Eric Dickerson finally comes clean
- Thread starter WoadBlue
- Start date
What to me is the funniest and most horrible part of the huge level dirty recruiitng out TX back then was that SMU, the one that got the Death Penalty, was not the worst offender, not in terms of either the most bought players or the longest running super dirty program. That title belongs to Oklahoma under Barry Switzer. The OU boosters, and staff, had mastered that pattern during the early 1970s, and when it hit overdrive in the SWC in the late 1970s, it was very much an attempt by TX schools to catch up to OU to not be left behind in recruiting their own state.
Barry dirty? Shirley, you jest.
So far as a system is concerned, I wonder if any could have rivaled Auburn's.
Auburn indeed has a very long history of corrupt recruiting. And 'system' is a perfect way ton describe it. Back to the late 1940s, Auburn had fans who scouted AL and GA HS games to spot top players and find out which had very poor families - it was those they would bribe. It just was never nearly as successful as what Switzer accomplished. For every 1 Cam Newton that Auburn got, Switzer got 5 or 6 very costly top recruits.
Bill Dooley knew all the SEC dirty secrets - Vince played at Auburn and Bill at Miss St. One of the jokes that Bill told often was that his family, especially Vince, was so honest that they did not take advantage of the Auburn system of recruiting, and Miss St was just too poor to offer him even a decent meal plan.
I remembered that and laughed even more when we learned that it was poor Miss St that Auburn outbid to sign Newton.
Switzer ran a filthy program at Oklahoma. His whole backfield was selling coke at one point. He didn’t care what you did off the field as long as you produced on Saturday.
That was awful. Dupree was exactly the wrong kind of kid to go there. He very much was a small town innocent who just loved playing football. And as far as I can tell, virtually none of the money that paid for him to go to OU ever went to him or his mama.
