Barry Switzer: A Legacy Cemented
8/29/2024
A Las Vegas Raiders scout came through Norman not long ago. The scout had a connection with Barry Switzer, reached out and asked Switzer for a favor: a tour of OU’s football facilities.
So Switzer walked the scout through the Switzer Center and Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, and at some point the scout marveled, telling Switzer, “This is as good as anything’s Alabama’s got.”
It made Switzer laugh. He thought of the first time he set foot on Owen Field and got a tour of the stadium. January 4, 1966. Switzer had flown to Oklahoma City the night before, the first staff hire of new OU head coach Jim Mackenzie.
Switzer had grown up in southern Arkansas, reading about Bud Wilkinson’s vaunted Sooners and listening to OU football on the radio. Switzer’s first day on the job was his first sight of Norman.
And he came away unimpressed with the stadium.
“Seeing it for the first time, I was so disappointed when I went to the locker rooms,” Switzer said. “The coaches’ offices, on the north end, wasn’t overly impressed. Had better at Arkansas or just as good.
“The players showered with coaches. Only one damn shower. I looked at it and said, ‘godalmighty, Arkansas’s got better facilities than these guys. I knew right then we would have to have some things done.
“I couldn’t believe it. ‘This is Oklahoma?’”
Yep, that was Oklahoma.
The stadium was good to meBarry Switzer
And seven-and-a-half years later, Switzer trotted onto Owen Field as OU’s head coach, with a bunch of football players who would give Sooner Nation some of its greatest thrills and that stadium some of its most stirring drama.
OU’s 100th season in the stadium begins Friday night against Temple, and those early-Switzer teams will be honored, with celebrations of the 1974 and 1975 national championship teams and Dewey Selmon’s induction into the College Football Hall of Fame.
Celebrating the stadium’s 100th season, there’s no better era to kick it off than Switzer’s.
Over the years, Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium has been turned into a jewel — the Palace on the Prairie, as radio voice Toby Rowland has dubbed it — and even back in 1966, it at least was big, with a capacity of 61,836, about 25,000 seats more than Arkansas’ Razorback Stadium.
And despite Switzer’s first impressions, the stadium grew on him.
“The stadium was good to me,” said the 86-year-old Switzer, who in 2001 had a home built less than a mile from Owen Field. He lives there still.
The stadium was good to Switzer, and Switzer was good to the stadium. Like the other giants of OU football history after Bennie Owen’s brainchild of a stadium — Bud Wilkinson, Bob Stoops — Switzer’s quick success led to stadium expansion and renovations.
Switzer went 29-0-1 in his first 30 Sooner games, and between the 1974 and 1975 seasons, OU opened the west side upper deck, which included the new press box and what passed at the time as luxury suites. Switzer still fancies himself a stadium critic — “That press box is the ugliest; someday, maybe we’ll get a new press box and new (luxury) boxes underneath,” Switzer said — but when fans and players and everyone associated with Sooner football think of what that stadium has begat, they don’t look to the sky, they look to the ground and the memorable games that were staged.
Of course, 18 game minutes into Switzer’s first home game as head coach, he had to be wondering how Owen Field was going to treat him.
Early in the second quarter of the Sooners’ 1973 home opener against 17th-ranked Miami, in a 7-7 tie, OU quarterback Steve Davis swept to his right after faking a handoff to the fullback. A classic wishbone play.
Except something happened never seen before or after in two decades of the Sooner wishbone. Davis feigned keeping the ball, then flipped it to trailing halfback Tim Welch. The pigskin never reached its target.
Miami cornerback Eldridge Mitchell — called a “halfback” by the vernacular of the day — didn’t bite on the fake, and like a savvy soccer goalkeeper, timed the play perfectly. Mitchell intercepted the pitchout and returned it 79 yards for a touchdown.
“That damn cornerback, he said, ‘****, I’m going to go get this,’” Switzer said. “Ran right by me. That’s the damndest thing.”
Switzer’s Sooners survived the Hurricanes, winning 24-20. OU went on to win Switzer’s first 15 home games, including six against top-20 teams.
That was just a harbinger of things to come. Switzer’s teams played wildly entertaining football — no gridiron ever had as much fun as Owen Field when it hosted the Sooner wishbone — with dominant defense and offensive stars for the ages, and those first three Switzer teams were the apex.
OU went 32-1-1 in Switzer’s first three seasons, including some of the most memorable moments in stadium history.
- Randy Hughes’ 96-yard interception return for a touchdown against Colorado, breaking a 7-7 tie en route to a 34-7 victory.
- Tony DiRienzo’s 60-yard field goal against Kansas, which remains the longest 3-pointer in OU history.
- Safety Durwood Keeton’s hard hit on Nebraska tight end Larry Mushinskie, who had caught a pass from quarterback David Humm and rambled past the 50-yard line en route to a 33-yard gain. Keeton’s hit jostled the ball loose, Hughes fell on it and thus ended Nebraska’s only play in Sooner territory. OU won 27-0, and the Cornhuskers never snapped the ball on the plus-side of midfield.
- The roar when stadium public-address announcer Bill Boren thrilled the sellout crowd vs. Missouri on Nov. 9, 1974. In those pre-internet days, Boren revealed that Michigan State had upset top-ranked Ohio State 16-13, paving the way for the Sooners to be No. 1.
- Joe Washington’s smoke-through-a-keyhole, 57-yard punt return in Bedlam 1974. The Houdini-like escape from a band of Cowboys ranks to many as Washington’s greatest run.
- Scott Hill’s flying tackle of Pittsburgh phenom Tony Dorsett on Sept. 20, 1975, a hit that today would have gotten Hill tossed from the game and convened a Congressional investigation. Among crimson faithful of a certain age, likely the most popular play in OU history.
Switzer’s winning streak finally ended on November 8, 1975, with a 23-3 loss to Kansas that included eight straight OU possessions ending in turnovers (nine if you count a blocked punt that preceded the first giveaway).
But Switzer’s Sooners gaveth, and Switzer’s Sooners tooketh away — five Nebraska turnovers turned a 10-7 OU deficit into a 35-10 Sooner rout, and OU went on to the Orange Bowl and the national championship.
Switzer’s mind drifted back to 1966. Wilkinson’s “Play Like A Champion Today” sign was up, long before Notre Dame and Lou Holtz got credit for it. Gatekeeper Morris Tenenbaum was passing out gum to those who were welcomed in and forbidding to let pass those who were not. Curmudgeonly Jack Baer, the equipment manager/kicking tutor/baseball coach was around. “Jack was a trip,” Switzer said. “As long as you knew how to cuss Jack back, you were OK.”
But the Sooners had tradition, and that stadium soon enough was rocking with the next great era of OU football.
When Switzer first laid eyes on the stadium, the Sooners had played just 41 seasons there. Now it’s turning 100; Switzer still is around to critique it, and the memories created by his teams will live forever.
