COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’95 : Sooner Rather Than Later : Schnellenberger Starts Over With Oklahoma

Here at Camp Schnellenberger, star defensive end Cedric Jones knows exactly how many steps there are from the bottom of Oklahoma Memorial Stadium to the top. He knows because the new coach ordered every player to scale the east-side steps twice a day, two times a week for four weeks.

“Yeah, 71 to the top,” said Jones. “In my [previous] three years here, we never ran the stadium. But a lot of people had dreams the night before.”

Starting Sooner tackle J.R. Conrad knows exactly how hard it is to haul his 293-pound body up the 20-foot rope hanging just outside the Oklahoma football offices. He can do it because the new coach told him to, and when the new coach talks, said Conrad, “you don’t know whether to stand, sit down, put your head down or bow.”

The new coach had called Conrad into his office and read him the Slim Fast riot act. Conrad still gets the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.

“His eyes were red, he had that low voice and he says, ‘J.R., you need to lose weight. You’re too fat,’ ” Conrad said.

Now, 37 pounds lighter, Conrad has lost the blubber, but not the dread. “I’m still scared to death of him,” he said.

And that, Sooner players, is the way Howard Schnellenberger wants it. Nothing wrong with a little fear, especially after last year’s 6-5 regular-season record--the worst in 30 years--which was followed by the night of the living dead, when Oklahoma suffered a humiliating 31-6 Copper Bowl loss to a so-so Brigham Young team.

Schnellenberger was there. He had already accepted the job, so Oklahoma Athletic Director Donnie Duncan invited him and his wife, Beverlee, to watch the game from the Sooners’ private box. The game wasn’t a quarter old when Schnellenberger turned to longtime assistant Ron Steiner and said, “They’re not playing hard. It’s going to be a long night.”

By the end of the first period, BYU led, 7-0. By halftime it was 17-0, and the Cougars had 290 yards to Oklahoma’s 61. By the end of the third quarter, BYU was up, 24-0. The Sooners finally scored in the fourth quarter, but by then Beverlee was asleep in her seat and Schnellenberger was standing near the back row of the suite, seething.

“It was obvious that they were fat and out of shape,” Schnellenberger said. “They were certainly fat-headed.”

In Oklahoma’s defense, the Sooners were playing for lame-duck coach Gary Gibbs, without their starting quarterback and against a passing scheme rarely seen in the Big Eight Conference. Schnellenberger understood the situation. What he couldn’t understand was a lack of effort.

“[That] game is the low point of Oklahoma University football,” he said. “There was BCB--Before Copper Bowl--and everything after is ACB--After Copper Bowl. We have to ensure that we will never be embarrassed like that again.

“But if it hadn’t happened, they wouldn’t have come looking for me,” he said. Then, catching himself, he added, “or someone else.”

*

Schnellenberger wasn’t necessarily Oklahoma’s first choice, and he certainly wasn’t the people’s choice. Sooner fans clung desperately to the hope that Barry Switzer, the most successful coach in Oklahoma’s storied history before he lost control of the athletes and resigned under pressure in 1989, would tire of the Dallas Cowboys and return to Norman. Fat chance.

Then there was talk of luring Auburn’s Terry Bowden, but the price apparently was too high. Then the search moved to North Carolina’s Coach Mack Brown, who interviewed with Duncan but signed a sweetheart extension with the Tar Heels.

Duncan contacted Schnellenberger, who was doing a slow burn over Louisville’s decision to junk its independent status and join the newly formed Conference USA in 1996. The way Schnellenberger figured it, Louisville had betrayed him and his dreams of adding a national championship to the one he had won at Miami in 1983.

Rather than a schedule dotted with Texas A&M;, Tennessee, Miami, Florida State, Texas and Penn State, Schnellenberger would have to find room for Conference USA members Tulane, Southern Mississippi, Memphis, Cincinnati and Houston. As an independent, Louisville had a chance, however slim, for a national title. As a Conference USA member, it has a chance for the Liberty Bowl.

“I had just signed a contract through 2000,” Schnellenberger said. “I had just built the house of Beverlee’s dream. But I was that hurt by the decision.”

Schnellenberger, who spent 10 years at Louisville, building the program almost from scratch, had an escape clause in his deal and he used it. He took the Oklahoma job without setting foot on the campus or talking contract with Duncan.

Compared to Gibbs, Schnellenberger was Richard Simmons with a mustache. During his six-season stay at Oklahoma, Gibbs cleaned up Switzer’s mess, but he never won a Big Eight Conference title and he beat rivals Nebraska and Texas only once each.

“The players didn’t want to play for Gibbs,” said John Rohde, columnist for the Daily Oklahoman. “Gibbs was a big OU family guy, but it’s tough to follow Barry Switzer. It’s like going from Frank Sinatra to Nancy Sinatra--same family, but not nearly the same singing.”

Schnellenberger comes to Oklahoma with his own baggage. He is 64 and making his last run at any type of championship. He was criticized in a recent Sports Illustrated story for his alleged part in compromising Miami’s football program. The charges: single-digit graduation rates and the advent of player taunting. Schnellenberger scoffs at the accusations and seems more upset that the magazine chose to run a photograph of him wearing a gaudy orange sport coat.

And, although Schnellenberger can’t be held solely responsible for the actions of his recruiters at Louisville, one former high school player, now an All-American for a major conference team, said his trip to the Cardinal campus included only a cursory look at the school’s academic-support facilities.

Proof positive of mixed priorities? No, but hardly an endorsement.

*

In 1961, when Schnellenberger was a Kentucky assistant, his players gave him a pipe as a going-away present. Since then it’s been difficult to tell when Schnellenberger is puffing hard or simply blowing smoke. He does both so well.

Schnellenberger is part Bear Bryant (motivator), part George Allen (total control), part Don Shula (anal retentive). He went to Miami in 1979, promised a national championship and delivered one five years later. He went to Louisville in 1985, babbled something about a “collision course with a national championship” and six years later the Cardinals were beating Alabama in the Fiesta Bowl. Close enough.

Louisville went 22-23 during the rest of his tenure, but even his most ardent critics--and he has his share--concede that Schnellenberger rescued the program.

Schnellenberger helped arrange the long-awaited series with Kentucky and dramatically improved the schedule. Schnellenberger led Louisville to its best record and its first bowl appearance in 13 years. Schnellenberger spearheaded an effort to build a football stadium, rather than to continue playing in Cardinal Stadium, a triple-A baseball facility.

“The great thing about coming [to Oklahoma], I talk about our goals--a seventh national championship--and I get this: ‘Let’s do it,’ ” Schnellenberger said. “At Miami it was, ‘You’re out of your damn mind.’ At Louisville they wanted to put me in a straitjacket and put me in Our Lady of Peace Hospital.”

The Louisville media called him “Howard Hyperbole,” in honor of his constant attempts to create interest in a program often dwarfed by Cardinal basketball. It was a tough sell.

Several years ago, during his weekly teleconference, the operator notified Schnellenberger that no one had called to talk to him. Schnellenberger picked up the phone and threw it against a wall. And last season, after Louisville somehow had lost to Army, Schnellenberger emerged from the visitors’ locker room at West Point, took one look at the collection of reporters--two from the Louisville Courier-Journal, one from the school newspaper--and asked, “Isn’t the New York Times here?”

Schnellenberger has accused reporters of rifling through school files. On occasion, he has used intimidation tactics.

Angered by a series of critical columns by Rick Bozich of the Courier-Journal, Schnellenberger told the writer, “You know, I’ve been talking to your boss about you.”

Replied Bozich, “Oh, yeah? Who, my sports editor?”

“No.”

“My editor?”

“No.”

“My publisher?”

“No. Even bigger than that.”

“Who then?”

“Mr. Neuharth,” as in Al Neuharth, then chief executive officer of the paper’s parent Gannett Co.

Schnellenberger could be equally demanding and demeaning of his own staff. When the Cardinals were preparing for the Fiesta Bowl, a reporter approached a player with the blessings of then-football sports information director Jeff Schneider. Told by the reporter that Schneider had approved the interview, Schnellenberger said, “He’s not part of this program. I’m the one who’s the program. You need to talk to me.”

Another time, Schnellenberger called Schneider “a dumb . . . “ in front of reporters for supposedly printing a wrong date in a game program. Turns out Schneider was right, Schnellenberger wrong. The coach never apologized. Schnellenberger also lectured Schneider about “the lions and the lambs.” The media was the lion, Louisville’s football program the lamb.

Despite his faults, Schneider said, Schnellenberger was worth the trouble.

“There was never a time in my 10 years at U of L that I went to the football complex and he wasn’t there,” Schneider said. “If we lost a game, he’d stay up all night and watch the film. He’d open that place up and he’d close it down. He had his hand on everything, but he worked his tail off. He earned the money he got. He’s one of the best damn game coaches I ever saw.”

And from columnist Bozich: “In many ways, what he did here was remarkable. He won by recruiting guys people couldn’t or wouldn’t take. The guy’s a great football coach. I’ve never disputed that. But Oklahoma is the place for him, where people talk about football all year round.”

*

Schnellenberger was fired once, in 1973, three games into his second season as coach of the Baltimore Colts. Owner Robert Irsay ordered him to put rookie quarterback Bert Jones into the lineup. Schnellenberger refused and Irsay fired him before the game was over. Left without transportation, Schnellenberger caught a ride back to the airport with John Steadman, a Baltimore columnist.

Schnellenberger decided then that he would ever after control his own destiny. That’s why he chose to make his head-coaching comeback with a broken-down Miami program; why he took a gamble with the never-realized USFL Miami franchise, where he was named vice president, general manager, coach, ticket manager and player personnel director; why he returned home to a down-and-out Louisville program and why he’s trying to revive the once-powerful Sooners.

Schnellenberger must be in control. Anything less and he starts having Irsay flashbacks.

For instance, he once arranged for a helicopter to fly a photographer over the Louisville practice field for some overhead shots of the team at work.

“Uh, Coach,” someone said, “aren’t we supposed to get clearance from somebody at the airport?”

“Screw that,” Schnellenberger said. “By the time you get up and down, they’ll be scrambling and won’t know what happened.”

Already, Schnellenberger’s fingerprints are on the Oklahoma program. When rain left puddles on the steps leading to the football offices, Schnellenberger had maintenance workers drill holes in the concrete for drainage. After all, who wants a big-time recruit or potential big-money donor hopping over puddles?

His office has been redecorated. Desks have been rearranged. Policies have been revised. He canned Oklahoma’s famed 5-2 defense for the 4-3. He even plans to redesign--gasp!--the Sooners’ uniforms. So upset was one student about the uniform news, that he asked and was granted an audience with Schnellenberger to plead his case. Schnellenberger was nice about it, but the old uniforms are goners.

“The mission here is to change,” Steiner said. “It almost seems he goes out of his way to change something.”

Except himself. Schnellenberger went on a barnstorming tour that covered 30 cities in nine days. He made sure to pay homage to Oklahoma legend Steve Owens, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1969. He visited Troy Aikman, who played at Oklahoma before transferring to UCLA. He made a pilgrimage to Dallas and met with Switzer. And just in case anyone was interested, he made himself available to the 19 television satellite uplink trucks that were there from Texas, Arkansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma to cover the Cowboys.

As usual, Schnellenberger is scaring the bejabbers out of his players. Conrad talks as if he’s a born-again Sooner, reciting the inspiration Schnellenberger has provided. Assistant coaches hit the tackling dummies. Team managers, vowing to be the best managers in the Big Eight, hit the weight room. Players hit the stadium stairs and climb ropes.

“He can motivate [you] to run through that wall,” said Conrad. “And have you come back and tell him how much you like it.”

Said Kentucky Coach Bill Curry, a Schnellenberger admirer: “He’s a powerful will.”

Maybe, but the truth is, the Sooners are starved for charisma. Schnellenberger actually had them believing that rope climbing not only was a good workout, but could save their lives.

“You never know when you’ll be in a burning building or on a ship that’s sinking,” he said.

The Sooners bought it. New eras are like that.

*

For the first time in 15 years, Schnellenberger has a program that doesn’t have to beg for a football stadium, pray for media coverage or worry about a schedule. Oklahoma has 17 starters and 54 lettermen returning, and could start its last game of the regular season undefeated. The big if: finding a starting quarterback.

Schnellenberger isn’t making any predictions. Then again, he isn’t denying the possibility of a special year.

“It’s quite obvious that the Sooner nation is very impassioned [and eager] to have a great football team and return to its position of national prominence,” Schnellenberger said.

The Sooner nation ? Not to worry--more Howard Hyperbole.

But make no mistake about Schnellenberger’s resolve. Another national championship and he becomes the first coach to have won titles at two schools. Another national championship and he can blow smoke in the faces of anyone who questioned his age, his methods and his loyalties. Another national championship and someone might have to bronze those ropes.

“There’s no pressure any greater than what a man puts on himself,” Schnellenberger said.

If that’s the case, then Schnellenberger will do just fine. After all, he’s used to the weight.