"I am real proud …God put me in a very good place."A gentleman named
Brad McRae spoke those words last year, near the end of a successful fund-raiser for the local
United Way
in Norman, Oklahoma. According to a report chronicling the event, which raised more than $19 million, McRae, the co-owner of a local car dealership, spoke movingly of coming to the city as an adolescent after losing both of his parents in a plane crash. He recalled his high-school years saying he often "slept in a park all night in my car."
That night, McRae's dealership donated two automobiles to the cause.
There's no reason you should know Brad McRae, unless you're, like him, a self-described "die-hard"
Oklahoma Sooner fan. McRae is one of the principals in the roughish drama that unfolded this week when starting quarterback Rhett Bomar and his roommate, offensive lineman J.D. Quinn, were punted off the Sooner team after a university investigation revealed the two players had pulled an old-school scam by being paid for work they never actually did, a major NCAA no-no.
Back in the day, jocks were often caught earning a few bucks an hour for things like checking to see if the school gymnasium was still standing or whether the sprinkler system worked. In the summer and fall of 2005, Bomar and Quinn apparently clocked in at McRae's Big Red Sports/Imports dealership then clocked out later in the day. Trouble was, in between they were in class or at practice – anyplace but at Big Red.
OU head coach
Bob Stoops, a New Jack no-nonsense kid of guy whose team was to contend for college football's so-called national championship this season, dumped the two players almost immediately after hearing the results of the investigation. He called the decision "cut and dried."
A bit of disclosure here: If you're a devotee of "Pass the Word," you already know I grew up as a "die-hard" Sooner fan. I was a kid during the meat of the Wishbone Era when workmanlike quarterbacks like
Jack Mildren handed off to nifty runners like ,b>Greg Pruitt and
Billy Sims, who routinely broke off heart-thrilling 50-, 60- and 70-yard touchdown runs. And when brickwall-like defensive linemen like LeRoy, Lucious and Dewey, the
Selmon brothers, vacuumed opposing runners as if they were dust bunnies. I'm a grown-up now, too big for such passions and, of course, a journalist of the most impartial stripe. But if you want to see me cry, mention Nebraska and Johnny Rodgers and "punt return" in the same sentence.
That said, Stoops did absolutely the right thing. As have other coaches during perhaps the most renegade off season college football has seen in some time. Miami's
Larry Coker may have also cost his team its title shot by suspending four players, including two starters, from the Hurricane's season-opener against Florida State for various violations. Auburn is sitting a couple of talented linebackers for three games after an academic brouhaha that still hasn't quite settled. And four Tennessee players have been arrested since May; one was kicked off the team.
Stoops did the right thing for several reasons. For one, the stakes are huge.
NCAA sanctions -- including banishment from the post season and loss of scholarships -- can stymie a program for years. For a top-ranked program with annual hopes of qualifying for the
Bowl Championship Series, the financial hit can be in the millions. No player, no matter how talented, is worth the risk.
Stoops' move also sends exactly the right message in an era when flaunting the rules has almost become its own sport. Bomar and Quinn didn't just make a youthful mistake; they willfully, and with calculation, pimped the system, laughing all the way to direct deposit. But they got busted. Neither should be allowed to play college football anywhere for a year, even if they make restitution (and they should). I don't care if itty-bitty schools like Texas A&M Commerce are salivating at the possibility that Bomar, once one of the nation's top prep quarterbacks at Grand Prairie (Texas) High, might come their way. I'm trying to teach my kids about accountability. Help me out folks!
McRae is the kind of die-hard who fuels the frenzy surrounding college sports. There are hundreds of thousands like him all across the nation, from Maine to Monterey. Four years ago he placed a bet with a local sports radio host, promising to change the name of his dealership to Big Orange Sports/Imports if rival Oklahoma State (orange is the Cowboys' color) beat the Sooners in what's known as the Bedlam Bowl. The Cowboys got the upset and while McRae couldn't legally change the name of his business he took the loss good-naturedly and offered to take the bet again the following season.
He won't have that chance this season. In April, he and his partners sold
Big Red to the
Hudiburg Auto Group in nearby Midwest City. "We like the name; they've got a great reputation; and [the former owner]'s got really good people in every aspect of the business," said company president David Hudiburg, at the time of the sale. (The new owners say they cooperated fully with the investigations, though they added that they did not possess of the paperwork dealing with two players' "employment" with the dealership. They added that they no longer employ university athletes.)
Brad McRae is probably really good people. His testimony last year about his personal journey indicates a belief in something greater than himself -- something other than OU football. But his personal passion poisoned his good judgment. He was an enabler in the short-term down fall of two young men and, like them, he should be held accountable.
There was no mention this week of McRae being, say, banned from purchasing tickets this season or attending home games. No talk of accountability on his part, or any sort of restitution.
Sure, McRae and his former partners are probably pariahs in Norman, which just might be punishment enough. Its not a very good place to be at all.
Universities might be fearful of extending their sanctions to the hands that feed them. But until they subject overzealous boosters to penalties similar to those handed down to athletes who violate rules, die-hards will never die. And greedy, gullible young men will always pay the price.
