By John Shinn
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There was a time when a rivalry was epitomized by the coaches leading the teams. Ohio State’s Woody Hayes and Michigan’s Bo Schembechler could hardly speak to each other during their famous “10-Year War.”
Former Texas coach Darrell Royal has never spoken about former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer in high regard and has tried to avoid the subject over the last four decades.
The Red River Rivalry fed off that animosity. Players picked up on it, fans have run wild with it. It’s all conspired to create a feud that runs 365 days a year.
The bad blood should be in peak form when No. 1 OU (5-0, 1-0 Big 12) faces No. 5 Texas (5-0, 1-0) at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. But the animosity doesn’t permeate from the head coaches the way it used to.
“I’ve never believed you have to hate someone to compete against them,” OU coach Bob Stoops said. “That’s never been our philosophy.”
That’s been one of the changes between OU and Texas over the last decade. Saturday’s meeting will be the 10th between Stoops’ Sooners and Mack Brown’s Longhorns. Stoops owns a 6-3 edge in the previous games. However, he’s never made a big deal out of it.
On his end, Brown has always spoke glowingly about the man who stands on the opposite sideline.
“What I’ve gotten is a great respect for Bob and what he’s done over the last 10 years,” he said. “He’ll be remembered like Barry Switzer and (former OU coach Bud) Wilkinson. He’s done exactly for them what they’ve asked him to do.
“People think Bob and I sit around and fight all the time, but we really don’t.”
One reason for that is simple: They haven’t spent a great deal of time around each other.
Most great coaching rivalries require some sort of personal connection to really ignite. One of the things that helped feed the Red River rivalry in years past was the fact Royal was a former All-American at OU under Wilkinson and always considered the legendary Sooner coach his mentor.
And before Switzer became OU coach in 1973, he’d been an assistant on staff for five years and had played and coached at Arkansas. His biggest rival all those years had been Texas. In the case of Ohio State-Michigan, Schembechler was a former Ohio State assistant under Hayes.
Neither Stoops nor Brown had those deep-rooted connections when they took over their current jobs. But Brown points to other aspects.
NCAA restrictions on recruiting have limited the chances coaches have of bumping into each other on the recruiting trail. Rarely does a player change his mind in the final days before national signing day and spurn one school for the another. Typically, they’ve committed to their school long before October. Winning one game in October doesn’t affect the next recruiting class very much.
But the biggest reason might be the depth of the Big 12 Conference. Prior to the Big 12’s formation, OU and Texas were atop the pecking order in the Big Eight and Southwest Conferences. It was a lot easier to pour all the chips into the Red River Rivalry when what followed was easy wins.
Not anymore. The Sooners host No. 16 Kansas next week. Texas gets No. 3 Missouri.
“Both fellas have to go back to work next week. This is about the conference championship,” Brown said. “We won the game two years ago and everyone thought we were in great shape to win the Big 12. Then we lost to Kansas State and Texas A&M.;
“I know Bob feels the same way. The game is really important to all of us. But after the game, we have to go back to work. That’s one of the things that’s changed, too.”
Stoops pointed to college coaches being a part of the same fraternity more nowadays than ever. Job security is almost nonexistent. Talk radio and message boards are constantly banging away at every move. It can turn rivals into kindred spirits.
“We have all bonded more and have each others’ back,” Stoops said.
John Shinn
366-3536
jshinn@normantranscript.com
