Oklahoma reunites after disappointing season, scandal on campus

NORMAN, Okla. — In the days following a blowout bowl loss in December, several Oklahoma players created a leadership council. The goal for the tightknit group of six captains was to enforce accountability and, as junior cornerback Zack Sanchez puts it, "to change the culture around here."

If it was standard operating procedure for college football teams after a disappointing season, that didn't make the task any less real. Going 8-5 when you were expected to contend for the College Football Playoff tends to produce urgency.

It's why Bob Stoops fired longtime assistant coaches and remade his staff, why Oklahoma's offensive scheme is undergoing a radical overhaul, and why this is seen locally as perhaps the most important offseason since Stoops' arrival in December 1998.

"That's not Oklahoma football," Sanchez says of last season. "That's not why we came here."

But then spring practice began — and culture change took on a broader meaning.

On March 8 — one day after the Sooners started spring practice — a video went viral of members of the Oklahoma chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity singing racist lyrics. Suddenly, the six players on the leadership council (along with Sanchez, center Ty Darlington, quarterback Trevor Knight, receiver Sterling Shepard, linebacker Eric Striker and defensive end Charles Tapper) faced a more critical task than making sure guys worked hard and got to meetings on time.

The aftershocks from the video rocked the campus, and the football team. The SAE chapter was disbanded. Two students identified in the video, which had been filmed on a bus during an excursion, were expelled. And inside the football team's meeting room at the Barry Switzer Center, the reactions were varied and visceral.

For several days, the players met for hours on end. Early on, the atmosphere was tense. Emotions ran high. Striker's immediate response to the video was to post a profanity-filled rant on Snapchat.Though he says now he regrets "the curse words," he also says he wouldn't change anything.

"That's how I felt in my heart," he says. "That's what I needed to say. I don't regret it at all."

Other Sooners weren't sure how the racist chant captured on the video applied specifically to the football team. Some noted they didn't come to school to be civil rights activists. But they agreed to follow the leadership council.

As president of the school's chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and one of 15 student athletes with voting membership in the NCAA's new governance structure, Darlington is no stranger to activism. Although he admits the players aren't "the most well-equipped … to deal with these issues," he says their platform — outsized or not — made responding an imperative.

"We didn't have the luxury of not taking a stance," he says. "Ignoring it was not an option. We had to do something."

And Striker adds: "We have to use the platform to bring a change, an awareness and a positive culture change all over, to campuses all over the nation."

With the blessing of Stoops and the school's administration — not that the players were necessarily looking for approval — the Sooners did not practice for a week, but instead made a series of collective statements that included a silent walk, arm in arm, through campus, and a similar maneuver on the practice field a few days later. Stoops calls it an "ugly issue," and says the players' response was "necessary."

"Our players were very thoughtful in how they went about it," he says. "They realize this is an issue around the country and we happened to catch it here, so we're not gonna ignore it and we're gonna make a strong stance against it, and effect change."

The week of protests was followed by spring break. When the players returned to campus, they were also ready to return to practice. But several players say another key moment occurred when Levi Pettit, one of the two students expelled from school after the video, asked to address the football players on the Monday after spring break. He met with four members of the leadership team. According to Darlington and others, Pettit's apology seemed genuine.

"Each of us told him we forgave him," Darlington said, "and we all hugged him and we all prayed together. I think it was a really special moment to see something come full circle."

***

Full circle meant back to football, and to the issues that had seemed so important as spring practice began. In 16 seasons, the Sooners have won eight Big 12 championships. But they haven't played for the national championship since 2008. The perennial power currently ranks below TCU and Baylor in the conference pecking order.

Last season's disappointment was more than the record, it was the expectations. Contending for national titles is the standard at Oklahoma, and the Sooners were coming off a 45-31 blitzing of Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. With the nucleus back from that squad, the Sooners were in everybody's top five to start the 2014 season. The team had embraced the expectations, too; a couple of months before the season kicked off, Sanchez told Paste BN Sports success was defined as "national champion."

Three of the five losses were by a total of nine points. A play here or there would have made a huge difference. But there's no explaining away a 48-14 home loss to Baylor, an avalanche that came when Oklahoma led 14-3 after the first quarter. Or the way the season ended, with a 40-6 loss to Clemson in the Russell Athletic Bowl. As Sanchez puts it, "That's not Oklahoma football."

"We want to be a great football team," Striker says. "We want to win. We want to do the right things to bring Oklahoma football back. That's what we're trying to do.

"We didn't just abort that mission, at all."

***

As the Sooners played their annual spring game on Saturday — spring practice won't actually conclude until next week, when two more practices are scheduled to make up for those missed during the players' protest — they claimed progress on several fronts, including offense, where new offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley's version of the Air Raid has begun to take shape.

"I'm really excited about what we're doing offensively," Stoops says. "There's a real solid and consistent structure and purpose to everything, what we're doing."

The Sooners must still determine a quarterback. Is it Trevor Knight, the star of that Sugar Bowl victory against Alabama who was inconsistent during 2014, with several devastating mistakes, or transfer Baker Mayfield, or maybe someone else? And the offensive makeover doesn't mask an impetus to be better defensively, either; the Sooners will count on newcomers in August to compete at several positions.

Whether it adds up to a return to the championship level expected, both within the program and without, remains to be determined.

"We're gonna fight," Stoops says, "to do everything we can to be back chasing championships."

Darlington's smartphone background is a photo of Clemson defensive end Vic Beasley lying atop Oklahoma quarterback Trevor Knight. The reminder is probably unnecessary.

"I don't think anybody's forgetting that anytime soon," Darlington says. But as they attempt to alter a program's culture, he says they've come to recognize something important: "Things are so much simpler when you're just playing football."

And in an odd way, the Sooners say the racist video and their response has created a different level of accountability and unity among the team. It took something that's "bigger," Sanchez says, "than football.

"It brought us together, man," says Sanchez, adding it might have been "the biggest blessing for this team, as crazy as it might seem."

"We were on the verge of breaking in half, splitting in half," he says. "If we can overcome that, there's nothing football-wise we can't overcome. This is probably the hardest thing we've gone through as a team, more than anything on the football field. Getting through that got me excited about how close this team is and what we can accomplish all together."

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