Plaino, with this off week please reply to this thought. I always believed Jack Mildren was one of the best if not the best field general OU has had at QB. On the other hand, I always felt he lacked in his throwing ability. The pass that still sticks in my head was the overthrow to Jon Harrison towards the end of the 71 NU game. To this day I believe that if that pass had been completed the outcome of the game would have been different.
I've watched the replay of that game 100 times over the years. And of that play. It wasn't as close as OU fans saw it. It was the one chance we had after Nebraska took the 35-31 lead. The ball was too flat. Had Jack put some air under it, it might have been another story. After that, the wheels came off. I believe we got one first down, but that was that.
Jack came out of high school believed to be a great passer. I've heard all kinds of stories about OU messing with is throwing motion. The one great think is that he was truly ambidextrous, in fact he wrote left handed. In high school he completed a couple of left handed passes, which grew his legend helping create the great recruiting storythe SI end of the magazine story, where the long, feature stories were published. That story was part of how OU's second dynasty was born. The class after Jack's was better than his, which was pretty ballyhooed. But, Jack's high school team, Abilene Cooper was a great team and really good on offense. When you could throw with a true dual threat quarterback, you could be really good. And Jon Harrison, his high school teammate, was a great receiver, who was fast and ran great routes. Jack's throwing skills were probably a little overrated coming out of high school.
He wasn't much taller than 6 feet. His throwing form wasn't great. It probably didn't help much that Switzer was the OC, and quarterback's coach. Barry was an old two way lineman at Arkansas. His understanding of the throwing game was a little different than we have now. Back then, almost all the best teams in the country ran the ball. Notre Dame and USC were the notable exceptions. I think on the long throw to Jon, the wind had picked up in the second half, and it had gotten colder. And Nebraska had keep the ball for so long, the combination of new shoes, he's just put on because it was threatening to rain. a little slight slickness to the ball with some light sprinkling, and fearing the overthrow, he gunned it, hoping to have it less wind affected. In seeking not to overthrow it, he gunned an overthrow.
The other best teams threw to keep teams honest, as a surprise and when they needed a big play, In 1969-71. it was a 15-yard penalty for offensive holding. That's why Darrell Royal was famous for the immortal word, "When you throw the ball, three things can happen, and two of them are bad." But he'd learned from Bud Wilkinson. And when Texas needed to throw, they were good at it in crunch, even with a wishbone. So did Bud, in a day when pass blocking rules are much different than they are now.
I agree with you about Jack being the ultimate field general. But it was ironic, that sometime after the start of his junior spring practice, he was stung because Switzer complained to him privately that he was a poor field general. I don't think that anything a coach ever said to him, hurt him more. I don't know if Barry was trying to stir him up, or if he really believed that, but i KNOW that it bothered Jack a lot.
In those days, I had kind of a special bond with Jack. My high school team, where I was also a manager, won state in AA, the same day that Austin Reagan upset Cooper for the state AAAA. I razzed him about it enough shortly after meeting him, that he gave me the nickname Plano, and it's the only thing anyone in the football program called me for four years.
He knew I think how much I "worshipped him.: And maybe five or six times on Sunday evenings, he asked me to go to dinner with him. Maybe there wasn't anybody else handy. But we talked about that Switzer admonishment more than once. It's so sad, that he died so young of such a horrible cancer. And he was SOOO tough. After he died, Greg Pruitt talked about his great leadership. I mean, he ended up Lt Governor of Oklahoma. For a kid who great up in Texas, that's quite a leadership accomplishment. He'd have been governor too, is the first two years of Bill Clinton's presidency hadn't been so abysmal.