Tales from the Oklahoma Sooner Sideline

by Barry Switzer

  The Will To Succeed

  There are plenty of players taken in the National Football League draft every April who never see one snap in an regular-season game, at least not as a player. Only an elite few have what it takes both mentally and physically to survive training camp and the preseason to make an NFL roster.

  C.J. Ah You was an All-Big 12 defensive end selection as an OU senior in 2006, but his chances of making the Buffalo Bills’ roster as a seventh-round draft pick were slim at best. And when Ah You showed up to training camp in 2007 a bit underweight, he never managed to get his foot in the door.

  “Honestly, the transition from college to the NFL was really tough for me,” said Ah You. “It was all just a little overwhelming at the time so I wasn’t surprised when they let me go.”

  As the final days of camp melted away that hot summer, the Bills released Ah You, making him a free agent eligible to sign with another team. A tryout in Atlanta yielded no results and another in Oakland brought only frustration. It looked as if the Raiders would sign him, but the team opted not to due to some confusion concerning his medical history.

  “All of that was a reality check. I was looking for a job and I had a daughter on the way, so I had to make some tough decisions,” said Ah You.

  The first decision he made was to return to Norman and get a job at Sooner Legends Inns & Suites, doing whatever he could to help the Kennon family business. Ah You continued to work out at OU, building his strength and keeping himself in playing shape.

  “I knew I still wanted to play. I wanted to give it another shot,” said Ah You, who was on the verge of signing with the Phoenix Wildcats of the Arena League when his agent called with some interesting news.

  The St. Louis Rams were looking for a practice squad defensive end, and Ah You was high on their list. After a workout and some paperwork, the Utah native inked a deal with the Rams nine games into the 2007 season.

  Ah You spent the rest of that season and all of 2008 on the practice squad, working hard, learning the system, and figuring out what it takes to make it at the professional level.

  “It was a great experience for me being on the practice squad because it allowed me to develop more and more, especially going up against first-team players like I did,” he said.

  By 2009, Ah You had earned a spot on the active roster, and he didn’t look back. The following season, he played in all 16 games and had four quarterback sacks.

  “It’s been great just getting the chance to play at this level,” added Ah You. “I’m having a lot of fun, and I’m very proud to represent my family and my school on game days.”

  The Worst Call Ever?

  Oklahoma fans had barely recovered from the controversial loss suffered at the hands of Texas Tech in Lubbock a season earlier when the debacle in Eugene, Oregon, unfolded on September 16, 2006. It is a day and a game that will live on in infamy where the Sooners are concerned.

  The mere mention of the so-called “loss” is liable to incense even the most casual of OU followers.

  Here’s how it went down…

  Adrian Peterson and Oklahoma had gone into Autzen Stadium and silenced the normally rowdy crowd of Oregon faithful, forging a 33-20 advantage with less than four minutes remaining. But the Ducks scored two touchdowns in the final moments to steal a 34-33 victory.

  It was the way things unfolded in the closing 1:12 that will forever make this a hard-to-swallow outcome, as the Ducks were basically handed a chance at victory, first by the on-field officiating crew and then by the replay official.

  With the Sooners still on top 33-27, the Ducks attempted an on-side kick that appeared to be touched by an Oregon player prior to the ball traveling the required 10 yards. Never mind the fact that OU’s Allen Patrick recovered the ball, which should have all but ended the game at that moment.

  But the officials mysteriously—without ever seeing an Oregon player with the ball—awarded possession to the Ducks. Then, when the play was reviewed to see if the Oregon player prematurely touched the ball, the replay official maintained that he had not, despite video evidence to the contrary.

  Oregon then took the ball down the field and scored the go-ahead touchdown with 46 seconds left, leaving OU coaches, players, and fans stunned and angry.

  “Frustrating, maddening—whatever you want to call it,” said OU coach Bob Stoops when asked about the bizarre ending.

  The controversial outcome made national headlines for a week, with most pundits questioning how the on-side kick ever made it to replay to begin with. Despite the outcry well beyond Sooner Nation, the result stood and OU was left to ponder what should have been.

  The Next Voice

  Sports heroes have always been vogue, especially where impressionable young fans are concerned. Toby Rowland grew up in the middle of football country divided into two sections—Sooner Nation and Cowboy Country.

  Rowland hailed from Mustang, Oklahoma, which was only a few miles up the road from Norman. It only made sense that he was passionate about the Sooners from an early age.

  But there is a twist to the story, and it led him on an amazing path that came to fruition in 2011.

  The twist? Well, Rowland had his share of sports heroes and role models as a kid, but it was always his dream to call the action on the radio rather than actually be in the action. Even though he eventually went on to play college basketball at Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Oklahoma, his heart was on the other side of the microphone.

  “Being a Sooner was always in my blood. But as a kid, I didn’t want to be Wayman (Tisdale) or any of OU’s great football players—I wanted to be the guy calling those games on the radio,” said Rowland.

  Following his dream, Rowland took a job in the broadcast industry and worked 12 years as a sportscaster for KWTV News 9 in Oklahoma City. During that time, he also had a regular radio gig at KREF Sports Talk in Norman and did radio play-by-play for various sports events at his college alma mater.

  When longtime OU football and basketball play-by-play announcer Bob Barry Sr. announced that he would be retiring at the end of the 2010-11 school year, there was plenty of speculation about who would replace the legend.

  In the end, OU officials believed in Rowland enough to make him the next voice of the Sooners, a job he took over at the start of the 2011 football season.

  “It still hasn’t set in and probably won’t for a while,” said the 37-year-old Rowland. “This has always been the No. 1 dream job for me. It’s the pinnacle, and that’s how I’m going to treat it. To say I’m honored and humbled is an understatement.”

  A Parting of Ways

  Unfortunately, in the world of collegiate athletics, it’s not all fun and Saturday game days. The big money Division-I football attracts year-round makes it one of the most profitable businesses in the country. With that success comes tons of pressure and all sorts of temptation, which both coaches and players have succumbed to over the years.

  Going into the 2006 season, Oklahoma was picked as the Big 12 favorite and a legitimate contender for the national title. Rhett Bomar was one of the main reasons the Sooners were so highly regarded.

  A season earlier, Bomar established a then-OU freshman record by throwing for 2,018 yards. The dual-threat quarterback was supposed to team with Fleisman Trophy candidate Adrian Peterson to provide the Sooners with a major 1-2 punch on offense in ’06.

  Just days before the start of fall practice, Bomar was dismissed from the squad by coach Bob Stoops after it was revealed that the sophomore QB had received pay for a part-time job in excess of the time he actually worked. That is an NCAA violation, and OU’s actions were swift and severe in dealing with the situation.

  The news came as a complete shock to the Sooner Nation, but Stoops stood by his decision, fully aware that the NCAA would also be doing its own investigation into the matter.

  “Our team and university actions are necessary because of the intentional participation and knowledge of the student-athletes in these v
iolations,” said Stoops at the time. “I firmly believe that our program is stronger than any individual player and that a championship program cannot compromise its values.”

  Besides Bomar, offensive guard J.D. Quinn was also dismissed for receiving similar “excessive payments” at a local car dealership.

  Senior Paul Thompson took over at quarterback that fall and helped lead the Sooners to an 11-3 overall record and the team’s fourth Big 12 title in seven seasons.

  All Day Long, and Then Some

  At the Division-I level, it isn’t very often that a highly touted recruit immediately lives up to all of the hype surrounding his arrival and the glaring spotlight that goes with it. Adrian Peterson was no doubt the exception to that rule when he landed on Oklahoma’s campus and didn’t stop running until he was deep into the school’s record books.

  In fact, Peterson was so good so early and so often that he came within an eyelash of becoming the first freshman to ever win the Heisman Trophy in 2004, finishing as the runner-up to USC quarterback Matt Leinart. That season, he ran for 1,925 yards on 339 carries and earned first-team All-America honors.

  The superlatives ran deep from just about every direction, including from his head coach.

  “He’s big, he’s strong, he’s fast, he’s got great vision—he’s got everything you look for,” said Bob Stoops at the time. “He’s got a great attitude about work and doing things the right way.”

  The right way could be traced to Peterson’s tireless work ethic, which was considered second to none on the team. So diligent was Peterson in how he prepared himself for action that he earned the nickname “All Day.”

  And he lived up to that moniker every single day.

  Although slowed by a handful of injuries over the course of his three seasons with the Sooners, Peterson rushed for 4,045 yards, finishing only 73 yards shy of OU’s all-time ground gainer Billy Sims.

  The Dusty Road Back

  Barely two games into his senior season—a season that was supposed to be his finest hour—Dusty Dvoracek found himself skidding out of control, his college football career apparently over and his life in turmoil. Unfortunately, he needed to look no farther than his own personal decision-making to find the root of the problem.

  “I never really thought about the consequences of what drinking was doing to me or about getting into trouble,” said Dvoracek in 2005. “I quickly found out that’s not the way the world works. The bottom line was, I was an immature kid who needed his eyes opened to become a man.”

  Days after an off-the-field, alcohol-induced fight landed one of his good friends in the hospital, Dvoracek was dismissed from the OU squad by coach Bob Stoops. It was all the 6-foot-3, 298-pound defensive tackle could do to breathe, but he vowed to clean up his act and hopefully return to football one day.

  Up to that point, Dvoracek had played in the shadow of OU teammate Tommie Harris, although most experts agreed that his play was as good as, if not better than, Harris’ at times. When Harris departed for the NFL, Dvoracek was supposed to step into the spotlight and shine.

  But instead of making positive headlines for his play on the field, he made the news for his struggles with alcohol.

  “Everyone makes mistakes. It’s what you do with those mistakes, how you turn them around that matters. You can either fall and lay on the ground or you can get back up and stare it right in the face and overcome it,” said Dvoracek, a two-time member of the Big 12 All-Academic team. “I’ve faced it. That will be good for a lot of people to hear.”

  All a man has, after all, is his reputation.

  “The biggest thing for me is that I want to leave a legacy at Oklahoma so that when I come back 10 or 15 years from now, I can hold my head up high and look at the teams I was on and feel like I was a positive part of that.?

  A year after being dismissed from the team, Dvoracek rejoined the program. He had completed a six-week rehab program and worked long and hard to regain the confidence of Stoops and his peers.

  In his fifth season of eligibility, Dvoracek led all interior linemen in the nation with 17 tackles for loss. He also earned All-Big 12 honors for the second time while helping lead a young OU team to a win in the Pacific Holiday Bowl.

  Unmatched Mentor

  A quick glance at Bob Stoops’ first 12 seasons as head coach at Oklahoma is quite revealing. No other coach or program won more games during that span, making his .806 career winning percentage tops among all active coaches.

  That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

  Stoops’ overall accomplishments at OU are no doubt impressive, and his teams have been in record-breaking mode basically since the day he took over in 1999. Besides averaging 10.8 wins per season during that span, the Sooners made 12 straight bowl appearances, including eight of the BCS variety and four national title game visits.

  While history tends to offer up a rather brash measuring stick at OU, Stoops has more than lived up to sometimes unreasonable expectations—not only reaching 100 victories faster than any head coach in college football history but doing so against a schedule loaded with quality opponents season after season. In fact, Stoops’ teams went 41-16 against opposing teams ranked in the AP Top 25 during his first 12 seasons at the helm.

  “Bob Stoops is the kind of coach every program in the country wants leading it,” said ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit. “He obviously knows the game and knows how to relate to today’s players, and he’s got a coaching pedigree that gives him an edge.”