OUTLAND TROPHY AWARD DINNER
TOM OSBORNE LEGACY AWARD WINNER
BARRY SWITZER
1st recipient-Milt Tenopir
2nd recipient - Jim Ridlon
6th Recipient - Fisher DeBerry
9th Recipient - Barry Alvarez
10th and 11th Recipients - Dan Young and Reese Morgan
BARRY SWITZER
After coaching
Switzer was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2004, he received the Jim Thorpe Lifetime Achievement Award. Switzer still resides in Norman, Oklahoma with his wife Becky. In August 2007, XMSN added Switzer as a part of the channel’s expanded college sports coverage. On September 9, 2007 Switzer joined the Fox NFL Pregame show. Switzer got into acting after coaching, playing the part of the Head Coach of the Prattville Pirates in the 1998 movie Possums. Switzer also guest-starred in an episode of TNT’s Saving Grace titled “Do You Love Him?”, which first aired August 11, 2008. In 2006, Switzer and Toby Keith helped found First Liberty Bank in Oklahoma City. He owns Switzer’s Locker Room, Switzer’s Vineyards and a number of other small businesses in the Norman area.
The Tom Osborne Legacy Award was presented — by Osborne to Barry Switzer — at the Outland Trophy Dinner at the downtown Doubletree in Omaha.
University of Oklahoma
Following the 1966 season, Switzer moved to the University of Oklahoma as an assistant coach under new head coach and good friend, Jim Mackenzie. After Mackenzie died of a heart attack following spring practice of 1967, Switzer continued as an assistant under former University of Houston assistant and new Oklahoma head coach Chuck Fairbanks.
When Fairbanks accepted the position of head coach of the New England Patriots following the 1972 season, Switzer was the obvious choice to succeed him.
Switzer became head coach at Oklahoma in 1973, leading the team to undefeated seasons that year and the next. Oklahoma won national championships in 1974, 1975 and 1985 under Switzer’s leadership. The team won or shared in the Big Eight Conference championship every year from 1973 to 1980. During his sixteen years as head coach at Oklahoma, his teams won eight of the thirteen post-season bowl games they played in, and 54 of his players were selected as All-Americans. In 1978, Billy Sims won the Heisman Trophy.
Image result for barry switzerIn 1989, after sixteen years as Oklahoma’s head coach, Switzer chose to resign. Switzer succeeded in getting the better of several famous contemporaries, including a 12–5 mark against Tom Osborne, 5–3 against Jimmy Johnson, 3–0 against Bobby Bowden, and 1–0 against Joe Paterno, Bo Schembechler, and Woody Hayes. Along with Bennie Owen, Bud Wilkinson, and Bob Stoops, he is one of four coaches to win over 100 games at the University of Oklahoma. No other college football program has more than three coaches to accomplish such a feat.
Switzer was known as an outstanding recruiter of high school talent, particularly in the neighboring state of Texas. His record against Texas in his sixteen seasons as Oklahoma’s Head Coach is 9–5–2. The 1984 game between these two universities ended in a 15–15 tie by virtue of a field goal by Texas on the last play of the game. On the next to last play of the game, however, there had been an apparent interception of a Texas pass thrown into the end zone by Oklahoma’s Keith Stansberry. The pass was, however, ruled incomplete and the interception waved off. Bruce Finlayson, Supervisor of Officials for the 1984 game later admitted, as reported in the Daily Oklahoman newspaper the following Monday, October 14, 1984, that the officiating crew had made an error in not confirming Oklahoma’s interception. The correct call would have preserved a 15–12 Oklahoma victory and changed Switzer’s record against Texas to 10–5–1. Switzer has a 3–0–1 record against UT-Austin’s Darrell Royal and a 2–0 mark against that university’s David McWilliams
Copyright 2017 Greater Omaha Sports Committee
Bob Mancuso, Jr. – Chairman
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