Okies have led the Sooners
Our chart in the Sunday paper on the hometowns of the starters from each OU football national championship team was interesting. It’s amazing how many Oklahomans have contributed to the Sooners’ greatest teams.
For instance, the 1975 team had 13 Oklahoman starters, including eight on offense. The entire offensive line was from Oklahoma — Okmulgee’s Karl Baldischwiler, Seminole’s Chez Evans, Southeast’s Dennis Buchanan, Muskogee’s Terry Webb and Ada’s Mike Vaughan.
Ten years later, OU still was bagging championships with a huge Oklahoman contingent. The 1985 team started four Okies on the offensive line — Seminole’s Eric Pope, Norman’s Travis Simpson, Jenks’ Anthony Phillips and Moore’s Greg Johnson. The lone non-Oklahoman was from just across the line, Mark Hutson of Fort Smith, Ark.
Even the 2000 team was majority-Okie. Twelve Oklahomans started on the 2000 team, and again, 80 percent of the O-line was from in-state: Moore’s Frank Romero, Mustang’s Bubba Burcham, Wagoner’s Scott Kempenich and Tahlequah’s Mike Skinner. The lone non-Okie was Howard Duncan of Kansas City, Kan.
That’s what makes the 2008 team rare. The Sooners won’t start an Okie on the offensive line.
Our man Jake Trotter wrote how that three of OU’s four Heisman Trophy winners were from in-state. Taking the award theme even further, it’s apparent that OU gets the majority of its trench stars from Oklahoma.
Fourteen Sooners have won the major awards from history that deal with linemen or linebackers (Outland, Lombardi, Butkus, UPI Lineman of the Year). Eight of those are from Oklahoma: Eufaula’s Lee Roy Selmon, Tulsa East Central’s Tony Casillas, Tulsa Washington’s Granville Liggins, Lawton MacArthur’s Jammal Brown, Muskogee’s Max Boydston and Kurt Burris, Fort Gibson’s Teddy Lehman and Jenks’ Rocky Calmus. The others are all Texans: J.D. Roberts (Dallas), Jim Weatherall (White Deer), Greg Roberts (Nacogdoches), Brian Bosworth (Irving), Tommie Harris (Killeen) and Bob Harrison (Stamford).
When it comes to ballhandlers, OU often looks to Texas. But in the trenches, most Sooner greats have been home grown.
Jarboe: A clash of cultures
One of the lessons of the Josh Jarboe case is the culture clash that occurs in big-time college sports.
Those who say that Jarboe’s obscenity-laced rap about guns and shooting people is just a normal part of the culture from which he comes? That aren’t necessarily wrong. I’m sure that’s right, that Jarboe didn’t spend a lot of time thinking up the lyrics or that they’re a sign of future behavior.
The rap was more ignorant than stupid. Jarboe didn’t know any better. Didn’t know how the video would play in his new world of Oklahoma and his new world of a college campus.
For all I know, you could say the same thing about the gun conviction. Maybe taking a gun onto his high school campus was more ignorant than anything. But that’s no excuse.
Guns on school grounds are a serious issue in America. There should be no debate about that. If Jarboe doesn’t realize that — if his home training failed so miserably that he missed out on that most basic of values — then he was a bad gamble for Bob Stoops from the start.
And the irresponsibility of Jarboe’s video shows that he probably doesn’t realize the gravity of his original crime.
Jarboe is the poster child for this issue in Oklahoma, but it’s not an issue that goes back to Georgia with Jarboe. Assimilation is important to society in all facets, people of different backgrounds learning to live and work together, and big-time college sports, where hundreds of Josh Jarboes each year enter the ivory-tower world, are one of the prime laboratories.
Getting to know Jay Norvell
The Bob Stoops golf tournament was Thursday, with the OU football staff and support personnel playing a scramble with boosters and media. That always prompts several questions from different precincts.
One, why is Stoops and staff playing golf with the media? Two, why is the media playing golf with Stoops? An newsroom editor once asked, do our city-hall reporters play golf with the mayor.
Well, to answer the last question, I assume not, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea. The golf tournament is a kickoff to the preseason; a chance to chat and develop a relationship without the pressures of specific questions or practice time restraints or deadlines or any number of issues that affect both parties once the pads have been pulled out.
And here’s the best thing about the golf tournament. If you get to play with a coach you don’t really know, after 18 holes in the suffocating sun, you know them afterwards. Which is why Thursday was great. I got to play with Jay Norvell.
OU’s new receivers coach — who actually spent three weeks on Stoops’ staff in 2001 before taking an NFL job with the Raiders — rode with me in the cart, and I got to know much more about Norvell, an old Iowa teammate of Stoops’.
You can read stuff in the media guide, but it’s not the same as driving around Jimmie Austin Golf Club, looking for lost balls and a little shade. A new things I learned about Norvell:
1. He’s a big baseball fan. Grew up in Wisconsin and loves the special sauce on the brats at Brewer games, be it old County Stadium or new Miller Park. 2. Norvell’s dad played at Wisconsin, and Norvell later coached at Wisconsin, but in between he jumped down to play at Iowa for Hayden Fry. 3. One reason Norvell left OU after three weeks in 2001 was Norvell needed only one more season to be fully vested in the NFL pension plan. Norvell said Stoops was very understanding. 4. Norvell, who came from Bill Callahan’s Nebraska staff, was on the Wisconsin staff with Callahan and speaks highly of the beleaguered Husker coach.
We talked about a ton of other things, but that’s a sampling. The Stoops Tournament is bad golf. Golf-wise, it’s good for nothing but a sunburn and missed shots. But relationship-wise, it’s one of the best things going.
I didn’t play in the Mike Gundy Tournament this year; it teed off at 9 a.m. last Thursday, and that’s the morning I got back from Kansas City at 3:15 a.m., and I knew I’d be having the late night, so I didn’t sign up. But it was my loss. In years past, I’ve gotten to know OSU coaches like Doug Mallory and Joe DeForest, and I’ll definitely try to play next year.
