STORM IN NORMAN : Switzer May Still Be King, but Kingdom Is Crumbling

In this land of oil derricks and rolling fields, Barry Switzer is King.

As coach of the University of Oklahoma’s football team, he is master of the state, more famous than the Governor and, perhaps, more powerful.

Under Switzer, who has coached here for 16 years, the Sooners have won three national championships since 1974, and Switzer has the best winning percentage of any active college coach.

But all those victories cannot erase the problems today besieging Norman, a college town that boasts of everything from Sooner bail bonds to the Sooner fish farm to the Sooner Federal Savings and Loan.

A long, grim shadow has been cast over the football team, which is reeling from a series of charges against five athletes. Rape and drug dealing are the catchwords of the day. And the question is whether even the Great Switzer can survive the onslaught.

The latest setback occured last Monday when Charles Thompson, the Sooner starting quarterback, was arrested by FBI agents and charged with selling 17 grams of cocaine. Were that not bad enough, Switzer later said that he had been tipped about the FBI probe and questioned Thompson--for the good of the team--thereby ending what federal officials had hoped would be a more thorough investigation.

Bill Price, U.S. attorney, said Switzer would not be charged with obstruction of justice because the coach was not trying to thwart a criminal case.

“He was a coach looking after one of his players,” Price said.

However, in the course of the week’s furor, Switzer also made the mistake of calling Lawton, Thompson’s home town, and nearby Ft. Sill, the “drug center of the state.” His comments only served to anger the people of Lawton. The Lawton Constitution called for Switzer to either apologize or resign.

“Barry, you owe Lawton-Ft. Sill an apology, and if you’re not man enough to do it you should be gone,” the paper wrote in a Friday editorial.

Switzer did apologize, but by then the outcry had reached such a state that Gov. Henry Bellmon asked interim Oklahoma President David Swank to attend his weekly news conference to field reporters’ questions. Early in the week, Bellmon has issued a statement saying that he was “thoroughly surprised and disgusted” at the charges against Thompson.

Thompson’s case, however, is but one of the problems plaguing Switzer’s team.

Two weeks ago three football players were charged with first degree rape stemming from a January 21 incident involving a 20-year-old woman in the athletic dormitory.

On January 13, cornerback Jerry Parks allegedly shot teammate Zarack Peters in a dorm room. In the past the two had been close friends.

While in Orlando, Fla., for this year’s Citrus Bowl, which the Sooners lost, several players were accused of causing extensive damage to a hotel room. Also, four assistants were said to have caused $583 in damages during an argument at an Orlando country club after a round of golf.

In December, the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. placed the football team on three years probation for recruiting violations. Oklahoma is limited in recruiting, banned from live television appearances next season and banned from bowl games through 1991. As an aside, the Sooners won four of their six national championships while on probation.

With all that, Switzer’s job still seems safe--for the moment at least--which bespeaks of his influence all the more. Swank, the interim president, said the university board of regents passed a set of guidelines Feb. 10 designed to upgrade the academic participation of student athletes, who all live in virtual isolation in dormitories near the football stadium.

“They are not all absolutely brand new and some are long range proposals to make sure that academics are an important part of the athletic program,” said Swank, who emphasized that it was up to Switzer and the Athletic Director Donnie Duncan to take the lead in implementing the new guidelines.

“If they don’t do it, I am going to look at other solutions,” he said. “Things have to be put in place very quickly.”

For his part, Switzer, at least in his public statements, saw little relationship between his job and the alleged criminal charges that have been filed against his players.

“Barry Switzer should resign because of what they did?” asked Switzer, rhetorically. “No more than I think their mothers and fathers should go to prison to serve their sentences.”

Switzer made the comment earlier this week to the Oklahoma State Network. Neither he nor Duncan returned repeated telephone calls.

Meanwhile, though, public opinion seems to be going against Switzer as it never has before. Three major newspapers have called for the coach’s resignation.

This is a far cry from what happened more than a decade ago when the Oklahoma City Times merely reported that Oklahoma football was under investigation. Both reporters for that article received numerous death threats.

“Nothing less than a new start under a new leadership can restore confidence and pride in OU football,” the Tulsa World wrote in an editorial this week. “Nothing else, in fact, can save the University of Oklahoma from becoming a national laughing stock.”

Joel Bushbaum, editor of Pro Football Weekly, said in a radio commentary Friday that Switzer may have to resign if Oklahoma is going to earn a clean image.

Columnist Randy Galloway of the Dallas Morning News took perhaps the toughest stance against Switzer, saying he should be fired on the spot for recruiting violations.

“It’s hardly a secret . . . that if Switzer wants a certain athlete, nothing stands in his way, certainly not scholastic aptitude or character references,” he wrote. “Many people in college football will tell you that Barry Switzer is now getting what he recruited in some cases--trouble.”

Certainly, Swank agrees with that assesment, and his view is that Sooner coaches, and Switzer in particular, are going to have to give more attention to areas other than athletic prowess.

“He’s going to have to look at character, too,” Swank said.

Switzer bashing wasn’t for everyone. When you are the king of Oklahoma, and winning, supporters rally round. One in Oklahoma City, just up the road, decided to put his support in writing. He rented a billboard and had this printed on it:

“SUPPORT BARRY SWITZER

and OU FOOTBALL.”