The Michigan Wolverines–this year’s national football champion accused of cheating–reminds us that winning and scandal have plagued other great programs over the years. Here’s what happened at the University of Oklahoma.
OU football is historic, having won nearly 1000 games all-time, winning 75% of the time, and claiming seven national championships. But in the late 1980s, the Sooners faced a headline-making situation of another kind.
For decades, athletes on scholarship at many schools lived in athletic dorms. It was a way of building brotherhood off the field. But as we know from the basketball-related scandal at the University of Louisville in 2015, living separately can yield issues.
That happened at OU in 1989 when three OU football players–Nigel Clay, Bernard Hall, and Glen Bell–surrendered themselves to local authorities, charged with first-degree rape of a 20-year-old OU co-ed in the athletics dorm. If convicted, the crime carried a five years-to-life sentence. In addition, Clay and Hall were charged with furnishing and supplying alcoholic beverages to the victim and her underage friend. When authorities investigated the rape change, they found that the incident had witnesses who cheered on the attack. They also found drugs and weapons on site.
It wasn’t the first time issues surfaced at the dorm. Eight days earlier, freshman cornerback Jerry Parks shot sophomore offensive lineman Zarak Peters in the chest after a late-night argument. And even that incident wasn’t the whole story. Brian Bosworth, a nationally known college football player who played for the Sooners earlier in the decade, wrote about other incidents in his 1988 memoir, The Boz: Confessions of a Modern Anti-Hero. Among other things, he wrote about OU players using cocaine.
Given issues at OU and elsewhere, it’s unsurprising that the NCAA forbade athlete-only dorms starting in 1996. Henceforth, dorms had to be at least 51% non-athletes to be sanctioned for use.
