If Sooners Play By the Rules, Then Everything Will Be OK

“Oklahoma is back,” Sooner Coach Bob Stoops proclaimed after his team won the national championship Wednesday with a 13-2 victory in Miami over Florida State.

Whether that is good for college football--or for Oklahoma University-- depends on your perspective.

One can only hope that it doesn’t mean a return to the outlaw years under former coach Barry Switzer. When he resigned under pressure in 1989, the Sooners were on three years’ NCAA probation and five players were facing criminal charges ranging from rape to drug possession to discharging a weapon.

In fairness to Switzer, Oklahoma’s problems didn’t start with him. When he began there in 1973, the Sooners were on two years’ NCAA probation.

A former OU president, Dr. George Lynn Cross, once said in seeking appropriations from the state legislature that he “would like to build a university of which the football team could be proud.”

But even he realized how skewed the priorities were in Norman when, after one national championship season, Oklahoma alumni from Muskogee presented Coach Bud Wilkinson with a Cadillac. The same group, recognizing Cross’ efforts to improve the university academically, rewarded him with a cigarette lighter.

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The Washington Redskins hire Marty Schottenheimer as head coach.

Pete Carroll wasn’t available.

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Lou Holtz at one time was considered the heir apparent to Woody Hayes at Ohio State.

Holtz was raised in East Liverpool, Ohio, played football at Kent State and served as defensive backfield coach on Hayes’ staff.

Because of timing, Holtz and Ohio State never got together. But he did play a role in Coach John Cooper’s dismissal. Ohio State Athletic Director Andy Geiger said that the Buckeyes’ loss to Holtz’s South Carolina team in Monday’s Outback Bowl was the “capstone” that sealed Cooper’s fate.

Some of raconteur Holtz’s most colorful stories are about working for Hayes.

Speaking of the 1968 season, Holtz says, “I remember when we beat Michigan, 50-14, and went for two at the end of the game. When I asked Woody why we went for two, he said, ‘Because they wouldn’t let me go for three.’ ”

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USC basketball player Jeff Trepagnier marries his longtime girlfriend to escape the long arm of the NCAA.

She finally made an honest man of him.

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Track and field lost one of its most avid fans last Sunday, when former Sen. Alan Cranston of California died at 86.

Cranston, who lettered on the track team at Stanford in the ‘30s, maintained a vigorous exercise regimen throughout his life. Until the mid-’90s, he was a regular competitor in the Masters division sprint in the L.A. Invitational indoor meet at the Sports Arena.

Although Al Franken, the meet’s promoter, started at some point giving Cranston a head start of 30 yards or more in a 60-yard race, Cranston always was beaten to the finish line.

Franken recalls Cranston calling before a meet a few years ago and asking the names of his competitors.

“Al,” Cranston pleaded after hearing the list, “don’t you have anyone older than me?”

Cranston attended the U.S. Olympic trials last summer at Sacramento.

Holding court one day in a hotel lobby, he told a joke that former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev had told him while they served together in a think thank on nuclear disarmament.

One day during an economic recession, a man standing in a Moscow bread line became so impatient that he announced he would march to the Kremlin and assassinate Gorbachev.

Two hours later, the man returned.

“What happened?” his comrades asked.

“There was a longer line at the Kremlin,” the man said.

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Tiger goes blond.

Wouldn’t stripes have been more appropriate?

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.