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Pat Jones' Tales from Oklahoma State Football
CHAPTER EXCERPT
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| Pat Jones' Tales from Oklahoma State Football by Pat Jones with Jimmie Tramel |
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This excerpt may not be reproduced without express written consent of Sports Publishing LLC. Please feel free to link to this page. We encourage anyone interested in receiving a percentage of online sales from their referrals on this title to sign up for our AFFILIATE PROGRAM. " |
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EXCERPT : from Chapter Eight, “Run for the National Title: 1984”
Thurman Breaks Out
We got our first real sign of what Thurman Thomas was all about in a 34-6 win over Kansas State. Thurman entered the game on our third series, finishing with 206 yards and two touchdowns on 34 carries.
It was debated when we should start him. We were giving him more and more carries, but we had Charlie Crawford and we had Shawn Jones. We knew Thurman was good and we wanted to get him more and more work. That was a game where we were able to do it.
Moving on Up
We continued to win and people ranked ahead of us fell by the wayside. We were on course for the most high-stakes Bedlam game in history, but we didn’t want to overlook anyone on the way.
We beat Missouri 31-13 under temporary lights—it was one of ESPN’s early night games—and we scored on consecutive possessions after Leslie O’Neal blocked a field goal attempt that could have cut our lead to 17-16.
Then, on a cold and rainy day in Stillwater, we held on to beat Iowa State 16-10. The Cyclones had a fourth-and-15 at our 27 at the end of the game and Windell Yancy knocked down a pass intended for Tracy Henderson at the 10. Yancy paid dividends for the OSU basketball program later. One of his relatives, Terrel Harris, became a Cowboy basketball player.
No. 2 vs. No. 3
We were given a lot of national media attention in the month leading up to the Oklahoma game. The New York Times did a big spread on us. Sports Illustrated had been down to Stillwater. The bowl people were all over us.
Leading into this Bedlam ballgame, all those things were happening. It was just a totally magical time for everybody, and the kids were handling the pressure great even though there was a lot of hype—and justifiably so, because this was the biggest Bedlam game ever played.
We were ranked No. 2 and OU was ranked No. 3 in the UPI poll. The rankings were reversed in the AP poll. Basically, we were in a two-game playoff for the national championship.
The winner of the Bedlam game was going to go to the Orange Bowl to plead a case for the national title. That was the year BYU would win the national championship, going unbeaten and defeating a 6-5 Michigan team in the Holiday Bowl.
We knew this was high-stakes stuff when we went down to Norman on the bus. Our approach was to just go down there and kick the door in. The bus ride was almost like a presidential caravan. Cars were honking and everything.
Pregame Tidbits
Coaches always meet with the TV crew before a televised game so the broadcasters can get a little insight. We were a little bit less than truthful with Coach Broyles, the color analyst, because we were doing some stuff against Oklahoma’s wishbone that I didn’t want to tell him. Later on I apologized, but we didn’t want to divulge our defensive game plan to anybody.
That was my first time at OU as a head coach. I was standing outside the dressing room pretty early before the game and not many people were around. Nobody was belligerent to us or anything.
A middle-aged guy with a nice-looking kid stood over where I was smoking a cigarette. They had their red gear on and I could tell they were looking at me, so I walked over and introduced myself. The guy said he didn’t want to bother me, but the kid really wanted my autograph. And he had on all of his OU stuff. They were OU people. The dad said he could not thank me enough. That always stuck with me, because I never really did get wrapped up into the Bedlam rivalry a great deal. I was struck by the respect the OU folks had for us and for our football team.
Main Event
The biggest Bedlam game ever played was a pretty even contest. We scored a touchdown right before the half. The clock was about to run out before we scored and I don’t recall us having any timeouts left. The OU players were slow lining up because they wanted time to expire. Referee John McClintock, who later became the Big Eight’s director of officials, got in there to stop the clock with four seconds left, and Rusty Hilger threw a fade to Jamie Harris for a touchdown to tie the score at 7-7.
OU’s coach, Barry Switzer, ran down John when the half ended and got after him pretty good. I remember going by, slapping John on the rear, and saying, “Nice call, good job” because I didn’t want Barry to intimidate him too much.
Early in the second half, Rusty Hilger dropped a snap, picked it up, and threw a 77-yard touchdown pass to Malcolm Lewis to give us a 14-7 lead.
Andy Dillard and Scott Verplank, two pro golfers who played at OSU, were on the sideline with us. I want to say Dillard had a Boston Bruins jersey on, but when Hilger hit that throw, I remember seeing Dillard turn around to the OU crowd and unload with both middle fingers. I told him to quit it, because I didn’t want to make those people any madder than they already were.
OU scored 10 points to go up 17-14 entering the fourth quarter and it looked like we were going to get the ball for a chance to make a drive and win the game. Bobby Riley fumbled a fair catch and OU recovered at our 25, setting up a 20-yard Spencer Tillman touchdown run. That was the last score of the game and OU won 24-14.
Coach Broyles asked me later why I didn’t go out and complain to the officials that Riley had been interfered with while trying to catch the punt. But what good does it do to complain about a call? I wasn’t into whining about calls. They called it and I wasn’t going to talk them out of it. I didn’t complain about it after the game, either. I didn’t want the whole thing to come across as, “The Aggies are griping about being cheated.” That was just a high-stakes game that we didn’t win.
Whole New Ballgame
I really thought that game took the Bedlam rivalry to another level. I thought it changed the complexion of the event even though we didn’t win. It was the only game on national television that day. The whole deal was as big as it could literally get. It was the last game of the regular season and the only way it could have been bigger would have been if we were ranked Nos. 1-2 instead of Nos. 2-3.
I thought everybody showed respect. I can’t remember anybody showing any hatred. It was competitive. They knew we had a good football team. From that game on, I think Bedlam took a little bit different tone.
OSU beat OU in 1976 and we should have won that 21-20 game against them in 1983, but this was a classic high-stakes, end-of-the-season matchup. Even though we didn’t win, I thought it almost erased the “poor Aggie” concept. We had a very good football team. We were ranked high. Even though we were not going to the Orange Bowl, we were going to the Gator Bowl. We still had a pretty good sense of accomplishment.
Gator Hunt
The Gator Bowl people were ecstatic over landing two top-10 teams. We were No. 9 and South Carolina was No. 7. Plus, South Carolina was going to bring about a jillion fans and our people were excited to go to Florida. Coincidentally, we stayed at the Sea Turtle Inn on Jacksonville Beach. That was the same place I had gone to accept a job at Pitt a few years earlier.
Before the Gator Bowl, I flew to New York with Pat Quinn, our sports information director, so we could attend a promotional deal for the bowl staged by ABC. South Carolina’s head coach, Joe Morrison, was there, too.
We were staying right off Central Park and ABC was playing it up as Joe Morrison’s return to New York. Joe was a big-name guy up there because he had been with the New York Giants. They brought back a bunch of his old teammates, including Sam Huff and Fran Tarkenton. It was a who’s who of all the Giants I had watched as a youngster, so they were larger than life to me.
I was a first-year head coach, so they didn’t know me from Adam. I didn’t really know Joe Morrison, but I knew of him. We hadn’t been at that function five minutes and they were all over Joe, making a big fuss about him. Joe came up to me and said something like, “As soon as this is over, we are going to the bar. I’ve got to get my butt out of here.”
Joe did not like the attention. I think he felt a little bit awkward because they made a big deal over him and not us, even though I didn’t feel slighted. But I gained a comrade out of that situation. Joe Morrison was a close friend until he died.
Wild Ride
During our team’s bus ride to the Gator Bowl, we became caught in traffic amid the South Carolina crowd. It got a little crazy. They weren’t rocking our bus, but they were damn close and a lot of words were directed at our players. They said some things that weren’t real nice to some of our black kids. It got very quiet, and either Rodney Harding or one of our coaches said, “We’ve got them right where we want them.” That lightened up the mood and off we went.
Aggie Magic
I allowed myself to be wired for a heart monitor and sound at the Gator Bowl. ABC thought that was neat.
So many Gamecock people were in the stands that it was almost a South Carolina home game, but we had a lot of people there, too. The game set an attendance record of more than 82,000, and it was the largest crowd ever to watch OSU play football.
We had the best team. I knew that when the game started. We scored the first 13 points, but they caught up with us and went ahead by a point. We had to score on our last drive, which started at our 12, and I told Larry Coker that it was four-down territory all the way.
We started dinking and dunking and got it across midfield, converting a fourth-and-six along the way. We were in field goal range. I told Larry, “Go ahead, let’s try to keep going.” We hit Barry Hanna on a crossing route. They busted a coverage. We were hollering for Hanna to get out of bounds so the clock would stop. We thought he got knocked out of bounds, but he didn’t. Bang, he made a great run down the sideline, bouncing off a couple of guys, and went in for a 25-yard touchdown reception with about a minute left. It was Hanna’s only touchdown that season. We went for two and won the game, 21-14.
Thurman Thomas ran for 155 yards and was MVP of the game. Leslie O’Neal and Rod Brown both were named All-Americans.
Victory Lap
The bus ride back to the hotel after the game was probably the most pleasurable hour that I have ever spent. Nobody else had ever won 10 games in a season at Oklahoma State, but we did it. We made a run at a national championship. We didn’t accomplish that, but we knew we were going to finish in the top 10. It would have been a real injustice had that group of kids not finished in the top 10.
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