In September 1965, when NBC sent Jim Simpson and Bud Wilkinson to Athens to broadcast the GeorgiaAlabama game, it was the first time network television had ever telecast a game from UGA’s historic campus.
They arrived on Thursday, and the late Dan Magill was the dedicated host, which meant that I, as his eager assistant, was allowed to tag along. Both Simpson and Wilkinson were generous with their time – and I was all ears.
Simpson was reading James Michener’s bestselling novel, The Source, a sweeping history of the Jewish people from prehistoric times to the 1948 founding of the state of Israel. That made a distinct impression on me, underscoring how important it was to read books with titles on the best-seller lists.
Simpson left the book in his motel room when he left on Sunday and called later that day to see if we could retrieve it and send it to him. I thought about reading it before getting it off in the mail, but then I saw it was over a thousand pages long. I quickly realized I could never get it back to him in a timely manner, so off it went.
I also spent time talking football with Wilkinson and made notes of his off-hand remarks, which were quite insightful. He was a fluid conversationalist, introspective, and with invaluable nuggets of information.
From that weekend, highlighted by Vince Dooley’s second team upsetting Alabama 18-17 in the famous flea-flicker game, a warm friendship developed with the great Oklahoma coach, who won three national championships and dominated the old Big Eight to the extent it was nicknamed “Oklahoma and the Seven Dwarfs.”
When Bud retired, he briefly entered politics, then joined the ABC-TV team, and became a consultant to President Kennedy on physical fitness. We kept in touch right up to his death in 1994 at 77 years old. I also recorded conversations with him about his years in Norman, which many OU friends have enjoyed over the years.
Bud was a very smart man and an innovative coach. In one of our conversations, he revealed his philosophy of substitution in a game.
“There is a point,” he said, “to where substituting the second team means that because of their freshness they can perform as well as the first team or better when fatigue sets in.”
With the remarkable depth his Sooner teams had, Bud established an unbelievable record of 47 straight victories. There is perhaps no such thing as an unbreakable record, but that one’s likely to remain intact for years to come – maybe forever.
Check the numbers of Bud’s years at Oklahoma: 145-29-4 for a winning percentage of .826. After a lull, Barry Switzer became the next great Sooner coach when Jim McKenzie died after one season on the job, and Switzer, because of his expertise with the wishbone offense, was hired.
Bud coached at Oklahoma for 17 years, while Switzer was there for 16, and his record was a sparkling 157-29-4 with a winning percentage of .837. Switzer, too, won three national championships in 1974, 1975, and 1985 before moving on to the Dallas Cowboys, where he won a Super Bowl – one of just three NFL coaches (along with Pete Carroll and Jimmy Johnson) to enjoy that distinction.
Another lull took place in Norman when the Sooners hired Bob Stoops, who would become Oklahoma’s winningest coach with a 191-48 record and a national championship in his 18 years with the team. He won the national title in 2000 and reached the national championship game four times overall.
For decades, Oklahoma and Nebraska owned the Big Eight Conference, either winning or tying for the championship every year but four: Missouri won the title in 1960, and Colorado claimed the championship in 1961, 1989, and 1990.
Running the football has always been a way of life in those conferences. Wilkinson, who mastered the split-T option, explained why: “You play in a wind tunnel most of the time.”
It has been quite a highlight to have enjoyed a close relationship with OU’s three greatest coaches, hosting them in Athens, seeing them in Norman, and recording interviews with each.
That was an era when coaches had time for a meal and conversation. Not anymore. They spend all their time on their cell phone now, recruiting. To hell with NIL.