the bus station and felt like it was the best thing for him to go back home.”

  Earlier that day, the brothers’ investigation had led them to the player in question’s room, where they discovered all of the stolen items in his closet.

  “They had some clues who it was, and they took the door off the hinges to find out,” added Switzer. “When they saw it was him, they packed his bags and drove him to the bus station. That was all that needed to be said.”

  Funny Man

  The 1975 season was full of surprises, mostly magical and occasionally sobering. Oklahoma was on its way to a second straight national championship, and thanks to George Davis, there was a bit of comic relief to help counter the pressure when it got too intense.

  Davis, a backup linebacker and the younger brother of former quarterback Steve Davis, spent much of his spare time entertaining his teammates with a unique sense of humor and timing.

  “George was the team funny man. He was a real character and he was good for team morale,” said teammate Tinker Owens. “He was always good for a laugh.”

  Davis got into the habit of making sensational entrances at the regular Friday walkthrough practice. The players loved it. One week, he showed up in an ambulance. The next week, he was piloted in on a helicopter that landed on Owen Field. Then there was the horse.

  The list goes on and on.

  “Everybody knew George had something big planned, and we all looked forward to it,” added Owens. “He had quite an imagination.”

  Beating Texas

  Oklahoma made a habit of finding ways to beat rival Texas during the Barry Switzer era. A perfect example of that unfolded during the 1974 Red River Showdown in Dallas.

  Installed as 21-point favorites prior to the game, the Sooners played more like an underdog for the opening three quarters. Three turnovers in Texas territory, coupled with several other blunders, left Switzer’s crew in a 13-7 hole.

  “We just couldn’t seem to do anything right during the first three quarters,” said quarterback Steve Davis.

  Suddenly, the realization that an undefeated season and a shot at the national title was slipping away kicked in. A dose of “Sooner Magic” did the rest.

  Billy Brooks got the comeback started when he took a reverse handoff from Davis 40 yards for a touchdown to open the fourth quarter. The game remained tied when OU failed to convert the extra point, but momentum had swung.

  OU’s Lee Roy Selmon recovered an Earl Campbell fumble on the following series, setting up a 37-yard field goal by Tony DiRienzo with 5:25 remaining. Selmon would help close the door by recovering another Campbell fumble in the closing moments.

  I'm Coming Home

  During the days and hours after being told his team was changing from its veer offense to a run-oriented attack called the wishbone, Greg Pruitt sat down and contemplated his future at Oklahoma. He came to the conclusion that he didn’t like what he envisioned.

  “I just looked at it as an offense a wide receiver would get lost in. Everything was run, run, run, and I didn’t see a whole lot of future for a guy who caught passes,” explained Pruitt. “I was very resistant to change. I was disappointed about not starting.”

  So the fledgling sophomore called home and told his mother he was going to leave OU and find another school. Maggie Pruitt didn’t want to hear it. In not so many words, she told her talented son that she didn’t raise any quitters and that he’d better rethink what she felt was a rash decision.

  “Greg didn’t realize it, because all he saw at the time was the fact he was being moved out of the starting lineup as a receiver. But it was a move that he would ultimately take full advantage of,” explained OU coach Barry Switzer.

  Switzer, of course, was right. Pruitt made a better-than- expected transition to halfback, and by his junior season had become one of the most feared running backs in the country. He ran for 1,665 yards that season (1971) and averaged an NCAA-record 9.41 yards per carry.

  “As it turned out, staying at OU was the best thing that could have happened to me,” added Pruitt, who finished his collegiate career with 2,844 rushing yards and 38 touchdowns.

  Waiting His Turn

  Oklahoma’s roster was so deep and so strong during the 1970s that many players who might have been stars at some other school were relegated to the bench. Jimmy Rogers was one of those “what if” guys.

  Stuck behind players like Joe Washington, Billy Sims and David Overstreet for his entire Sooner career, Rogers got very few chances to strut his stuff as a running back. Ironically, Rogers was still selected by New Orleans in the 1980 NFL draft, and he played four seasons with the Saints.

  Not Exactly Part of the Team?

  During the late 1960s and early ’70s, when Oklahoma football was rediscovering the glory years of the Bud Wilkinson era, a problem evolved, albeit a small one. Kids began walking on for the football team who had only one thing in mind—to be a part of the team photo. A day or two after the photo session, they would turn in their gear and disappear.

  Back then, the Sooners held their picture day a few days before preseason camp started. So walk-ons and other non?scholarship players were included in the picture day process.

  “It got to be a problem, because these kids would act like they were walking on just to be in the photo and then quit the team before practice began,” said former OU sports information director Mike Treps. “All they were interested in was showing their buddies they played football for OU, and they’d have the photo as proof. ”

  Not that OU was lax about letting just anyone sign up to play football, but it had to start doing more in-depth background checks on potential walk-ons.

  Rolling Over

  Barry Switzer’s staff was forever making recruiting trips deep into Texas, searching for the Billy Simses and Brian Bosworths of the world. A frequent stop was Houston, where OU booster Sam Mason would fly the staff to various destinations in his private jet.

  On one occasion, Switzer, Jerry Pettibone, Gene Hochevar and Wendell Mosely were flying with Mason, who was a pilot, when they decided to have a little fun with Mosely. Switzer went into the cockpit and asked Mason to do a rollover maneuver to see how Mosely would react.

  Back in the cabin, Mosely and his fellow assistants were sipping cocktails and smoking cigars, discussing the flight home. Mosely had just taken a big puff off his cigar when the plane made a big roll to the right.

  “Wendell swallowed that smoke, completely turned white and about bit the end of his cigar off,” recalled Hochevar, laughing as he relived the moment.

  About 30 minutes later, Mason pulled the cockpit curtain back and informed the staff that a thunderstorm was on the horizon and the plane would have to jockey around it.

  “Sam tells us if we go around the storm we might be cutting it a little close on fuel, but he’s not too worried about it. He said he could put us down in Dallas and refuel, but it would make us late getting back to Norman,” explained Hochevar.

  About then, Mosely
perked up in his seat, noticed no one else was going to debate the options and said: “Put this son of a bitch down. The only time you’ve got too much gas is when you’re on fire.”

  Of course, Switzer and company, having put Mason up to the joke, were rolling in the aisles by the time Mosely had finished expressing his concerns.

  Keeping it Snappy

  When a series of mysterious ailments sidelined quarterback Dean Blevins in the early part of the 1976 season, coach Barry Switzer turned to sophomore signal caller Thomas Lott. With just two days of preparation, Lott found himself under the microscope as the Sooners traveled to Dallas for their annual showdown with Texas.

  Keeping things as simple as possible until Lott fully learned the offense, the Sooners used the word “hut” for their snap signal. And most of the time, it was simply on one “hut.”

  “As we did that, the defensive teams we were playing began to adjust to it,” explained former offensive lineman Mike Vaughn. “Trying to get an advantage, a lot of the linebackers on the other side were calling out signals. It was drawing us offsides quite a bit. As soon as Thomas started his cadence, you’d hear ‘hut, hut.’”

  Obviously, the Sooners were forced to vary their snap count after the penalties got out of hand.

  Sooner Magic

  Oklahoma football fans had grown accustomed to winning programs over the 25 seasons that preceded the Barry Switzer era. Other than a few lean years in the 1960s, the Sooners had racked up victories at a record pace, winning three national championships and countless conference titles along the way.

  That was Bud Wilkinson’s legacy.

  But Switzer’s teams would add a new dimension to Sooner lore, and it would be known as “Sooner Magic.”

  Switzer defined Sooner Magic as “good players making big plays in critical situations.” His OU teams made a habit out of producing clutch performances and sensational comebacks.

  The term “Sooner Magic” actually originated from the OU- Nebraska series and the fact that the Sooners routinely found ways to frustrate their rivals from the north, usually with some kind of late-game heroics.

  “You just knew their fans were sitting in the stands saying, ‘Oh no, they’re doing it to us again,”’ said Switzer, who owned a 12-5 record against Nebraska.

  Good Company

  It’s very rare that three players from the same university are selected in the first round of the National Football League’s annual draft. But that was the case on April 8, 1976, when Lee Roy Selmon, Joe Washington and Billy Brooks were the first, fourth and 11th overall picks by Tampa Bay, San Diego and Cincinnati, respectively.

  Selmon, a two-time consensus All-America defensive end, was the first Sooner since Heisman Trophy winner Billy Vessels to be selected as the overall number-one pick.

  Centers Stick Together

  President Gerald Ford helped get the annual Red River Rivalry under way in 1976, participating as the guest of honor in the pregame coin toss. Afterward, he joined some fellow dignitaries in the Cotton Bowl stands and watched as 16 th-ranked Texas, on the strength of two Russell Erxleben field goals, had the No. 3 Sooners on the ropes deep into the fourth quarter.

  But just when it looked like the Longhorns would pull off the upset, OU recovered a fumble that set up the game-tying scoring drive. Suddenly, the spotlight shifted to the foot of Uwe von Schamann, who missed only one point-after kick during his entire collegiate career. Unfortunately for the Sooners, von Schamann never got the chance to give OU the lead.

  “Basically, all we had to do was kick the extra point to win the game. But it didn’t happen,” said von Schamann.

  Center Kevin Craig’s snap was high and hard, and holder Bud Hebert could not handle it. Hebert tracked down the loose ball and tried to pass into the end zone, but it fell incomplete, leaving the two rivals deadlocked at 6-6.

  Craig had been a team manager until Barry Switzer noticed him zipping some deep snaps one day before practice. The following week, Switzer installed Craig as his new special teams center.

  A few days after the game, Craig received a personal letter from President Ford containing words of encouragement, including the closing line, “Centers have to stick together.” Ford had played center for Michigan’s undefeated national football championship teams in 1932-33.

  Climb Aboard

  Before the University of Nebraska made serious weight training a routine part of college football programs, most Big Eight schools like Oklahoma featured very substandard equipment in that area. Even into the mid-1970s the Sooners were lagging behind in the strength conditioning department.

  Underneath Memorial Stadium, in an old 30x30 storage room, is where the Sooners worked on their lifting. There were two large universal machines located there, only one of which was maintained in working order at all times, and two sets of free weights.

  “The Selmon brothers would come in there and do reps with all of the weight on every part of the machine,” said All-America receiver Tinker Owens. “There wasn’t enough weight for those guys.”

  Lee Roy Selmon improvised when working on strengthening his lower extremities. One day, Selmon had maxed out the leg-lift portion of the machine, so he had OU kicker Tony DiRienzo sit on the bar to provide even more resistance.

  It’s a little-known fact that DiRienzo played such a major role in Selmons success.

  The Minister of Offense

  There was nothing flashy about Steve Davis. He wasn’t particularly fast and didn’t have a great arm. The Sallisaw, Oklahoma, product looked more like, well, a choirboy than a college quarterback.

  Fact was, Davis was a Baptist minister who was as quiet-natured and unassuming off the field as he was ferocious and unflappable as a player.

  So what made Davis so good?

  “He could move the football team, bottom line,” said OU coach Barry Switzer. “Steve wasn’t the best athlete, but he turned to gold when he hit that field. He was smart, confident and he didn’t make mistakes. That’s the definition of a good quarterback.”

  Little did anyone know, when Davis earned the starting job in 1973, that he would lead the Sooners to a pair of national titles and an overall record of 32-1-1.

  No Room in the Backfield

  When George Cumby arrived in Norman prior to the 1975 season, he had high hopes of becoming part of the next generation of great running backs at Oklahoma. A native of Moore Station City, Texas, he was six feet, 200 pounds, with a sprinter’s speed.

  Unfortunately for Cumby, his timing, in terms of breaking into the OU backfield, was less than perfect. Fellow freshman Kenny King and several veterans were the front-runners for the starting job, and it became apparent that Cumby, despite all of his physical assets, was destined for the bench.

  To make matters worse, Cumby broke his collarbone early in his freshman season and then broke it again the following spring.

  “It was a situation where George was stuck behind a couple of guys who were better than he was as a fullback. Plus, he got hurt and that put him behind,” said OU coach Barry Switzer. “But he was such a good athlete, we figured we could find a place for him on the field, even if it meant moving him to defense.”

  Switzer asked Cumby to try defense for a couple of weeks, and he eventually made the move to linebacker in the spring of 1976.

  “Initially, I didn’t want to move. I told him I felt I was a running back and that’s where I wanted to play,” said Cumby. “But he told me to think about it, and I decided to give it try.”

  Oh, what a try. Cumby, under the tutelage of assistant coach Warren Harper, made the transition look easy. And when Daryl Hunt injured his knee, he suddenly was at the top of the depth chart.

  “I never looked back. I really just wanted to play, and moving to linebacker gave me that chance,” added Cumby. “I think it worked out pretty well.”

  A rare combination of speed and strength, Cumby was Big Eight Defensive Newcomer of the Year as a sophomore, and he twice earned the conference’s t
op defensive player award during his career. By the time he left for the NFL after the ’79 season, Cumby was a two-time All-American and fourth on OU’s career tackles list with 405.

  No Bowl Game, No Problem

  After the NCAA slapped sanctions on Oklahoma for transcript violations during Chuck Fairbanks’ final season as head coach and six All-Big Eight players departed, it was widely believed that the Sooners were in for hard times while they waded through three seasons of probation.

  But Barry Switzer believed differently. After taking over for Fairbanks prior to the 1973 season, the 35-year-old skipper was confident in his program’s talent and resolve.

  “I knew we weren’t going to roll over and play dead just because someone said so,” recalled Switzer, whose ’73 squad finished 10-0-1, its only blemish a 7-7 tie against No. 1 Southern Cal.

  The following season, Switzer’s Sooners forged a perfect 110regular-season record and then sat back and watched how the bowl games unfolded.

  College football writer Hershel Nissenson publicly stated that the Associated Press was not a “policing agency” and therefore it would not punish college football teams by excluding them from its weekly polls. The Sooners had been in the top 10 all season and when the final AP poll was released after the 1974 bowl season, Oklahoma was voted No. 1, despite being on NCAA probation.

  Block That Kick!

  Any person who claimed to be an Oklahoma football fan in 1977 will always remember what he or she was doing on September 24 of that year. More specifically where they were at the moment that Uwe von Schamann kicked a game-winning 41-yard field goal to beat fourth-ranked Ohio State, 29-28.

  It was the equivalent of the 1971 “Game of the Century” between OU and Nebraska, only this time the Sooners had plenty to celebrate as the final gun sounded.

  OU built a 20-0 lead that day, but injuries to quarterback Thomas Lott and running back Billy Sims helped alter the two teams’ fortunes, at least for a while. Woody Hayes’ Buckeyes stormed back, scoring 28 unanswered points, and it looked as if the third-ranked Sooners would leave Columbus disappointed.

  But “Sooner Magic” was lurking in the shadows.