The Multi-Option I-Bone Offense

In late 1983, while working as a publicist for the Alamo Community College District in San Antonio, Texas, I met Dr. James R. Smith, a local veterinary dermatologist who would forever change the way I looked at football. As if his occupation were not interesting enough (at that time, there were only four veterinary dermatologists in all of Texas, and only about 25 in the entire country), Dr. Smith would later give me another reason to find him interesting. On late afternoon in February 1984, between sets of incline bench presses at the local health club where we met, Dr. Smith told me that I could not guess who he had been talking on the telephone with earlier that day. When I agreed I probably could not, he said “Barry Switzer,” who was, at that time, the head football coach of the Oklahoma Sooners. When I asked if the reason he was talking to Switzer was related to Dr. Smith’s