milesl
11/18/2015, 01:01 PM
http://www.tulsaworld.com/sportsextra/ousportsextra/never-again-the-story-of-the-sooners-culture-change-and/article_3150ce8a-efaa-5e06-bf98-21b0f8350e88.html
"Never again" ... The story of the Sooners' culture change, and how that helped transform their season
http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/tulsaworld.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/e/d0/ed057425-1161-5dd8-be9d-4461f0d90244/564836f38f787.image.jpg?resize=800
Oklahoma's Trevor Knight waits to celebrate with teammates after an Oklahoma touchdown during the NCAA football game between the Oklahoma Sooners and the Baylor Bears at McLane Stadium in Waco, Texas on Saturday, November 14, 2015. IAN MAULE/Tulsa World
NORMAN — “Never again.”
Those two words, according to center and captain Ty Darlington, came up most when the Oklahoma Sooners got back from having their tails kicked by Clemson in the Russell Athletic Bowl last December. When, through text messages and conversations, seven of OU’s most experienced, most important players realized their program had reached a code red.
“There was a culture that needed to be changed,” linebacker and captain Eric Striker said. “We felt like if we started there, then we could do everything we needed to get done on the field, as far as discipline, and maturing off the field. We wanted to change the culture.”
Nearly 11 months later, it seems that culture has changed. The work fostered by Darlington, Striker, Trevor Knight, Charles Tapper, Sterling Shepard, Nila Kasitati and Zack Sanchez last winter came to fruition last spring, when the Sooners put up a unified, dignified front against the Sigma Alpha Epsilon video episode.
Last month, on-field adversity struck the Sooners when Texas stunned them in the Cotton Bowl. They have responded with five straight emphatic victories, the latest being a 44-34 takedown of Baylor which puts them in position to contend for both a Big 12 Conference championship and the College Football Playoff.
Things like execution and coaching have played big roles in OU’s bounceback. But if the Sooners aren’t together in the first place, if they aren’t still in lockstep leaving Dallas on Oct. 10, the football adjustments likely don’t sink in.
This is the story of the Sooners coming together...
What’s going on?
It didn’t take a psychologist to see the culture change Striker referenced was necessary. By the time Clemson was done with them, the Sooners had lost three of their last five to turn a season of great expectations into a calamitous 8-5.
“You look at last year and there’s evidence of when the going got rough, we did not necessarily come together,” Knight said.
When the Sooners returned from Orlando...
“We got together as a team and we had team meeting after team meeting with just the players,” Knight said. “Eventually we were trying to figure out, ‘What is our next move?’ We broke up into position groups and decided these are the things we want to see done.
“And that didn’t work, so we said, ‘Let’s get the leaders of each position group.’”
Knight for the backs, Shepard for the wide receivers, Darlington and Kasitati for the offensive line, Tapper and Striker for the defensive front, and Sanchez for the defensive backs.
Ideally, the influence of that seven-member council would trickle down to OU’s younger players.
“It was us getting together and understanding that we’re rebuilding,” Kasitati said. “There’s a lot of younger guys coming in that are going to have to step up. We as older players have to show these younger guys how to do things, and the way to act and how practice should go, the intensity and energy you have to bring to it. Make them understand that.”
The council’s words were one thing. But deeds sank in more.
“We made sure if we were lifting weights, we were lifting the heaviest,” Tapper said. “If we were running sprints, we were the first ones done. We were getting extra work in, doing all the little things so now in the season, we can tell the young guys, ‘You need to do this because we were doing that.’ They respect us because we’ve been doing it.”
The idea was to set a more positive influence when football returned in the fall. But then the SAE video went viral last spring, and a degree of hell broke loose on OU’s campus.
SAE incident becomes rallying point
“When SAE happened we already had a framework,” Darlington said. “We already had a group of guys that was meeting every week and instituting different changes, self-policing and accountability punishment and that type of stuff. So when that happened, there was no doubt. This is how we’re going to represent the views of this program. We’re going to make our decisions for the team through these seven guys.
“That leadership council or whatever you want to call it, that happened solely because of Clemson. But then it was in place for something much larger.”
It turned out to be more challenging than anything Baylor, Oklahoma State or Texas ever doled out.
“Through the SAE thing, we had guys screaming at each other, yelling at each other, almost fighting,” Knight said. “We had seven guys in that leadership group, so it was an odd number. We’d have one guy say, ‘I don’t know which way I want to go,’ and three guys would say, ‘I want this,’ and three guys, ‘I want that.’
“We would literally stay up hours and hours and hours talking about it. So no, it wasn’t always easy. It’s not ever going to be easy. But it’s continuing to talk and talk and work things out. ‘Let’s try this, let’s try that.’ Ultimately there would be common ground.”
The Sooners, pictured locking arms on Owen Field instead of practicing, became something of a national example of positive influence and responsibility. An unforeseen ordeal became an unexpected rallying point.
“The stuff that went down with SAE made the older guys come out front more and understand we have to do more in that situation,” Kasitati said. “It brought us even closer together and helped us understand each other even more as a team.”
An ‘incredible level of character’ needed
Captains who spoke at Big 12 Media Day last July asserted the Sooners were more brotherhood than football team. SAE was proof.
But could that really translate when games began? Could the Sooners use unification to their benefit when facing their first bit of in-season adversity? How they responded to Texas would provide the answer.
Their leaders spoke, again, after the 24-17 loss. The message?
“What it’s going to take from here on out is an incredible level of character,” Darlington said, “ that our character gets revealed in times of adversity.”
Wasn’t that the case the previous spring? Thus the expectation that this fall wouldn’t be any different.
It hasn’t been, either. The Sooners claimed all of their goals were still before them when they left Dallas a month ago, even as observers scoffed. If they stayed together and responded, they could reach them.
Here they are five wins later, controllers of their own Big 12 destiny and contenders for college football playoff’s ultimate prize. The Sooners didn’t just pay lip service to their disastrous 2014 season, and they are reaping the benefits as a result.
“I think so,” Darlington said outside OU’s victorious locker room at Baylor. “Last January when we came together we resolved not to let it happen again. We weren’t perfect, and we haven’t been perfect since then. But there has definitely been a resolve of leadership that we’re going to take it upon ourselves to do what we need to do to take this team to where we should be as a program, and honor the tradition we had before us.”
Guerin Emig 918-581-8355
[email protected]
"Never again" ... The story of the Sooners' culture change, and how that helped transform their season
http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/tulsaworld.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/e/d0/ed057425-1161-5dd8-be9d-4461f0d90244/564836f38f787.image.jpg?resize=800
Oklahoma's Trevor Knight waits to celebrate with teammates after an Oklahoma touchdown during the NCAA football game between the Oklahoma Sooners and the Baylor Bears at McLane Stadium in Waco, Texas on Saturday, November 14, 2015. IAN MAULE/Tulsa World
NORMAN — “Never again.”
Those two words, according to center and captain Ty Darlington, came up most when the Oklahoma Sooners got back from having their tails kicked by Clemson in the Russell Athletic Bowl last December. When, through text messages and conversations, seven of OU’s most experienced, most important players realized their program had reached a code red.
“There was a culture that needed to be changed,” linebacker and captain Eric Striker said. “We felt like if we started there, then we could do everything we needed to get done on the field, as far as discipline, and maturing off the field. We wanted to change the culture.”
Nearly 11 months later, it seems that culture has changed. The work fostered by Darlington, Striker, Trevor Knight, Charles Tapper, Sterling Shepard, Nila Kasitati and Zack Sanchez last winter came to fruition last spring, when the Sooners put up a unified, dignified front against the Sigma Alpha Epsilon video episode.
Last month, on-field adversity struck the Sooners when Texas stunned them in the Cotton Bowl. They have responded with five straight emphatic victories, the latest being a 44-34 takedown of Baylor which puts them in position to contend for both a Big 12 Conference championship and the College Football Playoff.
Things like execution and coaching have played big roles in OU’s bounceback. But if the Sooners aren’t together in the first place, if they aren’t still in lockstep leaving Dallas on Oct. 10, the football adjustments likely don’t sink in.
This is the story of the Sooners coming together...
What’s going on?
It didn’t take a psychologist to see the culture change Striker referenced was necessary. By the time Clemson was done with them, the Sooners had lost three of their last five to turn a season of great expectations into a calamitous 8-5.
“You look at last year and there’s evidence of when the going got rough, we did not necessarily come together,” Knight said.
When the Sooners returned from Orlando...
“We got together as a team and we had team meeting after team meeting with just the players,” Knight said. “Eventually we were trying to figure out, ‘What is our next move?’ We broke up into position groups and decided these are the things we want to see done.
“And that didn’t work, so we said, ‘Let’s get the leaders of each position group.’”
Knight for the backs, Shepard for the wide receivers, Darlington and Kasitati for the offensive line, Tapper and Striker for the defensive front, and Sanchez for the defensive backs.
Ideally, the influence of that seven-member council would trickle down to OU’s younger players.
“It was us getting together and understanding that we’re rebuilding,” Kasitati said. “There’s a lot of younger guys coming in that are going to have to step up. We as older players have to show these younger guys how to do things, and the way to act and how practice should go, the intensity and energy you have to bring to it. Make them understand that.”
The council’s words were one thing. But deeds sank in more.
“We made sure if we were lifting weights, we were lifting the heaviest,” Tapper said. “If we were running sprints, we were the first ones done. We were getting extra work in, doing all the little things so now in the season, we can tell the young guys, ‘You need to do this because we were doing that.’ They respect us because we’ve been doing it.”
The idea was to set a more positive influence when football returned in the fall. But then the SAE video went viral last spring, and a degree of hell broke loose on OU’s campus.
SAE incident becomes rallying point
“When SAE happened we already had a framework,” Darlington said. “We already had a group of guys that was meeting every week and instituting different changes, self-policing and accountability punishment and that type of stuff. So when that happened, there was no doubt. This is how we’re going to represent the views of this program. We’re going to make our decisions for the team through these seven guys.
“That leadership council or whatever you want to call it, that happened solely because of Clemson. But then it was in place for something much larger.”
It turned out to be more challenging than anything Baylor, Oklahoma State or Texas ever doled out.
“Through the SAE thing, we had guys screaming at each other, yelling at each other, almost fighting,” Knight said. “We had seven guys in that leadership group, so it was an odd number. We’d have one guy say, ‘I don’t know which way I want to go,’ and three guys would say, ‘I want this,’ and three guys, ‘I want that.’
“We would literally stay up hours and hours and hours talking about it. So no, it wasn’t always easy. It’s not ever going to be easy. But it’s continuing to talk and talk and work things out. ‘Let’s try this, let’s try that.’ Ultimately there would be common ground.”
The Sooners, pictured locking arms on Owen Field instead of practicing, became something of a national example of positive influence and responsibility. An unforeseen ordeal became an unexpected rallying point.
“The stuff that went down with SAE made the older guys come out front more and understand we have to do more in that situation,” Kasitati said. “It brought us even closer together and helped us understand each other even more as a team.”
An ‘incredible level of character’ needed
Captains who spoke at Big 12 Media Day last July asserted the Sooners were more brotherhood than football team. SAE was proof.
But could that really translate when games began? Could the Sooners use unification to their benefit when facing their first bit of in-season adversity? How they responded to Texas would provide the answer.
Their leaders spoke, again, after the 24-17 loss. The message?
“What it’s going to take from here on out is an incredible level of character,” Darlington said, “ that our character gets revealed in times of adversity.”
Wasn’t that the case the previous spring? Thus the expectation that this fall wouldn’t be any different.
It hasn’t been, either. The Sooners claimed all of their goals were still before them when they left Dallas a month ago, even as observers scoffed. If they stayed together and responded, they could reach them.
Here they are five wins later, controllers of their own Big 12 destiny and contenders for college football playoff’s ultimate prize. The Sooners didn’t just pay lip service to their disastrous 2014 season, and they are reaping the benefits as a result.
“I think so,” Darlington said outside OU’s victorious locker room at Baylor. “Last January when we came together we resolved not to let it happen again. We weren’t perfect, and we haven’t been perfect since then. But there has definitely been a resolve of leadership that we’re going to take it upon ourselves to do what we need to do to take this team to where we should be as a program, and honor the tradition we had before us.”
Guerin Emig 918-581-8355
[email protected]