The Oklahoma Sooners were clearly the better team in this year’s edition of the Sugar Bowl. While Auburn’s offense essentially had both arms tied behind its back without quarterback Sean White, the Sooners outclassed the Tigers on both sides of the ball for most of the night.
But anyone watching the game could feel one storyline in particular overshadowing the contest.
This won’t be a column tearing into Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon or his actions on the fateful night he punched a woman. That horrific night in 2014 has been documented and discussed countless times, especially in the last month, and while the conversations regarding violence against women should never end, there’s nothing I can offer to the discussion that hasn’t already been said by pundits and people with hot takes.
Focusing in on Mixon alone would be redundant and ignore the larger ethical issues going on at Oklahoma University, specifically within its football program.
So, that’s the point of this column: not to pile on Mixon further, but rather to break down the systematic failures that have plagued Bob Stoops’ program and tainted its recent accomplishments.
Oklahoma handled the Mixon situation so poorly two years ago that it managed to corner itself on national television, even in the process of winning one of the most prestigious contests in college football.
It’s bad enough that Mixon played in the game. However, If the program had suspended Mixon for the Sugar Bowl, it wouldn’t have sent the message that it cares about domestic violence (considering the incident took place two years ago), but rather that it cares only about its image and the backlash it received after the footage from that night was made public.
People being upset about these kinds of things only after visual evidence of them is released is another issue entirely, one that reared its ugly head in the cases of NFL players Ray Rice (video of his assault) and Greg Hardy (photographs of the victim’s bruises). The outrage over Mixon should have reached fever pitch in 2014, not now.
But back to Oklahoma. Stoops botched the situation so poorly two years ago that any choice he could’ve made for the Sugar Bowl would have been either morally reprehensible or clearly disingenuous.
However, the program managed to make things even worse during its win over Auburn. Stoops not only played Mixon, but had the nerve to make him the central focus of the offense, knowing just how angry that would make many viewers.
Mixon had 19 carries for 91 yards and two scores, making him the team’s leading rusher in yards, carries and touchdowns in the game. Samaje Perine, the school’s all-time leading rusher and owner of the FBS record for rushing yards in a game (427 against Kansas in 2014), had just 17 carries for 86 yards and one score.
Additionally, Mixon led the team in receptions (five) and receiving yards (89). This on a team loaded with great receivers, including Heisman finalist Dede Westbrook. We'll get to him later in this column.
There’s no right decision Stoops could have made regarding Mixon’s status for the game. Somehow, though, he managed to make the worst decision possible by making Mixon the team’s brightest offensive star outside of chaotic quarterback Baker Mayfield. It was nothing short of Bob Stoops defiantly lashing out at everyone who called his judgment into question.
Many Oklahoma fans ate it up, too. Mixon received, by far, the loudest cheers from the Sooner section during the pre-game. My ears weren’t deceiving me. I watched the game from the press box, which is located right on top of the home side of the stadium, where Oklahoma fans sat. Mixon received louder cheers than Mayfield or Westbrook.
All of those cheers of support to a player who broke four bones in a woman’s face with his fist and was given a redshirt year to work out while not losing any eligibility.
No, a redshirt is not a punishment. Many young players take redshirts to preserve their eligibility and adapt to the college game. Any defense of Mixon that includes the tidbit that he “served his punishment” only highlights what a joke his punishment was in the first place.
On Dec. 21, Stoops told the media that if the program’s current rules relating to domestic violence and violence against women were in place in 2014, Mixon would have been kicked off the team.
"Dismissal is really the only thing that is possible,” Stoops said. “A young guy having an opportunity to rehabilitate and to have some kind of discipline and come back from it is really not there anymore. Hopefully that message goes down even to the high school level that these things are just unacceptable to any degree and there's no recovering. I guess it never has been acceptable."
Stoops has publicly acknowledged that his original punishment was laughable and said he will have no tolerance moving forward, yet he gave Mixon 24 touches on a national stage — seven more than any Sooner not named Mayfield or Erick Wren (the team’s center).
Also, there were no ramifications for Mixon and some of his teammates’ behavior during the game.
For starters, as the first half was winding down, the Auburn student section began chanting at Mixon, “He hits women!” Rather than ignoring it, Mixon, along with Mayfield, turned to the student section and waved their arms so the fans would chant it louder.
In a span of several weeks, Mixon went from owning up to his mistake to just owning it. If you’re in that kind of position and want to prove to people that you’ve grown, acting like that on national television is not a good look. It just makes it harder to take your “tearful apology” seriously, even if you meant every word you said (all of which were two years late, by the way).
His teammates later decided to get in on the “fun”, as several were caught fake-punching him on the sideline and laughing during the second half. He was laughing, as well. Everybody had a grand old time knowingly mocking that time that a woman had her face broken.
Please, tone-deaf media members like Brent Musberger, keep talking about how he’s matured and ready to make millions of dollars in the NFL.
Lost in this ugly situation, however, are two other black eyes the program took around the time of Mixon’s incident.
In April 2014, Missouri receiver Dorial Green-Beckham was kicked out of the program after an 18-year old female student accused him of forcefully entering her apartment in the middle of the night to see his girlfriend. The woman also accused Green-Beckham of pushing her down at least four stairs.
No charges were filed or arrests made, mainly because the witnesses felt pressure to avoid ruining his football career and being harassed or retaliated against.
Just a few months later, Green-Beckham signed with Stoops’ program. It was not only a horrific PR move by Oklahoma, but also a dumb one with little potential payoff. Green-Beckham would have to sit out a year and would then be eligible to enter the NFL Draft. After sitting out a year, he did indeed leave for the NFL in 2015.
Oklahoma took in a player with such an ugly mark on his record and he never even played a down before bolting. Great call on that one, “Big Game Bob.”
Now, we arrive at Westbrook. Westbrook was one of the most sought-after junior college receivers in the nation in 2014, ultimately signing with Stoops’ program in 2015.
What Stoops and the school’s background checkers missed, however, was that Westbrook had been arrested twice in Texas on domestic violence charges against the mother of his two children before becoming a prominent junior college prospect. In 2012, he was accused of throwing her to the ground. Not even a year later, he was accused of biting her arm and punching her in the face.
These arrests were made public in documents obtained by the Tulsa World’s Cody Stavenhagen in December. The school responded by claiming it was unaware of the arrests while recruiting him.
"We have extensive background checks,” Stoops said in response to the story. “I'm not part of that. I'm not sure how that happened."
So, let me get this straight: one journalist from Tulsa was able to find out about his criminal record, yet a public university, one that does “extensive background checks”, completely missed all of his issues? Even if you can’t necessarily blame Stoops for this one, it does raise the question of just how incompetent the school’s background checkers are.
That’s not exactly the question you want to ask about a program that’s been plagued by the issues that Oklahoma has been.
This all leads me back to the current state of the program. Even though Stoops said there are new policies in place when it comes to violence against women, it’s hard to truly feel any gravity in that statement when one takes his past judgments into consideration, as well as his playcalling and his team’s behavior in New Orleans.
Oklahoma had a chance to show America its talent in the Sugar Bowl. It could have been a showcase for Perine and Mayfield and a defense that, after struggling all year, turned in its best performance of the season.
Instead, late in the third quarter, the Sooners ran a trick play where Mixon took a direct snap, faked a misdirection handoff to Westbrook and dove for the score that put them up 28-13.
Again, it’s hard not to see that as anything short of Stoops, middle fingers ablaze, telling America, “Yes, I hear all of you, but these guys sure can play football and I’m going to remind you of that whenever possible.”
Stoops made Mixon the star attraction, which overwhelmingly overshadowed all of his team’s accomplishments. It was obvious going in that would happen if he played a big role in the contest. If Stoops had the common sense to know that would happen and then did it anyway, he’s egotistical beyond words. If he didn’t know that would happen, then his intelligence and awareness must be called into question.
Violence against women is a huge problem in society, as it is in sports. We all shake our heads every time an athlete assaults a woman, but if we don’t take every opportunity to call out the institutions that attempt to normalize it or downplay its impact, and do so with urgency, nothing will change. It will be a constant cycle of men getting away with hitting women because they’re entertaining athletes.
Taking into account the school’s history of harboring woman beaters, its lapses in background checking, its lax punishment standards, its coach’s Sugar Bowl gameplan and its players’ on-field behavior in that game, Oklahoma University should be embarrassed and ashamed of its football program.
Unfortunately, shame is in short supply in Norman these days.
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