With Texas-OU looming, Bomar's worlds away at Sam Houston State

Before his dismissal, Rhett Bomar was on track to start all four years at Oklahoma. Scott Sewell/Icon SMI Austin Murphy's Mailbag Austin Murphy will answer questions from SI.com users. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

One of the first things people told Rhett Bomar when he got to Huntsville, Texas: Don't pick up hitchhikers.

Situated in the Piney Woods, 70 miles north of Houston, Huntsville is the location of Sam Houston State, Bomar's second college. It's also home to eight prisons, including what was for many years the nation's busiest execution chamber. The Longhorns may boast only the fifth-ranked team in college football this week, but when it comes to capital punishment, Texans can proudly boast, "We're No. 1!"

Biblical scholars refer to Adam and Eve's original sin as a "fortunate fall." Many Sooners fans feel the same way about Rhett Bomar's sudden, stunning plunge from grace two years and three months ago. Bomar's exit led, indirectly, to the ascent of Sam Bradford, the supremely gifted redshirt sophomore quarterback who has led the Sooners back to No. 1.

While Texas and OU kick it off at 11 a.m. in the Cotton Bowl this Saturday, Sam Houston's game against Central Arkansas "isn't until six," notes Bomar, now in his second season starting for the I-AA Bearkats. "Sure, I'll probably flip through [the channels] and see how they're doing. It doesn't really bother me. I don't really think about it anymore."

Of course he catches plenty of Big 12 football on the tube. No, he can't help thinking, he admits, "I should be playing there, things like that. But, honestly, I put that out of my head. I've realized that part of my life's over, it's done with. I'm not gonna play there anymore, and I need to focus now on my teammates here, and winning here."

It is grimly appropriate that Bomar should have ended up plying his trade in "Prison City." He never committed a felony, but, looking back on the swiftness with which he was booted from the Oklahoma program in August of 2006, one wonders if he might as well have.

Bomar was a redshirt sophomore and the Sooners' returning starter at quarterback that summer. But he never made it to two-a-days. A University investigation revealed that Bomar and offensive lineman J.D. Quinn had held down no-show jobs at a Norman car dealership. While as many as two dozen OU football players had been employed at the dealership over the previous four years, according to published reports, only Bomar and Quinn were busted. Only those two were disciplined. And that discipline was draconian.

For purposes of comparison, remember that this was on the eve of the 2006 season, in which Troy Smith would lead Ohio State the BCS title game, winning the Heisman in the process. Left unmentioned on the stage at the Nokia Theater the night he accepted that award was the fact that, two years earlier, Smith had accepted $500 from a booster, causing head coach Jim Tressel to ... suspend him for two games.

I bring that up not to demean Smith, who obviously learned from his mistake, but to use it as a frame of reference. Here's another. Bomar's ill-gotten gains, the NCAA later reckoned, came in at some $7,400. Even as he was packing his bags, USC was in Defcon 3 over the status of Dwayne Jarrett, who'd been declared ineligible for receiving "extra benefits" totaling some $18,000 -- the amount of free rent he'd received from the father of a teammate. Since Jarrett had been chipping in $650 a month to defray the cost of his and Matt Leinart's $3,866-per-month lease, the All-American receiver thought everything was on the level. The NCAA ruled that, in this case, ignorance was an excuse. Jarrett's eligibility was restored.

Bomar, for his part, was called into the office of head coach Bob Stoops and kicked off the team. There was no talk of suspensions or probation or second chances, just Old Testament justice. He was gone. That's how Stoops rolls. I don't fault him for that, although it did seem like piling on a few weeks later when the head coach put a figurative boot in Bomar's backside, telling reporters that the young man who'd been on track to be a four-year starter for him was, in retrospect, no great loss: "The truth is we lost a guy who finished the year with 10 interceptions and 10 touchdowns. It isn't like you lose (ex-Heisman winner) Jason White who had maybe 40 touchdowns and seven interceptions. Now that's different."

Asked if he was guilty as charged, Bomar says, "To an extent, yeah." In the same breath, he insists that his malfeasance was "not as bad as everybody tried to make it out to be." He elaborates: "Nobody knows the whole deal, and I'm not gonna get into all that. It's just a lot of stuff that went on that nobody knows about. But, yeah, we made mistakes, and I guess had to suffer the consequences."