Barry Switzer All-Timers vs. Bob Stoops’ All-OU Team: The Rosters

What if you could organize a game that would feature the best OU players under Barry Switzer – in their prime, of course – against a football team made up of the best players who have played under head coach Bob Stoops. Which team would prevail in such as fantasy contest?

In Part II of our four-part series pitting these two OU All-Star teams against each other, we examine the rosters and the matchups on both sides.

While there are many components to a best-of-the-best team of all-star talent, let’s begin with the Switzer All-Timers and the quarterback position. Switzer won three of Oklahoma’s seven national championships – two of them with Steve Davis at quarterback and another with Jamelle Holieway taking the snaps from center, both of them operating out of OU’s famed Wishbone attack of the 1970s and ’80s.

Both Davis and Holieway (who forever will be remembered as the player who replaced Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Troy Aikman as the Sooner starting quarterback) were especially talented quarterbacks in OU’s explosive, run-dominant Wishbone offense. It was not at all uncommon for Switzer’s Sooners to run the ball as many as 75 times a game back then out of their high-powered, triple-option attack.

Aug 30, 2014; Norman, OK, USA; Former Oklahoma Sooners head coach Barry Switzer on the field during the game against the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

Davis did not achieve All-America status in his Oklahoma career, nor was he an All-Conference selection, but he easily could have been the poster boy for a “gamer” who knew how to win, as his 32-1-1 career record as the Sooner quarterback will attest. For the sake of our OU all-star fantasy game, Davis gets the call as starter for the Switzer All-Timers.

In selecting Davis’ backfield cast, you can easily go three or four deep with running-back possibilities, but it would be hard to beat a combination of Billy Sims, Greg Pruitt and Joe Washington, all three two-time All-Americans.

Switzer, never a big fan of putting footballs in the air in the form of the forward pass, subscribed to the oft-quoted football precept: “Three things can happen when you pass the football, and two of them are bad.” But in this game, either as an element of surprise or out of necessity, if he needed to throw the ball, he would have two sure-handed receivers in wide-out Tinker Owens and tight-end Keith Jackson.

Up front on offense, the Switzer All-Timers are anchored by a pair of two-time All-Americans: Mark Vaughn and Greg Roberts, who played in the mid-1970s. The remainder of the Switzer offensive line is composed of another two-time All-American, Mark Hutson, who played on the 1986 OU national championship team, and center Kyle Davis and Karl Baldischwiler, both of whom played on Sooner championship teams in the 1970s.

The Switzer offense would line up across from a Stoops All-Time defensive front made up of Kelly Gregg at nose guard, flanked by tackles Gerald McCoy and Tommie Harris and Dan Cody at defensive end. Behind them, at linebacker, are Curtis Lofton, Teddy Lehman and Rocky Calmus.

Anchored by consensus All-Americans Roy Williams at safety and Derrick Strait at one of the corners, along with fellow deep defenders Brandon Everage and Brodney Pool, the Stoops defense is probably better geared at stopping the run than the pass. But the bigger question is how well would it hold up against a four-pronged Wishbone option run game?

Matching the speed of the Switzer offense would not be an issue for the Stoops “D.” The telling factor would be how well Switzer’s Wishbone offense is able to protect the football, and then it would come down to which side is better able to exert its talent and its will and, of course, make tackles and plays.

Oct 4, 2014; Fort Worth, TX, USA; Oklahoma Sooners head coach Bob Stoops on the sidelines against the TCU Horned Frogs at Amon G. Carter Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

In contrast to the high-risk, high-reward, beat-you-with-speed running game of the Switzer team that keeps you guessing and is difficult to stop on defense, the Stoops All-OU team features a high-scoring, quick-strike offense that relies largely on a wide-open, spread passing attack, something that was totally foreign to the great Sooner teams that came before the Stoops era.

Stoops’ teams never abandoned the running game, which has been a hallmark of OU’s all-time football success. Instead Stoops and his offensive coaches used the run to set up and ensure better success moving the ball through the air. And the ability to pass the ball, employing multiple receiving weapons and schemes, spreads the defense, which make it easier to run the ball more successfully.

That is a huge reason why practically all of the Oklahoma team and individual passing records have come since Stoops became the Sooners’ 21st head coach in 1999. Stoops has won eight Big 12 championships with six different quarterbacks. Two of this quarterbacks – Jason White (2003) and Sam Bradford (2008) became OU’s fourth and fifth Heisman Trophy winners.

With Sam Bradford, one of only seven Oklahoma quarterbacks all-time to be selected in the NFL draft, calling signals for the Stoops team, joined by Adrian Peterson and DeMarco Murray in the backfield, Ryan Broyles and Mark Clayton spread out wide and Jermaine Gresham at the tight-end spot, the Stoops first-team offense is armed with enough weapons to blow a hole in almost any defense it would come up against. And against an offensive line that averages around 6-4 in height and in excess of 310 pounds (Duke Robinson and Davin Joseph at the guard positions, Trent Williams and Jammal Brown at the tackles and Vince Carter at center), stopping the run would require an extra special defensive effort by the Switzer All-Stars, let along getting to the quarterback to put pressure on Bradford.

Barry Switzer was known more for his offensive inclination, but he did have some outstanding defensive talent to complement his ground-pounding juggernaut offenses. If you pool the best of the defensive talent from the Switzer years together into a single 11-man unit, you would have an intimidating, aggressive defensive lineup capable of imposing its will on the best of the best in the college game. Let’s face it, you don’t put together two undefeated seasons and six one-loss seasons without a stellar, opportunistic defensive effort.

We’re talking about a defensive unit that consists of Dewey and Lee Roy Selmon, Tony Casillas and Rick Bryan as the front four and linebackers Brian Bosworth, Rod Shoate (one of only two three-time football All-Americans in program history) and George Cumby. And if that doesn’t get you attention, add on a secondary of Ricky Dixon, Darrol Ray, Scott Case and Tony Peters for good measure. These four deep defenders had a combined 33 years in the NFL after their careers ended at Oklahoma.

If a game between Switzer’s best vs. Stoops all-time greats came down to special teams, Switzer’s squad would have the advantage in the kicking game with placekicker Uwe “the Foot” von Schamann, but punting downs would be a toss-up between Switzer’s Mike Winchester and Jeff Ferguson of the Stoops team.

Stoops’ guys would have a decided edge, though, in the return game with Antonio Perkins, the Sooners’ career leader in punt return yardage, on the receiving end of punts and DeMarco Murray and Juaquin Iglesias sharing kick-off duties.

Part III on Monday – “The Opening Kickoff and the Grand Dame of OU Fantasy Games”