OU football: Don’t throw stones at Alabama
It’s become fashionable in recent weeks to bash Alabama coach Nick Saban for skirting recruiting rules. Showing up at Heritage Hall and accidentally bumping into Barry Sanders Jr. Finding himself on the Bama basketball video board, with Sanders sitting next to him, which incited the Crimson Tide crowd to chant Sanders’ name.
Both apparent secondary NCAA violations and both an example of Saban’s tendency to play loose with rules not deemed major.
But Oklahoma fans can’t go around ripping Saban with a clear conscience. The secondary violations reported this week by OU are worse.
University of Oklahoma Sooner (OU) college football head coach Bob Stoops talks about his recruiting class at the Lloyd Noble Center on Wednesday, February 2, 2011, in Norman, Okla. Photo by Steve Sisney, The Oklahoman
OU reported that some players worked out longer than the maximum eight hours permitted in the offseason, and that four coaches questioned players about their lack of participation in voluntary workouts.
This goes to the heart of a very important subject: the pressure applied to players for offseason and voluntary workouts.
I chatted with Cory Brandon out in Phoenix during the Fiesta Bowl week. He’s the OU offensive lineman who started much of 2009, then barely played in 2010. Went into the 2010 season not even listed on the two-deep roster.
It’s obvious what happened. Brandon’s participation in voluntary workouts was not exemplary, and he paid the price. Brandon maintained his poise in telling the story, saying he missed a week of summer workouts because of his grandmother’s funeral.
“Whatever their reason is, I’m sure it’s pretty good,” Brandon told me. “I respect their decision. Maybe it’s just that they think I didn’t work hard or wasn’t committed to the team … I told everybody I wasn’t going to be there. They felt I wasn’t committed.”
Bob Stoops said “I don’t know anything about that,” and while he declined to discuss why Brandon went from Outland Trophy watch list in June to third-team in August, Stoops did address why any particular player doesn’t play.
“Guys play by earning time on the field, how they perform on the field,” Stoops said. “There isn’t any one specific reason why.”
But this is a wink-wink deal. One of college football’s dirty little secrets. Players are expected to totally dedicate themselves in the offseason, when eight hours a week of supervised workouts are permitted, and in the summer, when no coaches are allowed and everything is supposed to be totally voluntary.
There’s nothing voluntary about it. If you want to play football, you be there. That comes across clearly in the violations reported by OU. Four coaches — Jay Norvell, James Patton, Willie Martinez and Jackie Shipp — were cited, either by discussing with players who was in attendance or receiving reports from strength coaches.
This is a difficult culture to change. The summer workouts basically turn football into a year-round commitment. Banning strength coaches like Jerry Schmidt from the process might help, but coaches would then likely be asking players to report on each other.
What’s most interesting in this case is that a player refused to sign a weekly practice log and provided an OU compliance officer with a recording of Martinez asking why he had missed a voluntary workout. I don’t know who the player was, but a good place to start would be check the depth chart and see who fell.
I think it’s a little encouraging that a Sooner stood up to the demands, even if in a small way. We saw the same thing at Michigan a couple of years ago with Rich Rodriguez, when some Wolverines revolted against practice weeks that went past the allotted 20 hours.
Coaches are getting paid more and more, and we’re asking more and more out of players. That strikes me as odd. Coaches’ jobs haven’t changed appreciably. High pressure, long hours during some parts of the year, short hours during other parts of the year.
But players’ lives have changed dramatically from 30-40 years ago. The time demands, much greater. The physical demands, much greater. Their compensation, the same. A scholarship.
This is not a call for paying players. This is a call for coaches to back off the summer demands on football players. And a call for the NCAA to figure out how to return the voluntary portion of workouts back to voluntary.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
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Comments
Did they sign up to play football for OU or basket weaving? If it was football then I would think that the so called voluntary workouts would be essential to a player growth as an athlete. That is not to say that Stoops and his staff are not wrong in the way they are managing the voluntary aspect of it, because they are wrong. Grandma’s funeral is a lot more important than a week of summer workouts. At the same time, these players have a responsibility to pay the university back for that scholarship and if they take a week off to go to the lake then maybe they are not committed.
If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying. It seems the NCAA has set up its long list of “secondary violations” to take care of a lot of the gray areas.
I dont normally comment on Barry’s blog posts but after reading this one I just can’t help myself. I’m guessing Barry never played sports in school or if he did he probably wasn’t succesful so I’ll make the counter arguement in something I hope Barry understands, the business world. How many of us that read this paper every morning work 50,60,70 hours a week only to get paid for a 40 hour work week? We do it so that we succeed in our chosen career field. Unfortunately the demands of most jobs can’t be met in a mere 40 hours. So we put in the extra time to get the job done. Sure we’d all love to get paid for the extra hours we work. But we do it because we take pride in what we do, we want to succeed, and we hope to be rewarded down the road via promotion to bigger and better things. The same concept applies to these players and what their coaches expect of them. The coaches want these players to be winners and the coaches want to enstill in the players the extra initiative required to be winners. If they put in that extra effort, they’ll be rewarded with trophies, championships, and could ultimately be rewarded with a draft pick. These young men are going to need these lessons moving forward in their life after football. We expect these coaches to make them winners on the football field and prepare them for life after football. So as opposed to calling for the coaches to back off and the NCAA to get involved, I prefer to call for the media hacks and NCAA reps who’ve either lost touch with reality or just dont get it to remain in the background and allow these coaches to do the job we’ve hired them for.
Berry,
I know that the NCAA doesn’t want these kids to work year round but I think that it is a stupid rule that should be lifted totally. The coaches are going to work the kids out as much as possible in the off-season. It happens at a school like North Texas as well at Oklahoma and other big time programs. The NCAA has got their thumb too heavily on the players, coaches, and staff and need to lighten up. I know that there needs to be some limits but to have coaches contact limited and only work out 8 hours a week is stupid. Working out 1-3 hours per day should not be a problem and if a coach wants to be there to instill dedication, then I think that is actually a great thing, not a bad one.
Maybe Corey Brandon isn’t the best example to use to make your point. My recollection of him from 2009 was that he was more likely to be flagged for a penalty than to make a block. Did he not go from starter against BYU (with 2 consecutive false starts) to emergency sub?
He might be a better example of how the various “watch” lists for postseason honors are as big a joke (Jimmy S on the Groza list?) as recruiting news on 11th graders.
You have a valid point about the involuntary nature of the voluntary workouts and violations of tangled NCAA regulations but CB should not be your poster child.
I like Trammell but he’s completely lost his mind on this one! I’m not taking this position because he’s “coming after” my beloved Sooners but rather because as a former Div. 1 football player, I can guarentee you a couple of things. First, any pressure applied by coaches during voluntary conditioning/workout programs didn’t just start in college! Many larger high school programs keep there foot on the throats of players during the off season. Second, there is no way that a coach at Oklahoma would decide about a player or his fall lineup based soley on whether a player attends summer drills. Now, it might factor into the overall opinion of the player but not the sole factor. A player that isn’t attending voluntary drills prolly has other issues. The guy may have an attitude or maybe he’s lazy! With all that said, 90% of Coaches decisions are based on who’s got the stones on the field!!
Wait, so an average player who didn’t put in as much time and effort as the other guys lost his spot to the guys who worked harder? He was one of 10,000 guys who started as an offensive lineman at OU in 2009, how could he possibly not keep that starting position?
It seems to me that we are missing the even bigger picture here. The players are college students first and foremost. And while I am a loyal Sooner fan, I also work and teach in higher education. Perhaps, instead of pushing student-athletes to “train more”, perhaps we should ask them to study harder, take more challenging courses, and earn a viable degree too. There are trade-offs. Quality student-athletes will find ways to do both, just we all do. Having coaches break the rules at the expense of both is asking for trouble and sending the wrong message. The bottom line is that the players need some space. They also need to be responsible for their own actions too. Stop babysitting them. Emphasize education, and the rest will take care of itself. Barry is right for once. “Wink-wink” simply means that it is OK to cheat. Not the way life works!!
I guess Tram thinks you can become an elite athlete by working out a little more than 1 hour a day in the offseason. If that were true, I would be a starting safety in the NFL. I would venture a guess that EVERY player that signs with OU does so with the hopes of making it to the NFL. Can you do that by working out 1 hour a day in the offseason? I bet Shaun White works out more than an hour a day at his craft and he is a freaking snowboarder/skateboarder.
No NCAA Violations occured by Nick Saban. You are saying they are violations and the NCAA is saying they aren’t.
You should be fired as a writer because you are not posting FACTS. You are posting False accusations.
Berry is right on this one. There is a wink-wink mentality and voluntary workouts are as voluntary as paying taxes to the IRS.
If thats the stance you want to take then where’s the watchdog group looking out for the regular student who isn’t on athletic scholarship. The one who has to work 2, maybe 3 jobs to pay for their education. The student who works until 1 or 2 in the morning to pay for their education and room & board. Where’s big brother to punish their boss because they didnt give them ample time to study for that next econ exam? Or didn’t give them enough time off so that they could study harder? When will we stop pretending that being an athlete isn’t their “job.” Performing it is how they pay for their eduction much the same way we work to pay for our homes. Sadly without that athletic scholarship many of these young men and women wouldn’t have the ability to further their education beyond high school. And in order to keep that scholarship to pay for that education they must give the extra effort to maintain that scholarship. This particular NCAA rule creates a fantasy land in the student athletes mind that just isnt reality. Once their 4 or 5 years are up and they enter the “real world” there won’t be any organization maintaining their schedule and insuring that they didnt exceed their alloted work time, free time, sleep time, dinner time, etc. They’ll have to prioritize their own time and manage their own schedules. So why perpetuate the lie for 4 or 5 very impressionable years and punish the men (and women) who are trying to instill in them the kind of work ethic that will make these student athletes successful citizens in our society. I agree its the rule, but it’s certainly not a beneficial one.
The NCAA rules are there for a reason. How many of these kids from OU are going to make it in the NFL each year? Max 5 I’d say usually less.
Average NFL Career – 2 years.
You are going to COLLEGE. OU is not a cracker jack university like say Troy for instance. You go to college for LIFE. There has to be limits on what you do to athletes.
Should they work out every day, yes. Should they do it on a college schedule? NO
bama and ou have always cheated… nothing new here… they are just less flagrant than the days of the bear and the sheister switzer…no more, no less!!!
WRECK’EM TECH!!!
Okay, you people keep saying that 8 hours a week is not enough time to work out as a D1 athlete. I doubt anyone disagrees with you, including the NCAA. They only said 8 hours a week that are supervised. These athletes know how to work out and are allowed to work as hard and as long as they want to.
Berry, your bias against Stoops and the Sooners is showing again. Like to get into spats with Coach Stoops at his press conferences don’t you. Think its cute to refer to OSU as “State” don’t you? Like to write negative articles about Coach Capel don’t you? If you think you are such a good investigative reporter, then why, please, have not the tough questions been asked about what was the motive (and facts) related to the extended delay by the Payne County DA and the Stillwater PD in filing criminal charges against the Cowboy Basketball player while he played in numerous conference games. Isn’t it strange that he was allowed to play against OU on Saturday before charges were finally filed early Monday morning? Where was the paperwork on Friday? Its odd that a lot of Sooner fans are asking questions concerning the subject but total silence from the great reporters at the Oklahoman. Yep,,I am a Sooner fan through and through but I believe in fair and balanced reporting and not the slanted and biased stuff we continually get from you.
Aren’t these young men receiving free education? My kids are paying out the backside for their education, I’m sure they would workout 20 hours a week to receive a free education. If they don’t like it they can always leave the school.
Good questions Charlie. I am sick and tired of Tramble – holding OU to a higher level is OK – but sucking up to Saban is miserable.
Rody and Tramble need to move on – their anti-OU act is old.
Trotter writes a column worth reading without voicing an agenda.
Go somewhere else Tramble – your act is growing thin.
This is just the tip of the iceberg across the country. Look at the escalation of facilities, salaries, tv exposure, and on and on over the last 30 or 40 years. This college football monster cannot be trimmed back! It’s all or nothing. I can’t wait til the Fall. Boomer!
Bob Stoops and the Oklahoma football program are and always will be about winning championships. I think if Cory Brandon was the better player he would have gotten the playing time because it would have helped the team win. I doubt Stoops would jeopordize winning football games just to make a point to a guy that missed a workout. Stop trying to make a story and just report it.
Charlie, here’s to help you out. The SPD did bring their case to the Payne/Logan County DA soon after the alleged incident. As the DA recognized there was not nearly enough evidence to prosecute with, he told the SPD they better dig a little more. Also, just so you feel better about things for the future, the newly appointed Payne/Logan County DA is a raging sooner fan.
Berry: You could not be anymore WRONG! I like Nick Saban, so I do not bash him. However, there was a possibility of a RECRUITING violation with contact with Sanders by BAMA. What OU did, right or wrong (NCAA says wrong), was to chastise scholarship athlete’s, who are already on campus, for not completing a minimum of 8 hours supervised workouts per week. NO recruiting violation or advantage. If a player is not completing their 8 hours supervised workouts, they’re not working out anymore than that (they would want credit for at least the 8 hours to show the team coaches and players that they are committed). Brandon had his chances and failed miserably on the field. Obviously, OU has a couple prima donna players (feminine tone intended) who have a sense of entitlement because they were “star” athlete’s in high school but did not need to work at it; they could get by on ability alone. In college, they need to workout, practice hard, watch film, and put the team first. If they are not dedicated to the university that pays their tuition then they should watch the game from the bench the entire season or find another school in which to play; and they should be completely ashamed of their poor, selfish attitude!
To Jack Black: I have followed the case(what little was reported) and its exactly why the question. The case was kicked back and forth. My point, it doesn’t take weeks to get more facts or answer the DA’s questions. Why in the meantime was he allowed to play? Please note that 2 of OSU wins came against Mizzou and OU (Wed & Sat) before charges filed on Monday morning. WOW! Where was the paperwork on Wed and Sat. Why wait till Monday morning to file? The job a reporters is to ask questions. This scenario begged such questions be asked. That’s all I am asking.
To Jack Black: The term as reported is “Secondary Rules Violation”, not “Recruiting Violation”; a very big difference!
Charlie, it does take weeks when the police department has to track down all the witnesses at a college party and interview them. That’s my understanding of what had to happen after the police department did not have enough evidence the first time.
I don’t feel any coach in his right mind would keep a player from playing when there were not real charges brought against that player.
While the timing may be strange to you, I don’t understand why you feel charges being filed on a Monday are so unordinary. Police departments are open on weekends and the SPD was continuing to build its case. Charges are often filed at the beginning of a week to let things play out at the court and in the DA’s office during the week.
Maybe the reporters did ask questions and there was nothing to report? I don’t think an article stating that there is nothing to report would draw much attention.
Anything about a player spending too much time studying? Anything about a coach asking how come a player wasn’t studying enough? Nope cause this is OU and it’s about football first, the kid second.
Who cares if the coaches ride them to work out more – the majority of the guys who really want to be big time players do it on their own. As far as I am concerned, this is a non-issue. Also, I do agree with many of the previous posts that Tramel has some type of beef with Stoops.
Another fine piece of journalism talking to some fata%% lineman all peeved because he didn’t work hard enough , or was not good enough to start.
What happened to reponsible journalism.
Brad 1802 – Little Bery has a beef with Stoops because he calls out the likes of Tramble and Deano Blevins when they ask some stupid question at a press conference.
No wonder the national perception of OU is bad. All they have to do is pick up a copy of the Joklahoman or listen to Rody and Tramble actually speak for 2 minutes.
Berry,
I don’t think you have an anti-OU bias. In fact, I usually agree with your columns, and I appreciated this column as a provocative piece. However, I respectfully disagree with your suggestion that Bob Stoops is asking too much of his players.
First, as many have argued, OU football players are elite athletes who get a free college education in exchange for playing football. When they enroll at OU they know that they are expected to perform at a very high level. I wonder how many elite athletes limit their off season training to a little over an hour a day. I wonder if Blake Griffin or Sam Bradford ever considered such a schedule to be an undue imposition. I doubt that the vast majority of OU football players consider their workout schedules to be an unfair hardship. Presumably they understand that, at a place like OU, they’re expected to perform at the highest level they can attain. More broadly, though, if you want to be elite in any field, you have to be prepared to make sacrifices in your personal life that go above and beyond the norm. That is a rule from which football players are not exempt.
Second, I disagree with your suggestion that an 8 hour/week workout schedule is too taxing for full time students. The fact is that many students with significant extracurricular activities become better students because they learn to manage priorities and work with efficiency. Look at Sam Bradford, who proved that a hardworking elite athlete can also be an elite student. Look at students enrolled in ROTC. The ROTC students I knew in college spent well over 8 hours each week training, and most were very strong students. I have no doubt that there are a lot of non-athletes (or non-scholarship athletes) at OU who spend more than 8 hours per week at the gym and/or working in student government, volunteering with charities, etc. — while also holding down part time jobs and handling a full course load. It can be done.
the ncaa is truely the National Communist’s Against Atheletes. How can anyone get better but only working out 8 hours a week. the bottom line is if they don’t want to put the time or work into it than no one can make them voluntary or mandatory. If my son were good enough to make it to a division 1 school than I personally would expect him to put more time into it than 8 hours a week. If he didn’t I wouldn’t expect him to ever make it.
You’re exactly right Berry! Just another example of how OU cheats in it’s little world. No “Big Red Sports Dealership” or anything like that this time, but they continually “push the envelope” to try to gain a competetive edge on the competition.
Scholarships are a bargain. If you got paid $5.oo an hour and put in the total hours these students put in for football you would easily be able to pay the cost of this scholarship. That said, some of the athletes are from poor families who have no way to help their children and the scholarship is the only chance they will get at college. What is the college doing for the student then. I know many examples of star athletes going to Pro Football and playing three or four years and end up working the night shift at a warehouse. How can someone spend that time at OU or any other big school and not at least have someone in a business that could provide a starting point to a career? Smart players are better players too. Maybe there should be a degree such as sports management so students can learn how to deal with their life after football. Even if you produce the National Championship it seem rather hollow knowing you got it by using up players and then casting them aside. Parents would be easily recruited if they saw all the former players that became successful in a career other than football.
Wow! I’m an OU fan, but its clear once again that there are a few true fanatics out there when it comes to defending their ‘sacred’ team and its coaches. Regardless of the true reasons for Brandon’s fall down the depth chart, too many of my fellow Sooner fans seem to miss the point. When you teach young men that its OK to cheat because you don’t like the rules, what do you get? People in all walks of life including the corporate and political world who continue that pattern of cheating even when it involves our money Sooner fans.
If you dislike the rules, get mad at the NCAA, not the whistleblowers. Until/unless the rules change, please support efforts to teach young men the importance of playing by the rules. We’ll all reap the benefits of that whether we see a national championship this year or not.
The voluntary work-outs is in investment to a lot of kids futures that wish to play at the next level. It seems like OU coaches are being punished for allowing and creating a culture for the “student athlete” They need to put the time in to separate themselves for the ultra-competitiveness of the NFL. Look how many kids went in the first round in 2010 draft. You will never be selected in the draft let alone in the first round by sitting on your tail all summer long.
In the words of a Dallas Cowboy LB (whose name escapes me at present) said to a DMN reporter a few years ago (think it was maybe early 2000s) regarding questions he was getting missing some offseason “voluntary” team workouts: “What do VOLUNTARY mean?” ……
Every School in the country practices, works out, and puts in more hours than the NCAA allows. I Played DI Baseball and seen it all. My Head baseball coach kicked the trainers out of practices because they were bitching about being on the field so long. Guess who turned us in for to many hours of practice. You got it, the athletic trainers. After that COACH said if your hurt go to the training room because they will not be out here with us any longer. Nobody said anything, not a peep, because we all had 1 goal and that was a NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP. So this really just makes me sick to my stomach. So someone bitching about there jobs, and thats what it is a job, if they are ever found out should be fired, kicked off, or deleted from from the college registry. THAT IS MY HUMBLE OPINION OF THIS SITUTATION.
I only read Berry T.so I can love our SOONERS and coaches more…..Berry you are a scum and always will be and great people like Coach Stoops will remain on the road to success helping young men like Sam Bradford excel through life. Actually Berry you might consider joining the dallas morning news….you’d fit in perfect…they will hate OU forever and will always be looking for a percieved flaw in Sooner sports. I bet they’d love having you or perhaps you’d like Stoolwater…no even they are not that low…The DMN did everything they could to hurt Coach Switzer….so I think the DMN would love having the likes you for this era.
The basic problem is this: the NCAA, the coaches, and the general public still want to pretend this is an amateur sport. It hasn’t been for decades and it becomes more of a business every season. Check your ticket prices, check the endorsements, check the bowl and TV revenue. Still think this is an amateur sport? The coaches are treating the players like they are athletes year-round and only hope their studies don’t get in the way. When bonuses and BCS bowls are at stake, “voluntary” workouts are a joke. The only reason no one will call it semi-professional is because it would formalize the hypocrisy of the sport even being affiliated with institutions of higher learning any more. Having said that, I’ll put my blinders back on and say “Go Sooners!!!”
LOL…poor Berry…He has to pander to his OU audience in order to keep his job most of the time and the one time he tries to write an objective piece about OU look what happens. These people would defend Bob Stoops if he became a terrorist and took out everyone within a 50 mile radius. Go back to writing your sophomoric pandering articles Berry….I appreciated your effort to try and write an objective article.
Berry –
Get off your high horse. Do you think Sam Bradford, Adrian Peterson, or any other starter or 2 deep player would have planted a wire to rat coaches out? No. I’m willing to bet the farm it’s a lazy, probably 3 or 4 deep player who wasn’t worth the time anyway. Although these players aren’t paid, they get alot in return. Especially at OU – if they start one year and make a good play that goes in Sooner Lore, they can get a job from a booster instantly after they’re done….you’re way off base here.
Berry sounds a little bit like Obama. Throwing rocks
at your own house isn’t very smart. It sounds like it
was written for Alabama.
“Balanced and fair” only works for FOX News–not sporting news.
Not understanding your audience is unforgiveable. Sports fanatics are not neutral. They are very bias to their own teams. We will skip the articles that project our team being rated lower in the pre-season and read
the articles that give high praise and high projections.
Psychology 101 tells us that we hang much of our self-worth on our sports team. When they win–we win. When they lose, we lose. Our infractions are oversights. Others are dishonesty.
A sports writer for the Sooners needs to be as much a
fanatic as they audience he/she is appealing to. Only
then will they write the articles that Sooner fans want
to read. We can always go to CBS Sports or other sites
to read negative article on ‘our’ team.
In a high stress world with a shaky economy and bad
news nearly everyday, we want to have at least one yellow
brick road we can dance on—or maybe one that is crimson and cream.
Berry Tramel, you once again prove your ineptitude and bias.
Why don’t you come on down to ‘Bama and spout your anti-Tide rhetoric and see how much love you get down there.
You are a poorly trained wimp of an individual.
In regards to the “player” who wore a wire to sell out his team, reminds me of the D-bag player @ Tech who was responsible for getting Leach fired.
You’ve obviously never played ball on been in the military or you would understand about the glue that bonds a unit together. Coaches are tough, Life isn’t fair, what’s your point. Lastly look up online which teams had the most oversigning of recruits. SEC schools are number 1 with Saban #1. BOOMER
I could be way off on this (never been a serious athlete), but it seems like extra workouts could only make a team marginally better where “impromptu” chanting of a blue chip recruit’s name in a stadium has the potential to change the face of a program.
You are right on the money about laying off of student athletes in the off season. It still doesn’t mean it’s not ridiculous to think that Nick Saban just happened to bump in to a big time recruit at his high school. Nick Saban is beginning to make farce of NCAA recruiting rules. I guess it’s the type of thing you love, if he’s coach at your school.