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Making a match OU's addition offers a peek into scheduling machinations
Updated: Friday February 23, 2001 9:53 AM
You get the feeling that any day now, Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops is going to bolt upright in bed at 3 a.m. and scream out, "I agreed to play whom?" The recent announcement that the second game of the Sooners' defense of their national championship will be on Sept. 1 at Air Force makes it appear that Stoops has let a certain giddiness overtake his coaching common sense. There's a reason that for more than a year, Col. Randy Spetman, the Air Force athletic director, has been searching for an opponent willing to come to Colorado Springs this fall. No one wants to play Air Force. In 17 seasons, not only has coach Fisher DeBerry won consistently (135-72-1, .651), but he has won consistently using the wishbone. Most coaches would rather find an NCAA investigator on their doorstep than a wishbone offense on their schedule. The identity of the coaching sage who said, "It's easy to defend the wishbone. Give me 13 guys and I'll shut that thing down," is long forgotten. But wishbone football demands a precision from the defense that isn't required the other 10 weeks of the season. It's like dropping a French student into Spanish class for a week. Certain aspects of the class will seem familiar, but all in all it's a different language. In this case, Stoops deserves what he's getting. The Sooners bailed out of a home-and-home with Arizona State because Stoops didn't want to return to Tempe in 2002, when the Sooners already have Alabama on their schedule. Never mind that the deal with Arizona State had been made in 1995. Oklahoma was willing to travel because the addition of a Aug. 25 home game with North Carolina gave the Sooners seven home games even without Arizona State. Though Stoops wouldn't have minded an eighth home game, the wear on the Memorial Stadium field, not to mention the fans who fill it, dictated that the Sooners advertise themselves as willing to travel. That's rare in the scheduling game. Big-name teams usually don't want road games. Spetman says he talked to Oregon State, UCLA, USC, Arizona State, Kansas and Georgia Tech, among others. They all told him, in so many words, to take a leap into the wild blue yonder. Air Force has 11 games on its 2001 schedule. But one of them is a road trip to Hawaii, which allows the Falcons to play a 12th game. Of their 11 scheduled matchups, only five were at home. "If we only have five home games, my revenue is very low," Spetman says. "How goes football is how goes the whole department." Before Stoops agreed to play the game, however, he called DeBerry. Timing is everything. Once Stoops figured out that Falcons quarterback Mike Thiessen has exhausted his football eligibility and that Air Force doesn't have any experienced quarterbacks, he decided he would like to spend a late summer afternoon in the mountains. However, Air Force still has one problem with the Oklahoma game. The Falcons already have a contest scheduled for Sept. 1 against Division I-AA Southwest Texas State. Spetman says that if he can't find another date to play Southwest Texas State, the Academy will have to pay the school a penalty for dropping the game. Of all the problems in his job, he says, "scheduling ranks right up there at the top," Spetman says. "It gives you ulcers." Sports Illustrated senior writer Ivan Maisel covers college football for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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