FORMER OU STAR JIMBO ELROD DIES IN CAR WRECK
Jimbo Elrod, an All-America defensive end at Oklahoma, died from injuries suffered in a car wreck Monday on the Turner Turnpike. The 62-yearold Tulsa resident starred for the Sooners’ 1974 and 1975 national championship teams. Elrod’s wife, Diana, was injured in the crash. She was taken to OU Medical Center and admitted in serious condition.
Will Sooner fans want to jump up and down when they score now? Or will they cringe? OU football is the front porch of the university. No less than school president David Boren and athletic director Joe Castiglione have said as much. It is the way people far and wide come to know about the university.
And this season, the faces greeting the world have been Baker Mayfield, Samaje Perine, Mixon and Westbrook. They have been the Crimson Four Horsemen. They have been the Sooner Mount Rushmore.
Plenty of OU fans find it abhorrent that Mixon is even part of the team much less included in that elite group, but the unsavory nature of his inclusion might have been sweetened a bit by the other three. Mayfield, Perine and Westbrook not only had team-first attitudes but also underdog stories.
Mayfield was the walkon no one believed in.
Perine was the sensation no one saw coming. And Westbrook? He had a feel-good story of epic proportions. He went to junior college because his grades weren’t good enough to play big-time ball out of Cameron, Texas, but then he quit football for a year. Rarely do guys make it from junior college to major-college football. But ones that drop out of junior college? That never happens. It did with Westbrook. Then to see him become a superstar midway through this season only added another chapter to his fairy tale.
But Monday, we were reminded that we don’t really know Westbrook. Don’t really know any of these guys.
You have to wonder if the coaches really know them either.
OU released a statement to the World indicating that it didn’t know anything about Westbrook’s arrests: “The university conducts independent background checks on every entering student-athlete. While the university has declined to extend offers in other circumstances as a result of gathered information, nothing was reported in this case.”
But if a newspaper can do a more thorough background check in a few weeks than a major university can during the entire recruiting process, that’s a problem for the university.
The details of Westbrook’s arrests are troubling. The first on Aug. 29, 2012, was on a family violence complaint, and according to the police report, the woman said Westbrook grabbed her by the arms, then threw her to the ground. The second on April 26, 2013, was on a misdemeanor family violence charge. A police report stated Westbrook allegedly bit the woman on the arm, then hit her in the jaw with a closed fist.
Only 19 months later, Westbrook committed to the Sooners.
He wasn’t found guilty in either case, but it looks bad that OU recruited Westbrook so soon after his arrest for alleged violence against women. And it looks even worse when you consider when the Sooners were recruiting him — it was in the aftermath of Mixon’s arrest for violence against women.
Mixon punched Amelia Molitor on July 25, 2014.
Westbrook signed with the Sooners on Dec. 17, 2014.
That was the same season Frank Shannon served a yearlong suspension following a Title IX investigation into a sexual assault, and Dorial Green-Beckham spent time on campus after transferring from Missouri, where he was kicked off the football team after his third run-in with police in 19 months.
What in the name of Brenda Tracy is going on here?
Bob Stoops and Co. welcomed Tracy to campus earlier this year. The rape survivor has spoken to college teams around the country, sharing her painful personal story while advocating for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence, and OU made a great decision to have Tracy speak to the football team.
But even the best of intentions are sullied by news of another superstar’s arrest for alleged domestic violence.
The same goes for everything crimson and cream. The university. The leadership. The athletic department. The football program. The coaches. The players. All of it is tarnished because of what looks more and more like a pattern each time another one of these incidents surfaces — how fast you can run, how well you can tackle or how well you can catch trumps how you treat women.
It’s an ugly allegation, but it’s one that OU has brought on itself.