Oklahoma Forgot Just One Thing

“The wishbone offense,” the late Bear Bryant was fond of saying, “can sometimes be a lot of wish and not much bone.”

The University of Oklahoma knows where he is coming from. They got their wishbone stuck in their throats by USC at the Coliseum Saturday. You might say they choked on it.

The wishbone is a quaint, quasi-archaic form of attack favored by coaches like Oklahoma’s Barry Switzer because it is easy to learn, easy to teach but hard to stop. For teams other than USC, that is. I mean, it works great against Kansas State.

It depends almost entirely on being faster than the other guy. Plus, of course, you’ve got to have the football.

In a way, it’s the modern version of the flying wedge. Except, it has all its muscle behind the ball-carrier. This would be the quarterback and he has to be a considerable athlete who can run like a halfback, throw like a quarterback and have the dexterity of a guy hiding peas under a shell.

The system gets its name from the way three backs line up behind the quarterback, in roughly the shape of a Thanksgiving turkey’s wishbone. When the quarterback gets the ball, he fakes it--or gives it--to the closest of these, and this guy dives into the line with or without the ball.

If the quarterback keeps, he slides along the line of scrimmage with trailing backs. If the defensive end takes the bait and commits himself, the quarterback laterals it off to the trailing back. If the defender hesitates, he lunges to daylight--and the goal line.

Except, trying to out-quick USC is like trying to out-bite a lion. Its defensive players got out on the flanks just as quickly as the offense did Saturday. They had what their coach admitted later was a 9-man line. The Oklahoma Sooners became the Oklahoma Laters.

They scrapped the wishbone--too late--after the score became 20-7. Like selling vegetable peelers, it doesn’t work if the other guy doesn’t take the fakes.

And that was the story of how the USC Trojans beat the Oklahoma ex-Sooners Saturday. The Sooners will get back on track against Iowa State next week. But, for once, the top team in the country won’t be from the Big Eight for a while.

Another thing the wishbone depends on is field position. Oklahoma had the field position of a guy locked in a closet all day. The Sooners ended up throwing the ball 21 times, but it was easy to see their heart wasn’t in it. They completed 8 to their own people and 4 to the Trojans. Their passes had all the accuracy of fourth-class mail.

Oklahoma, which had a football team before it had a state, found only more grapes of wrath on this California trek. The score, 23-7, could have been worse except the Trojans went into their prevent offense.

They concentrated more on keeping the football than advancing it. They didn’t care how far they took it, just how long it took. They just sort of dug trenches the last half of the game. Another thing the wishbone needs is the ball. Oklahoma didn’t have it much Saturday--only 58 plays to USC’s 79.

Rodney Peete did nothing to damage his Heisman Trophy candidacy. He did the major thing--win.

And he did that because Erik Affholter did the thing he does best--catch the football. If the ball stays in the air, Affholter catches it. And sometimes when it doesn’t. Some people catch footballs off their shoestrings. Affholter catches them off his cleats.

He caught 8 Saturday, and some of them were such leaping or diving catches you were sure they weren’t intended for him.

Affholter is what the trade calls a “possession” receiver. This means he doesn’t run one of those long dazzling sprints to the end zone for the coast-to-coast touchdowns. Affholter just kind of nickel-and-dimes you to death.

Whenever nobody else is open, Affholter is. And by open, Affholter doesn’t mean solitude. Throwing him the ball is like throwing a hat at Katharine Hepburn. Wherever it hits, it sticks. He could catch the ball in a blackout. He just kind of melts into the coverage. He doesn’t get open so much as invisible.

When he reappears, he’s got the football. And usually a first down.

He had a touchdown when last seen in the USC-UCLA game last year. Some people thought he was juggling the ball at the time--he fell out of bounds after the catch--but Affholter explained that the ball wasn’t bouncing, he was.

He attracts a hostile crowd whenever he’s in the middle on a pass pattern but he was able to keep the USC game plan going Saturday with his patented gum- fingered catches.

“The ball is not hard to catch,” he once told an interviewer. “It’s big enough and not very heavy.”

So is Affholter. He came to USC as a kicker. He used to kick 64- and 58-yard field goals in high school. USC has found he is more valuable catching 12-yard passes.

He has caught 17 of them so far this year and 72 of them in his career. He kept the football from Oklahoma Saturday.

That’s another thing about the wishbone. You don’t necessarily have to have the football inflated. But you do have to have it. You need a lot of it, in fact. But every time Oklahoma looked up, Erik Affholter had it.