It's open season on Sooners
Published: 7/13/2007 11:45 PM
Last Modified: 7/13/2007 11:45 PM
The headline in Friday's World: "Sooners paying penalty in national perception." Judging from a quick run across the Web, that's putting it mildly.
A blog from the San Francisco Chronicle: "The Oklahoma Sooners now maintain a special place in college football history with Wednesday's announcement that the Sooners must forfeit the entire 2005 season and remain on probation until 2010. Coach Bob Stoops' record takes a major hit thanks to some meathead car dealer... Barry Switzer almost killed the program in the late '80s with a series of egregious, outlaw violations. The Sooners' fate is proof that it's not about getting caught, it's about being dumb enough to get caught -- over and over and over."
CBSSportsline.com columnist Mike Freeman's message to OU, tongue buried in cheek: "You are among the standard bearers for lack of institutional control with your sexy five probations. You are improper benefits. You are improper recruiting. You are failure to monitor, improper inducements, improper entertaining, unethical conduct, improper lodging and any other improper you can think of. You are stop your grinnin' and drop your linen. You are ... gats and strippers. Now, you have been reduced to the pedantic by partnering with car dealers... You used to be automatic weapons, now you're time cards on a car lot. Shame on you, Oklahoma. You're cliché now."
Gil LeBreton of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "The university plans to appeal? That takes a lot of gall. Especially, as the NCAA report notes, when OU was already on probation for failure to adequately monitor its basketball program, and especially since this is Oklahoma’s seventh major infractions case."
Grant Teaff, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, to the Los Angeles Times: "It's a penalty that goes on penalizing because it's there every year. Fifty years from now, folks will look at (OU's 2005) records and say, 'What does that mean?'"
The Sporting News columnist Matt Hayes: "So now we hear Oklahoma is appealing an NCAA decision that essentially let the Sooners walk away from the bank with a bag full of loot. I'm still trying to figure out what OU is appealing: that the NCAA somehow didn't put 2 and 2 together and come up with Adrian Peterson drove a flashy car for three weeks and no one at that fine institution knew or questioned about it?"
Finally, on the lighter side, there were the five penalties the Northwest Times Herald of Illinois deemed worse than what the NCAA handed down. Number five: "Reinstall John Blake."
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
