Runners just seem to sprout each year in Norman

NORMAN, Okla. — In 1975, an Oklahoma assistant coach previewed his opening game with me over a beer at an Oklahoma City watering hole.

"Barry wants to get Joe Washington 200 yards," said Jerry Pettibone, talking about the head coach, Barry Switzer. "He wants to get him the Heisman."

A couple of days later, 200 yards for Joe Washington was about the only thing Oklahoma didn't get against Oregon, winning 62-7.

Maybe there was too much sugar to share. In the same starting backfield with Washington were Horace Ivory and Elvis Peacock. About the time Oklahoma had put up six touchdowns, on came the reserves, who were freshmen Kenny King and Billy Sims.

I defy anybody to name a more extravagant collection of running backs on one team in the history of college football.

Before Pettibone went off to join the congenital misery that was Oregon State football — he was head coach there in the mid-1990s — Washington was a valuable all-purpose back for nine years in the NFL. Sims won a Heisman Trophy and had three 1,000-yard seasons with the Detroit Lions.

Peacock and Ivory had multi-year careers in the NFL, Ivory finishing his with the Seahawks. King took a pass and went 80 yards for a touchdown in the 1981 Super Bowl with the Raiders.

Washington's history is intertwined with quarterbacks. In the good years at Oklahoma, it's usually about a running back. This is supposed to be one of those years, and the back is 6-foot-2, 220-pounder Adrian Peterson, whom the Huskies must deal with today.

Switzer, who coached not only those whippets at Oklahoma but Emmitt Smith on a Super Bowl championship team in Dallas, took time this week to assess the latest Sooners thoroughbred.

"He's the big, strong speed back," Switzer says. "A north-south downhill runner, not a stop-start-jump-sideways kind of back. He's a power slasher. He's got enough speed to hit the track and he can run through a tackle."

Peterson does that more frequently when he's not hit head-on.

"His stride is such that he's hard to get both legs wrapped together," Switzer says. "You're usually hitting one leg from the side."

With Oklahoma playing a reputedly dubious talent at quarterback in Paul Thompson, conventional wisdom says you play eight or nine defenders up and assume the pass won't be your Achilles. But the Sooners often spread the field with receivers, so there has to be a measure of defensive honesty.

The premium is thus high on the fundamental things — not overrunning the play or breaching a responsibility.

"We've got to keep him bottled up," says Washington defensive line coach Randy Hart.

Or the Huskies will be hearing "Boomer Sooner" a lot. It's an institution at Memorial Stadium, like the history of running backs.

Billy Vessels, a running back, won Oklahoma's first Heisman in 1952. Steve Owens, a workhorse who had four games of 45 carries or more in his career, accepted the school's second one in 1969. Sims, a prodigious talent, was No. 3 in 1978.

The anomaly was quarterback Jason White, who won No. 4 in 2003. Almost as if to underscore the school's penchants, White isn't playing in the NFL; he's working these days in securities.

Switzer can't remember his name — it was Mike Thomas — but an Oklahoma back in 1972 ran 90 yards for a touchdown the first time he touched the ball in a college game. He didn't even letter and transferred to UNLV.

Think about this: In 1971, Greg Pruitt averaged 8.98 yards a carry on his way to a 1,760-yard season. That was about when Oklahoma began running the wishbone, and tackling its backs was like wrapping up a tumbleweed in a Southwest windstorm.

"People ask me, 'Is the wishbone dead?' " Switzer says, laughing. "Nah, just the coaches that coached it are."

So is a fellow named Joe Don Looney, a former Sooner who died at 45 in a motorcycle accident in 1988.

He might have been the best Oklahoma back of them all, because some people think he had the raw gifts to be as good as Jim Brown, Gale Sayers or Walter Payton.

Except his body wasn't wired to his brain. Before Terrell Owens was born, Looney was the consummate insubordinate, a flake before there was such a term.

He began at Texas, got four F's and a D, transferred to Texas Christian and eventually to Oklahoma — where he averaged 6.2 yards a carry one year and led the nation in punting before he was kicked off the team in 1963 by the legendary Bud Wilkinson for throwing a punch at an assistant coach.

Five NFL coaches tried to tame him, none successfully. One of those, Detroit's Harry Gilmer, once relayed a play call to Looney and told him to run it into the huddle, only to be rebuffed: "If you want a messenger, call Western Union."

Friday, I went through the Switzer Center adjoining Memorial Stadium, but found no homage to Joe Don Looney. There appeared to be space, however, for the Heisman people think is coming Adrian Peterson's way.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com