OUInsider - Owen Field

Jeewhiz hoodle. At least put crimes in quotation marks.

Plus, we had David Swank as OU President and he detested the football program.

The only accusation regarding money to players was hart lee dykes telling the ncaa that OU offered him $1000 on signing day. That kid brought down both OU and osu. Switzer to this day laughs about that ridiculous story. Says no one on his staff ever would have been that stupid, to offer cash at a signing ceremony. The charges were quite lame, the most severe true charge, was that a van was rented to drive recruits around town. Yes, that was illegal. The ncaa wanted to get OU at that time, so they did.

Probation stemmed around a alleged $5000 cash inducement to Dykes. Switzer I can promise you knew nothing of it because he is too smart for that. Some think the assistant coach might have been under pressure to sign some players in his area. OU knew how high the bidding was and knew that getting involved would be fruitless.

A player got a summer job in Lindsay for way too much money for so little work. Mack Brown was given some money as his assistant coach illegally. Switzer flew a recruit home for a funeral. If you don't think players didn't go to Switzer and not get money for real serious reasons you are naive.

But the real reason he was fired or forced out was the rapes,shootings on campus,and drug busts by their star player Charles Thompson. Swank really had little pull with the Regent's and maybe painted a worse scenario about our national reputation than was the case but the Regents just tired of Barry's lack of control of the program. Anybody that thinks Swank snapped his fingers and the Regents said okay are naive. Then ask Barry today yourself. Swank wanted him gone but enough regents did too. People to this day give Swank too much credit when he had no power. He was an interim President for gosh shakes.

What made the Dykes situation all the more ridiculous is that $1,000 wouldn't have gotten a second look from him. And I doubt he'd have said anything. He'd have just kept it and laughed at OU if someone had tried to hand him such a piddly amount.

What still iirks me about the whole Dykes case with the NCAA is that OSU bought him and never really got "convicted" in the court of public opinion. They flirted with the death penalty, but all you heard was how saintly that Barry Sanders was, and how awful OU was (not that it wasn't somewhat deserved....).

David Swank is evil !