Switzer’s Win Column Obscured by Stain of Failure

To tell you the truth, Barry Switzer never did look like a football coach to me. I mean, I never felt this was the coach and those were the players. He was one of ‘em, if you know what I mean.

I think I know why he was a successful coach. I think he had a lot in common with all those pool-room guys, hustlers, and bad-guy-on-the-block types he got to play for him. They knew he was their kind of guy. There’d be none of that authority crock they might have to put up with if they’d enrolled at Notre Dame or Penn State or some place like that.

All they had to do for this guy was play some football, kick some butt, lay some blocks. Ol’ Barry would take care of the rest. Ol’ Barry wold keep people off their backs. Ol’ Barry wouldn’t want you to be secretary of state. Just take care of that line of scrimmage on Saturday. Try not to kill anybody. Just win, baby.

Barry never looked much to me like Walter Camp or Howard Jones or Pop Warner or Woody Hayes. He wasn’t what you’d call your basic father figure, one of these austere field-marshal types who puts a clear line of demarcation between himself and the troops.

You know, I’ve never even seen Barry Switzer look worried. He always looks as if he just found out the other team’s quarterback is ineligible. He always looks pleased with himself. His confidence level must break thermometers. Barry always put me in mind of a guy who takes your girl away from you at the prom and drives her away in your convertible.

Barry doesn’t even seem to get any older. He was one of the new breed of coaches. Buddy-buddy with the players. We’re-all-in-this-together approach. Trouble in the dormitory? Boys will be boys.

It finally didn’t work. The Oklahoma football team that ran roughshod over opponents for 16 years finally ran over the coach. Oklahoma is a tough place but gang rapes, dormitory shootings, drug selling and Brian Bosworth finally got to be too much. Oklahoma is more permissive than Princeton, but it had two choices--clean up Oklahoma football or bring back the Seventh Cavalry.

The old-time coaches never let the troops take over the fort. Knute Rockne was about as close to being a pal to the players as any of the old breed but he never let them forget who was boss. If they forgot, he had plenty of sarcastic ways to remind them.

Red Sanders, as good a coach as I ever knew, coached from a practice-field tower. His words came down to the players like Jehovah’s. They never called him Red.

Even Bear Bryant, the prototypical good ol’ boy coach who herded his players together in living quarters separate from the rest of the student body, reminded his team who was giving the orders. He kicked Joe Namath and Ken Stabler off his teams for off-field infractions. He kept Namath out of a bowl game. Bear never let the players forget who wore the stars on the shoulder.

Football is a violent game played by violent men. You get winning teams the way pirate ships used to get crews. You can try to be pals with them but you never turn your back on them. A better idea is to make them fear you. Today, it’s the other way around.

College is considered irrelevant by today’s player. He’s not there to learn to be a doctor, he’s there to learn to be a Green Bay Packer.

A coach used to be a pedagogue. He reminded the players that their pay was priceless--knowledge. Today’s players prefer gold chains. A lot of today’s coaches are kind of on scholarships themselves. They are no part of the academic life.

You go to college to get in on the accumulated wisdom of the millenia. You do this best by coming in contact with older, wiser professors who have a profound influence on your life because you’re impressed with them and what they teach you. If you’re in college for football, the coach has to play this role. He can’t do it if he’s just like you.

I seem to remember a story of the coaching staff at Oklahoma trashing a hotel room, bar or both at a bowl game last winter. Imagine how Howard Jones or Gen. Bob Neyland would have reacted to that. Oklahoma just paid for the breakage.

They said Barry Switzer had one of the most successful football programs of his day. Depends on what you’re counting. Bowl games, yeah. In the important contests of life, he had one of the worst football programs I’ve ever seen.