Boom And Doom

Switzer looked around at his happy bunch, took a long drag on his cigarette and smiled. He has often explained how he succeeds at Oklahoma. It's simple, really. He gets big linemen. He runs the wishbone. And he fills up the backfield with "great, great athletes," blazingly fast, agile players who might be too small to fit in elsewhere but are perfectly suited for his option offense.

"At the Orange Bowl last year our guys were standing out there during practice doing different athletic things, and little Anthony Stafford jumps up in the air and does a gainer," said Switzer. "Just like that. Eric Mitchel, our backup quarterback, says, 'I bet I could do that.' And he just, whoosh, does a back flip. Never done one before. I mean, the damnedest thing you ever saw. These guys just have great athletic talent."

And by "these guys," Switzer means his black players. He's frank about the role blacks play on his team and about his need to search hard for black players in a state that has few of them. If it means raiding another school's turf, so be it. Switzer's success grows because he, a product of the backwater town of Crossett, Ark., has developed a unique rapport with young black men. Switzer is loose, tolerant, aggressive and outside the establishment, qualities young blacks can identify with.

Across the locker room Thompson folded the towel he wore on his uniform. It bore the inscription KING CHARLES VI. What does Switzer think of that?

"Clothes, hair—what the hell does any of that have to do with winning?" he says. "Earrings. Sunglasses. Does any of that tell you whether a player is a great athlete, what kind of competitor he is?"

Obviously not. At least not at Oklahoma. And so the winningest active coach in college football and his gang are headed off to the Orange Bowl to battle Miami on New Year's Day and perhaps win a fourth national championship in 14 years. Miami is the only team to beat Oklahoma in the last three years.

Nebraska will be watching.