Two schools, one former coach - major problems

Sporting News, The, July 1, 1996 by Ivan Maisel

He may be gone, but the legacy of Howard Schnellenberger continues to hover over Louisville and Oklahoma like the aroma of stale pipe tobacco. At the former institution, Schnellenberger's policies have left the Cardinals' membership in Conference USA hanging by the thread of an injunction.

Meanwhile, The New York Times published a riveting piece that exposed the rumors and innuendo used by Oklahoma to construct a reason to dump Schnellenberger last December after one 5-5-1 season.

It's hard to imagine the gruff Schnellenberger's as a sympathetic figure. No one could have done more to bluster Louisville into the top echelon of football schools. But for all his effort before his 1994 departure, the school hasn't made it yet.

That became evident in 1993, when the Cardinals began the season 7-1 and found none of the major bowls interested. The next year, Louisville agreed to join Conference USA as long as any of the six football schools had veto power over expansion in that sport.

Simple enough. Six teams meant Louisville could play five conference games and have six slots to play the national schedule that Schnellenberger wanted that policy has run smack into the desire of the other schools for Conference USA to grow.

As we have discussed here, the league met earlier this month to vote on extending invitations to Army and East Carolina. Louisville vetoed both invitations. And the other five schools decided they wanted no more of Louisville's pretension. They voted to expel Louisville from C-USA Louisville filed for and received a temporary injunction against the league.

"The decision whether to expand in football is only the most recent instance in which Louisville has taken a position diametrically opposed to the desires of all the remaining conference members," a news release from the C-USA office said after the injunction.

"A lot of presidents are frustrated with Louisville's stance," associate commissioner Brian Teter says.

Take, for instance, the Rev. Albert J. Diulio, the president of Marquette University, a C-USA school that doesn't play football. He told the Louisville Courier-Journal, "Everything with Louisville is to do it our way' or we can't get it done."

Louisville president John Shumaker told the paper that his school wants to be a team player." Louisville will either play nice with the other children or play by itself, the very fate that Army and East Carolina are looking to escape. The league scheduled a meeting for Friday.

In the meantime, Army and East Carolina wait. Army coach Bob Sutton laughs. "We're causing a mess before we even get started," he says.

As for Oklahoma, legendary college football writer John Underwood, the man who ghosted Paul "Bear" Bryan's autobiography, wrote in the Times about how the university used rumors of drinking by Schnellenberger and shoplifting by his wife Beverlee (and overlooked refutations of same) in a naked campaign to run him off.

The story reminded one and all that no school has embraced the belief that winning is worth any cost more so than has Oklahoma. That's no compliment. It makes you proud that the Sooners are going on their ninth season without a conference championship, their longest such drought since the Dust Bowl.

Extra points

The same Florida businessman implicated in the NCAA's investigation of Michigan State football has been named in the NCAA's investigation of Georgia. Just so you get it straight, the man never has been to the Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God in Lakeland, Fla. That's the school that handed out junior-college credits as if they were Happy Meal toys 'For 39 cents, Super Size to a diploma!"). ... A former Texas Tech defensive lineman, Stephen Gaines, told the Housto;, Chronicle last week that an assistant coach and a tutor gave him the final-exam answers for a correspondence course. ... Cincinnati went 6-5 last season, yet Rick Minter will have six new assistants as he begins his second season. The most intriguing: defensive coordinator Rex Ryan, son of Buddy.