Thought I'd be the first to post here and remember one of the ALL TIME SOONER GREATS!
Starting off with the opening of a Sports Illustrated article,
PURSUIT OF A BIG BLUE CHIPPER
--DAN JENKINS
Every year he turns up in some little dry-bed town, where the folks are God-fearing, mother-loving, flag-saluting and psychoneurotic about football.
He is big, tough, intelligent, unselfish, a leader.
And fast?
He runs the 100 in 9.4--uphill. He runs the quarter in 46 flat--in the rain.
And his arm? Why it's like one of those bazookies that we kill the Red Communist Nazi menace with.
Everybody in town has seen him flick the ball 60 yards on his knees with two linebackers jerking on his face guard.
Man, if he doesn't have an arm then Johnny Unitas is an old woman.
He's got it all, which is why Ara Parseghian and Bear Bryant and Darrel Royal and the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Celtics and the Morgan Guaranty Trust have all been trying to sign him up since he was in the fourth grade.
And it's why whoever ends up with him will announce it in a press conference on the battleship Missouri and why those who don't will go running off to the NCAA and the FBI.
...Last season Texas offered up its usual phenomenon, this time a quarterback from the flat, arid plains of Abilene. He had all the attributes that make recruiters dance and holler--size speed, arm, brains, moves, family, church, statistics, leadership and handshake.
JACK MILDREN WAS HIS NAME.
He had been throwing touchdown passes on organized teams since the fifth grade, he had always been a winner, he had the savvy that only the son of an ex-coach could have, he had come from a formidable high school with an 8-man coaching staff, and everybody knew about him from UCLA to West Point.
Not that OKLAHOMA needs anything to incur the anger of Texas schools. Long ago Bud Wilkinson started reaching into Texas for good athletes, and last year OKLAHOMA started reaching for Jack Mildren before anyone else.
Maybe it was because of Merril Green and maybe not. Maybe it was because Abilene, being a big oil town, had a lot of well-to-do and influential OU exes, and maybe not.
Maybe it was because an OKLAHOMA coach, Barry Switzer, was practically camping on the Mildren's front lawn, and maybe not.
But on the one weekend he had free from playing a Cooper High game, Jack was invited up to Norman for the OKLAHOMA-Maryland game, and he went.
Finally, Jack made up his mind. It was two months, 27 official coaching visits, 500 letters, 100 telegrams and 150 long distance phone calls later, but he made his decision. He felt sure about his choice, but he wanted to sleep on it onemor night. As he slept, both OKLAHOMA head Coach Chuck Fairbanks and Arkansas Coach Frank Broyles were in Abilene waiting for the word.
Mildren had managed to narrow it down to those two.
The next morning Jack awakened, and his family watched as he called Frank Broyles at the Starlite Motel.
"Coach Broyles," said the quarterback, "I just wanted to let you know first that It's going to be OKLAHOMA."
(You can look this article up on line and read all it. It's lengthy...these are just some excerpts.)
I was in the 8th grade in 1967 when this SI article came out at (what was then) Hefner Jr. High on N. Macarthur in OKC.
The SOONERS were mediocre 6-4 in 1969 with sophomore Mildren at the helm. Mostly he handed the ball to Heisman Trophy winner Steve Owens 30-50 times a game out of the old Power-I formation.
In 1970 after a 2-1 start with a loss 23-14 vs. Oregon St. Switzer convinced HC Fairbanks to install the Wishbone offense in the 2 weeks between that loss and the Red River Shootout.
Which OKLAHOMA lost 41-9!
But the SOONERS quickly turned it around, putting up a 5-2-1 record in their last 8 games.
IT WAS THE BEGINNING OF A PERIOD OF RUNNING THE FOOTBALL DOMINANCE NEVER SEEN BEFORE OR SINCE, AND LIKELY NEVER WILL BE AGAIN!!
