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Exploring the Scandalous Legacy of the 1970 Oklahoma Coaching Staff · Sports History Network

• 0:47
  Welcome back to Pigskin Dispatch.
• 0:48
  I'm your host, Darren Hayes.
• 0:49
  What happens when you assemble one of the greatest collection of football coaching minds in the history on a single sideline, only to have their legacies defined by as much scandal as by Super Bowls and National championships?
• 1:02
  Today, we're turning back the clock to 1970 in Norman, Oklahoma.
• 1:06
  Joining us to crack open this vintage Sooner's recruiting brochure and explore the legendary and often controversial coaching staff is our good friend Timothy p.
• 1:16
  Brown of footballarchaeology.com get ready to dive into the real history and the questionable values behind the victories here on Pigskin Dispatch.
• 1:34
  Hey there.
• 1:35
  Glad to be back as always.
• 1:37
  And I just gotta say, there was crime in the streets back in 1970.
• 1:43
  Back in 1970, when Oklahoma's football staff, it was leading some of that crime wave back then.
• 1:53
  Yeah, I mean I read your tidbit, you know, it was a while back you wrote this thing and I remember it very succinctly, but I thought it was perfect.
• 2:01
  Since we're celebrating the year of 1970 this week on Pigskin Dispatch and all of our, our social and videos and podcasts.
• 2:09
  So why don't you tell us about the story that you wrote, this tidbit that you had titled 1970 Oklahoma Coaching Staff and Values.
• 2:16
  Yeah, so as I kind of suggested, this may, may not have been the most honest coaching staff in the history of college football.
• 2:28
  Is.
• 2:29
  Is there ever really an honest coaching staff?
• 2:31
  I just.
• 2:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I truly believe there are some, but this was not among them.
• 2:38
  So.
• 2:39
  And kind of the way I got into it was that I had, I had acquired like a mailer.
• 2:45
  You know, it's basically a brochure magazine, you know, 20 page or something like that that they would send to football recruits, you know, as they were recruiting for the 1970 season.
• 2:57
  And so it was all, you know, nicely done.
• 3:01
  And the, in the.
• 3:03
  Yeah, had the inside cover and then you have page one is this nice statement on values.
• 3:09
  And then it goes and you know, does talks about the program facilities and you know, coaching profiles.
• 3:15
  So the head coach was Frank, I'm sorry, Chuck Fairbanks.
• 3:21
  He had Jim Dickey as his defensive coordinate, coordinator Barry Switzer as the oak coordinator, Jimmy Johnson as the D line coach, Larry Lacewell is the another defensive coach and Galen hall was the wide receivers coach.
• 3:37
  So every one of those guys became a head coach, had, you know, they were successful coaches.
• 3:44
  Right.
• 3:44
  In part because they were part of that tree.
• 3:47
  Right.
• 3:47
  But, but they were also, you know, qualified Guys, but a lot of them ran into NCAA challenges.
• 3:56
  So Fairbanks left after 1972 season, took the Patriots job.
• 4:05
  But like two days later or whatever it was, the NCAA announced that they, they were sanctioning them for 107 recruiting violations.
• 4:17
  And so they were banned for two years.
• 4:19
  You know, bull banned for two years and you know, blah blah, blah.
• 4:23
  So he gets, he's succeeded by Barry Switzerland who you know, wins three national championships there and.
• 4:34
  But he resigned amid a payment scandal and then he goes on to become the coach of the Cowboys and win the Super Bowl.
• 4:44
  So.
• 4:45
  Okay.
• 4:45
  Yeah, don't remind me about that Super Bowl.
• 4:47
  That was painful for me.
• 4:49
  Who they beat you?
• 4:52
  I think, you know, it's a, it's a team that will be left unnamed right now.
• 4:58
  Yeah.
• 5:00
  So Jim Dickey, he became the head coach at Kansas State.
• 5:06
  I didn't find anything that was like, you know, nasty about him.
• 5:10
  But one interesting thing he did was so he's at Kansas State when they were terrible.
• 5:15
  Right.
• 5:16
  And so.
• 5:18
  And they just never had the players.
• 5:20
  One of the things he did one year was he had basically had his 18 best players red shirt so that he'd have the following year he'd have a competitive team because you know, some new guys would develop plus
• 5:32
  he'd have these 18 guys, you know, all back.
• 5:37
  So he kind of concentrated everybody in like one class and they actually made a bowl.
• 5:42
  It was the first bowl game Kansas State went to.
• 5:45
  And then they went fell back into mediocrity once, once all those guys graduated.
• 5:51
  So then you had Jimmy Johnson, you know, national title at Miami.
• 5:56
  Also, you know, back to back Super Bowls in Dallas.
• 6:00
  I'm not aware of anything that he did illegally.
• 6:05
  But he wasn't Miami.
• 6:06
  So you know, other than the thing was the big game, they had game of the century against Notre Dame when he was coaching.
• 6:13
  They had the Catholics versus Convicts game.
• 6:15
  Yeah, yeah.
• 6:15
  It's a negative connotation or somewhere.
• 6:18
  Yeah.
• 6:18
  So I don't know if that was do the stuff before he was at Miami and then Galen hall who maybe didn't do anything incorrectly himself, but he showed up after Oklahoma.
• 6:33
  I think he went to Florida and he becomes the offensive coordinate coordinator there when.
• 6:38
  And it was Florida.
• 6:40
  Charlie Bell was the head coach, Charlie Pell was the head coach.
• 6:43
  And then he's the guy that got, you know, for 107 recruiting violations.
• 6:48
  So he loses his job and Fairbank Switzer had lost his under player payment scandal.
• 6:56
  So.
• 6:56
  But it wasn't the 107 thing.
• 6:59
  So then Hull is promoted to head Coach, he's later got in trouble with the NCAA because he paid his assistance extra money out of his own, his own pocket because there were rules about, you know, assistance could, could
• 7:17
  only earn so much money back then.
• 7:20
  But the, the forgiving thing for him was that that rule was later ruled unconstitutional by the U.S.
• 7:28
  supreme Court.
• 7:29
  And then he ends up on Paterno staff in the final several years.
• 7:36
  Oh God.
• 7:40
  So, you know, this, this whole staff is like, you know, that pig pen guy and, and Charlie Brown.
• 7:46
  There's this cloud that follows them.
• 7:49
  And then, then the other guy that I mentioned was Larry Lacewell.
• 7:53
  Again, to my knowledge there wasn't anything untoward about him, but he ended up being, he had played at Arkansas State and then he returned there and is maybe still is the win, but at the time was the winningest
• 8:07
  all time coach, you know, for Arkansas State.
• 8:09
  So I mean a lot of coaching talent, you know, on that, on that staff, maybe some questionable ethics choices that some of them have made.
• 8:20
  If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying, right?
• 8:25
  So.
• 8:26
  Well, maybe, maybe the two guys that didn't have any violations, maybe they're the ones that wrote the value page then in the pamphlet.
• 8:31
  Yeah, that's probably what happened.
• 8:34
  They could probably spell.
• 8:35
  Yeah.
• 8:37
  So the, the other thing that I did want to mention was normally, you know, I could hold up this object that, the brochure.
• 8:47
  Except that what I do with as much stuff as I can if I buy it, to do a tidbit on it and kind of dig through the thing, then when I'm done with it, if I don't have a
• 8:58
  personal need for it, that I put it on ebay and sell it.
• 9:00
  So, so that one sold okay otherwise.
• 9:04
  But here, here it was.
• 9:06
  I used to hold it just like this.
• 9:08
  Well, by the magic of the Internet though, I'm sure you have images on your, your tidbit.
• 9:14
  So there'll be links in the show notes and you're going to tell us here in a little bit how people can partake in those.
• 9:19
  But there's a link to take you to it and folks can see the images on, on of football archaeology.
• 9:25
  Yeah, not, not in its entirety, but I mean I scan the whole thing, but so if somebody is really needing a scan of that thing, get in touch with me.
• 9:37
  A couple of bucks and stories, man,.
• 9:40
  It's still making money off it.
• 9:44
  All right, Tim, so we just mentioned you have your tidbits coming out.
• 9:48
  You have some great pieces of football history like this.
• 9:52
  Maybe you could share with folks how they could partake in this?
• 9:55
  Yeah, just go to footballarchaeology.com.
• 9:59
  Yeah, it's a substack site, so you can just visit whenever you want.
• 10:03
  You can.
• 10:03
  And you know, you can search the archives, all that kind of thing, or subscribe.
• 10:08
  And you can also follow within the within the substack app.
• 10:15
  And if you're searching for stuff on ebay, just look for the seller named Football Archaeology.
• 10:21
  All my old stuff is out there, at least some of it.
• 10:25
  There you go.
• 10:26
  All right, Tim.
• 10:27
  Well, we appreciate it and we value what you brought to us today.
• 10:31
  Not in a scandalous way that you discussed, but we really value it.
• 10:34
  That is so nice of you to say.
• 10:38
  Okay, thanks a lot.
• 10:40
  That's all the football history we have today, folks.
• 10:43
  Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.
• 10:47
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• 11:00
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• 11:02
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• 11:14
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• 11:21
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• 11:23
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• 11:27
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