Bomar scandal will rock Sooners in 2006 and beyond

	Rhett Bomar was expected to lead the Sooners to the Big 12 title this season. Bob Rosato/SI
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Usually, August is about the most upbeat month of the year on a college football fan's calendar. The start of practice is here, the first game is now so close you can smell it and every team in the country is still in the hunt for a championship.

This August, however, is off to a Debbie Downer-style start for fans of several of the nation's powerhouses. It's only been two days, and already the headlines section of this Web site's college football page reads like a horror novel. Alleged steroid use at USC. Arrests at Tennessee. Key players suspended for big games at Miami and Auburn.

While I don't want to make light of any of these situations, it's safe to say that none come close to matching the magnitude of Oklahoma quarterback Rhett Bomar's stunning dismissal Wednesday. Not since the infamous Maurice Clarett's suspension on the eve of the 2003 season has such an important player on such a high-profile team suddenly vanished from the landscape. And as the details of Bomar and banished teammate J.D. Quinn's transgressions have begun to leak, it's clear that this scandal is every bit as seedy, if not more so, than Clarett's.

According to reports, Bomar had an arrangement with an OU-friendly car dealership that paid him thousands of dollars for performing little-to-no work. It's the kind of thing so brazen in its stupidity that you wonder how on Earth the involved parties thought they could get away with it, and yet, none of us are naïve enough to think there aren't plenty of others who do.

As long as there are college football boosters, there will be booster scandals. It comes with the territory. By their very definition, these are the people most zealous about their favorite team, and that eagerness motivates them to do whatever they can to help the cause. Unfortunately, however, the misguided ones often wind up doing far more harm to their cherished team than any benefit they could have provided.

In this case, if the allegations are true, the former proprietors of Big Red Sports/Imports (which has since been sold to an Oklahoma City conglomerate), not to mention Bomar himself, have directly jeopardized the future of their beloved Sooners. We don't know at this point whether the program will face NCAA sanctions. We do know it has lost its projected quarterback for not only this coming season but the next two as well. Not just any quarterback, mind you -- the top-rated high school quarterback in the country three years ago, a guy who figured to shatter nearly every school passing record by the time his playing days were done.

In the short term, Oklahoma might not suffer as badly as you'd think. As luck would have it, the Sooners happen to have a veteran quarterback on their roster, fifth-year senior Paul Thompson, though he's been practicing and playing at receiver for the past year. Thompson saw considerable action in 2003 and '04 in relief of Jason White back when OU was beating people 53-7 and 52-9 and was originally the starter coming out of fall camp last season before Bomar supplanted him.