'The King' @ 70
Former OU coach is having the time of his life as a grandfather, businessman
Former OU coach having the time of his life as a grandfather, businessman

By Berry Tramel

Published: October 5, 2007

NORMAN — Barry Switzer turns 70 today, which means we've got two things to say to the old rascal. Happy birthday, and did you ever think you'd live this long?

To which Switzer answers, thank you and what in the hell are you talking about?

"I always felt like I had good genes,” Switzer said. "Good plumbing.”

Another Oklahoma hero, Mickey Mantle, always said he never planned to live past 40, since Hodgkin's disease killed his dad and grandfather by that age.

Switzer has lived hard, and his daddy lived hard and died hard, and his mama died hard, too, by her own hand. So 70 seems a solid achievement for a bootlegger's boy raised in the Arkansas sticks

But no. "I never had that fatalistic attitude,” Switzer said this week from his homey mansion just south of the campus where he coached football for 23 years.

"When you grow up in the '40s and '50s in rural Arkansas, everybody lived the same. Privys. Coil lamps. Just typical.

"Black or white, gravel roads, no utilities. Pumped water. Smoke house. Chicken, dogs. Shotgun house. No REA. No electricity until I was in the ninth grade. You know why I was so happy to finally get electricity? So I could get a fan at night and keep the mosquitoes off.

"We always had something to eat. Nobody today would want to live like that, but nobody thought they were in bad shape.”

Switzer starts talking and sometimes can't stop, and never do you want him to.

He still can spin a tale, still knows football and still goes 90 miles an hour, late to most appointments because he says yes to everyone, and he's having the time of this life.

Literally.

"Best time? I guess the present,” Switzer said. "Grandkids.”

He's got eight, six live in Norman and he gets to see them all the time.

I ran into Switzer awhile back at a Mexican-food joint. My granddaughter was with me. Switzer told me just wait until she can call my name and tell me she loves me.

She's getting closer and closer to saying Papa Bear, and often I think of Switzer when she does.

"I had a good run,” Switzer said. "I had good bats. I've been fortunate to be around good people.

"Right now, my family's healthy, kids are in good shape. (Wife) Becky and I are in good health.”

He dabbles in real estate with his son-in-law, oil and gas in Texas, banking in Oklahoma City, storage units with Toby Keith all over the state, health care, PR work for Alltel, television on Fox's NFL pregame show. He's as busy now as when he ran the Oklahoma football machine.

A full life. Full in the past, full in the present.

Switzer has regrets and admits it. "What happened professionally, personally,” he said. "But I'm not looking back on that. I have a lot of regrets. Mistakes made. But that's part of it.”

Here's what's most admirable about Switzer. For a man of means, a man of fame, he hasn't lost his down-home charm, hasn't lost that rare quality that puts him at ease with peasant or lord, black or white.

Switzer remains an Oklahoma icon, remains beloved by not just Sooner fans, but most everyone who comes his way.

"It's because of the American sports phenomenon called football,” Switzer said. "It's ridiculous. People make us out to be more than what we are. It's their fault. If I begin to believe it, it's my fault.”

But no. I didn't let that pass. Bud Wilkinson won as big as Switzer and wasn't as beloved. Bob Stoops is winning as big as Switzer and isn't as beloved. This goes beyond football.

This goes back to Frank Switzer, the bootlegger from southern Arkansas, the man described by his son as "a man's man. Old-school guy.”

Old-school but progressive. A southern bootlegger with a liberal bent.

"Great compassion for the black community,” Switzer said. "He took care of them,” and 20, 30, 40 years later, his son felt and feels the same way about all different kinds of people.

Which is why Barry Switzer, who drives big cars and lives in a big house and still flies in a big plane to a big city to work at a big network, still relates to the little guy.

"It's the common touch,” Switzer said. "I can walk the streets of Idabel or Bowlegs, I can sit down with the truck driver or the farmer, and I can relate to them. They can relate to me.

"I've always been able to do that. Make people around me comfortable. I'm approachable. Helped me in recruiting. Helped me tremendously.”

But he says it wasn't always so. Says back in Crossett, Ark., in the early 1950s, he was an introvert.

Who believes that? The day in 1994 that Jerry Jones hired Switzer to coach the Dallas Cowboys, Larry Lacewell told me that Barry Switzer has been the same ever since he met him at a junior-high track meet in 1951.

But Switzer swears it's true. He didn't walk through doors back in Crossett and immediately own the room.

"I evolved,” Switzer said. "I was truly an introvert. But most kids are. We all have complexes and insecurities But we emerge from that cocoon. You shed that when you realize no one really gives a (flip) about you.”

He's an introvert no more. Charismatic and engaging, an Okie-Arkie original, living well, with good plumbing to boot.

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