Blatant Homerism: The darkest days
As the Oklahoma Sooners trudge toward the end of a dreary 2024 football season, fans are hearing a lot about the year 1998.
That season marked the end of the worst stretch in the modern era of college football for the Oklahoma Sooners. I was 10 years old when it began in 1989. I don’t know if that makes me a reliable narrator when it comes to recounting the events of that decade of despair, but I do have an idea about what it was like.
What we’re witnessing right now ain’t that.
The trouble started for the Sooners in December 1988 when the NCAA handed down draconian sanctions against OU. The NCAA banned the Sooners from playing on live television for the entire 1989 season and prohibited them from playing in the postseason for two years. For the long run, however, the kicker was that OU lost a total of 14 of its 50 scholarships allotted by rule over two years.
When Barry Switzer stepped down as OU’s head coach prior to the 1989 season, Gary Gibbs, a brilliant defensive coordinator and boring public speaker, inherited the thankless duty of guiding the program through the probationary wasteland. Given the personnel constraints, he didn’t do a terrible job, compiling a record of 44-23-2 in six seasons.
Howard Schnellenberger lasted one 5-5-1 season as head coach in 1995 before getting shown the door. It was a year that will be remembered for damaging allegations about Schnellenberger’s personal habits; a Junction Boys-style preseason camp in which one player almost died; and a team whose play on the field didn’t come close to living up to the promises of a blowhard head coach.
The OU athletic department somehow managed to make a disastrous situation even worse by hiring Dallas Cowboys assistant and former Sooner standout John Blake in 1996 as Schnellenberger’s replacement. Think of the worst-coached football team you’ve ever seen and imagine something worse. It’s probably not as inept as Blake’s teams.
However badly you think the 2024 season is going for OU – and you can apply that to Brent Venables’ tenure as head coach – it pales in comparison to the 1990s. At the end, Blake’s squads were getting drilled routinely by the likes of San Diego State and Kansas and Northwestern. After so many putrid seasons, attending games became something downtrodden fans did out of habit, not enjoyment.
If there are any similarities between that lost decade and the Sooners’ current predicament, I would maintain those 10 disastrous seasons started in similar fashion to what OU is dealing with now. Whereas Gibbs had to work through NCAA-mandated scholarship reductions, Venables is trying to overcome the effects the OU roster getting picked clean of a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback and some other useful parts prior to his first season at the helm. What didn’t get pilfered in the transfer portal left plenty to be desired, too, even if Venables salvaged a few contributors recruited by predecessor Lincoln Riley. Meanwhile, the college football ecosystem is experiencing massive shocks in terms of compensating players and removing restrictions on their ability to transfer.
Does that make Venables today’s Gary Gibbs? That jury remains out. Starting with similar vibes doesn’t consign a coach to a similar outcome. But the turnaround that started in 1999 is instructive when it comes to OU’s current predicament.
For all of Blake’s faults as a head coach – and there were multitudes – he might have been one of the most effective recruiters college football has ever seen. (Even after he got sacked at OU, Blake’s services as an assistant remained in high demand at other programs because of his ability to close the deal on the trail.) When Bob Stoops became head coach of the Sooners in 1999, he inherited a roster of supremely talented athletes in need of actual coaching.
Stoops hired a coaching staff that included one of the most influential offensive tacticians in college football history. He recruited a QB out of junior college in Utah who knew how to operate the new-fangled O. He taught the team to do things that his predecessor couldn’t, like get the right number of players on the field most of the time.
You know what the next 17 years were like.
Even though Blake didn’t win many games, he left behind a promising foundation of talent for Stoops in Norman. Now in their fourth recruiting cycle, Venables and his assistants have similarly improved the depth and breadth of talent on OU’s roster.
If OU can’t get moving in the right direction on the field, the next coach should find a more promising roster awaiting him than what Venables got after the 2021 season. That coach would need to sell those players on sticking around, but it would at least give him a solid starting point.
Picks and Recs: Sturgill Simpson and Lez Zeppelin
Got a chance to take in two vastly different concert experiences that I’d recommend.
I last saw Sturgill Simpson six years ago when he was co-headlining a tour with Willie Nelson. (Naturally, the Red Headed Stranger closed out the show back then.) Simpson’s new “Why Not?” tour reflects how his stature in the industry has changed since then, and this tour is more like a tour de force. The shows are routinely clocking in at nearly 30 songs over the course of three hours – with no breaks. In addition to selections from his expanding catalogue, Simpson has added fun covers like “L.A. Woman” by The Doors, the Allman Brothers Band’s “Midnight Rider” and “Purple Rain” by Prince to the mix. All in all, no complaints here.
I’m far from a Led Zeppelin aficionade, but I had fun seeing Lez Zeppelin recently. The all-female tribute act treats its shows like reinterpretations of the real band’s concerts and incorporates a decent amount of crowd engagement in the process. Founder and guitarist Steph Paynes brings a particularly impressive amount of showmanship to Jimmy Page’s licks.