Commentary : At Oklahoma, Buck Stops With Switzer

Like the Roman Empire during its decline and fall, American civilization tends to value bread and circuses above all else. There is never enough money to build shelters for the homeless, but there is always enough to build another $80 million football stadium that will be used 10 times a year.

And when host Miami’s Super Bowl is upstaged by cries of police brutality and bloody rioting, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, on the morning of the league’s annual Superbash, reminds the media that the party leftovers will be distributed to the homeless. As Marie Antoinette said when told the starving masses had no bread, “Let ‘em eat cake.”

A society like ours, so in love with bread and circuses, must have gladiators to entertain it. But when the care and feeding of those gladiators gets so out of hand that we treat them as if they were above the law -- and instead attack those who would bring them to justice -- we are the biggest sickos of all.

The sickos seem to be enjoying a clear majority in Oklahoma, where telephone polls conducted by the Tulsa World and KTUL-TV in Tulsa indicate more than three-fourths of the callers -- 76 percent in the newspaper’s poll, 77 in the TV station’s -- said Oklahoma Coach Barry Switzer should not resign.

“Basically, we got three themes from the pro-Switzer people,” Alex Adwan, editorial page editor of The World, told the New York Times. “First, OU and Switzer are not responsible for what every football player does. Second, everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

“The third argument was, ‘He’s not hired to be a babysitter; he’s hired to win those games.’ ”

Assuming there were no more arrests of Oklahoma football players while we were sleeping, here’s a quick update on some of the reasons 24 percent of the callers think Switzer should be replaced:

Start with mid-December, when the NCAA placed the Oklahoma football team on three years’ probation for what it called “major violations.” Those included offering cars and cash to recruits and giving airline tickets to players. The NCAA committee on infractions noted that for “at least several years, the university has failed to exercise appropriate institutional control” over its football program.

And that, sports fans, is the Mickey Mouse stuff. The NCAA is concerned only with recruiting and academic violations. Not with Hill Street Blues-Perry Mason style criminality.

Apparently, three of every four Oklahomans polled aren’t, either.

On Feb. 10, running back Glen Bell, offensive tackle Nigel Clay and tight end Bernard Hall were arraigned for allegedly gang-raping a woman Jan. 21 at Bud Wilkinson House, Oklahoma’s all-jock dorm.

Eight days earlier, cornerback Jerry Parks shot offensive lineman Zarak Peters in the chest after an argument in the dorm. Sports Illustrated reported Parks then allegedly aimed the gun at his roommate, starting quarterback Charles Thompson, then pointed it at his own head and pulled the trigger, but the gun misfired.

As for Thompson, three days after he had lectured grammar-school kids on the evils of drug use, the FBI arrested, handcuffed and charged him with selling 17 grams of cocaine for $1,400 to an undercover agent Jan. 26. If convicted, Thompson, the Sooners’ leading rusher last fall, could receive 20 years in jail and $1 million in fines.

After Thompson’s arrest, the university disclosed that he had spent part of last summer in a drug rehabilitation center. Nor was this the first time Thompson had run afoul of the law. In Tulsa in August 1986, he pleaded guilty to a charge of petty larceny and no contest to an assault and battery charge for pushing a store clerk and stealing a pair of gloves.

In the wake of the arrests, The Daily Oklahoman in Oklahoma City and the Tulsa World ran editorials saying Switzer should resign.

At a news conference following Thompson’s arrest, Gov. Henry Bellmon, an Oklahoma State graduate, said he was “thoroughly disgusted” with OU football. But Bellmon later showed up at another news conference wearing a red OU jacket and gave Switzer his blessing.

Was Bellmon having a genuine change of heart? Or was it because, like any good politician, he’d seen the results of those pro-Switzer polls?

Switzer’s most famous and most outwardly outrageous player, of course, was The Boz, linebacker Brian Bosworth, now playing for the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL. The Boz was banned from the 1987 Orange Bowl when the NCAA said he had tested positive for anabolic steroids.

Bosworth’s autobiography, “The Boz,” describes Oklahoma as a school where berserk behavior by football players -- drug use, gunplay and off-the-field violence -- was anything but uncommon.

Defenders of the Sooners said Bosworth’s book, which was released before the NCAA probation and 1989 arrests, was full of exaggerations and lies. Maybe they still feel that way. If you stick your head deep enough in the sand, you could probably ignore a nuclear bomb.

Switzer has called each of the charges and arrests “isolated incidents.” He has said he doesn’t deserve blame for his players’ misbehavior any more than their parents do.

Switzer has always run one of the loosest, and one of the most successful, programs in college football. He prides himself on his open-minded outlook about today’s styles, and he has one of the best reputations for getting along with black players.

But is it a coincidence that (as detailed in the Feb. 27 issue of Sports Illustrated) Cincinnati Bengals running back Stanley Wilson, who has a history of drug problems and was suspended from the Super Bowl for drug abuse, played at Oklahoma? That former offensive guard and 1978 Outland Trophy winner Greg Roberts, charged in Tampa, Fla., with racketeering and drug-related offenses, played at Oklahoma? That former running back David Overstreet, who was killed while driving drunk in 1984 and was charged in 1982, along with Roberts, with raping an Oklahoma student (she dropped the complaint), played at Oklahoma?

If Switzer isn’t at fault, who is? Oklahoma players run amok because he allows it. Because they get the signal soon after their arrival on campus that as long as they win football games for Oklahoma, they can do just about whatever they want. As long as they are good gladiators, the rules don’t apply.

If you believe the newspaper and television polls, that’s how the people of Oklahoma want it, too. To many of them, aside from family and friends, Oklahoma football is their primary source of interest.

But while the problem of athletes running amok may be on the grandest scale at Oklahoma, it is not confined to Oklahoma. Hardly. It is happening more and more all over this land.

It’s a frightening statement about how warped our values are, and about the type of society we’ve become.