Wanting your children to grow up to be … Sooners

Sporting News, The, August 19, 1996 by Stan Dorsey

JOHN BLAKE, only 35, takes an I'm-one-of-the-guys approach to rebuilding the pride and the power of Oklahoma football

To look at new Oklahoma coach John Blake now, you could easily mistake him for a player. His broad shoulders and athletic stride mimic the swagger and confidence so often displayed by young college athletes basking in their physical and egotistical primes.

But only a year ago, the picture was not so pretty. Rather than lean muscle mass and subtle ripples, Blake's physique had rounded out to a robust 340 pounds. Perhaps he felt right at home among the massive bodies he was tending to as defensive line coach for the Dallas Cowboys, but when Blake showed up to interview for the top job at OU in 1995, his weight and sloppy appearance may have cost him the position that went to Howard Schnellenberger.

So Blake buckled down, and over a fourmonth period lost 126 pounds. It was an impressive whipping into shape of something that was getting a bit out of hand.

The situation at OU, however, has been way out of hand for quite some time, and it will take all the whipping, stripping, molding and scolding Blake can muster to resurrect a Sooners program that has all but vanished from the elite of the college football landscape, where it reigned supreme for so long.

Consider:

* Over nearly the last half-century, dating to 1950, the Sooners have won six national championships, more than anybody else.

* OU holds the NCAA record for consecutive victories with 47, a mark set from 1953 to 1957.

* The Sooners have had 50 consensus All-Americans since 1950, the most of any school.

* Going back 100 years, Oklahoma has had only nine losing seasons.

Indeed, being good--make that terrific, wonderful, incredible, stunning--is the Sooners' past. But being horrendous--at least by OU's own ethereal standards--is the Sooners' present.

It's indisputable: Oklahoma has suffered a pratfall of unspeakable scope and unfathomable dimension. The school that once won 12 consecutive conference championships under Bud Wilkinson and 12 more titles under Barry Switzer hasn't won one since 1987; the school with all those national titles hasn't won one since 1985. Over the past two seasons, the Sooners are 11-11-1. The last time this program lost 11 games over two years was 1965-66, when it was 9-11.

There was a feeling "that we were bulletproof," says Donnie Duncan, the athletic director for almost 10 years until his resignation last spring to become director of operations for the new Big 12 Conference. "Then, when things started happening, we considered it just a bump in the road." Turns out, of course, that the Sooners' big shots were twice wrong. The bullets, in fact, went directly to the heart of Sooners football and that bump in the road jarred everything loose.

Everything.

This explains why the Sooners this fall are on their third head coach in three seasons, when they employed the same number of men to lead them to a 244-64-7 record from 1967 to '93. It all comprises a rather dubious welcome mat for Blake, especially when you consider his thin resume: age 35, never before a head coach, never before a defensive or offensive coordinator. His three-season stint as defensive line coach with the Cowboys is really the only eye-catching stop in his coaching career. At least Blake's predecessors, the flamboyant Schnellenberger and the colorless Gary Gibbs, brought some solid credentials to the table.

Then again, if high qualifications are any barometer of future success, it makes all the sense in the world that Oklahoma decided on Blake. Gibbs (44-23-2 in six years, light-years from being good enough by OU standards) and Schnellenberger (who lasted one tumultuous campaign) did nothing to distinguish themselves during their tenures and, if anything, only further pricked the festering wound that OU football has become.

With Blake, OU is taking a new, albeit risky, approach that some say is the last resort for a program that, considering its storied past, has bottomed out.

"I know for a fact that the situation (at Oklahoma) is at a low," says Blake, a nose tackle for the Sooners from 1979 to '82. "But I didn't realize how bad it was until I got here. We can't go down any further at OU."

But how did the Sooners get in this position where a guy with Blake's lightweight resume would even be considered, much less hired, in the first place?

In 1987, Switzer led the Sooners to the Big Eight championship as the NCAA was snooping around. In '88, OU was convicted by the NCAA and put on three years' probation--including a two-year ban on TV and bowl appearances--and, for two years, was allowed to give only 18 scholarships instead of 25. Among the violations: One recruit was offered a $1,000 inducement to become a Sooner.

In 1989, Switzer resigned. One of OU's biggest all-time stars, 1969 Heisman Trophy winner Steve Owens, says, "The program went into shock."

In truth, for all his extraordinary achievements in his 16 years as coach, Switzer made things only worse for Oklahoma when he resigned with a third-person blast: "Barry Switzer is totally disgusted working within a set of rigid rules that does not recognize the financial needs of many of our young athletes. I am not making excuses, but simply giving an explanation when I say it was difficult to turn my back on these young men when they needed help." The thrust of Switzer's statement was that he was above the rules and knew better than the rules. Such an admission also gave strong evidence to the widespread belief that under Switzer, OU had become an outlaw program--witness Charles Thompson's drug involvement, Brian Bosworth's accusations of steroid use and rule-breaking, guns going off, athletic-dorm rapes and more. Alas, Switzer's parting shot was the last time arrogance has erupted in Norman, given the subsequent performance of coaches and players.