Biff Jones the Forgotten OU ‘B’ Coach
By DEAN CLARK
Contributing Writer
Attention Sooner football fans: there are five “Bs”, not just three.
The Oklahoma faithful have been referring to the three Bs since 2000 when Bob Stoops stunned collegiate football by winning the national championship in just his second year as OU’s head coach. That immediately elevated him into a Pantheon with Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer, the other two coaches whose first names began with a B who have led the Sooners to the national championship.
However, there are two other Sooner head coaches who should be included on the (no pun intended) B list, Benny Owen and Biff Jones. Neither led OU to the national championship, but both are figures of historic stature who are long-time members of the collegiate football hall of fame.
Owen should be known to all OU fans because the Sooners play on Owen Field. (Note the particular choice of preposition. The Sooners play in the Gaylord Family Memorial Stadium).
Owen is the man who put OU football on the map in the early 20th century and information about his achievements is easily obtained. So, nothing more will be said about him here except to note that Owen was known for his very innovative passing offense. The fact that OU first came to prominence as a passing team might surprise many who remember that the Sooners were very ground-oriented in their glory days under Wilkinson and Switzer.
Although Biff Jones has now receded to the status of historical curiosity, he had a truly amazing career even though he was a head coach for only 14 years between 1926 and 1941. That is a remarkably short time for a Hall of Fame coach but his career has an even more remarkable twist. During those 14 years, he was head coach at Army, LSU, Oklahoma, and Nebraska – four teams that have won the national championship more than once.
That is probably a feat that is unmatched and likely never to be matched. His overall record was 87-33-15 for a winning percentage of .700.
Jones was a standout football player at Army and served as its head coach from 1926 to 1929. His 1927 team shut out Notre Dame, 18-0, one of the few and one of the worst losses ever suffered by Knute Rockne. Notre Dame got revenge the next year, winning 12-6, in one of the most famous football games ever because that was when Rockne gave his “Win one for the Gipper” speech at halftime. Despite the emotional lift, the Irish barely won. Army was on the one-yard-line when the game ended.
Jones, a serving officer in the Army at the time, was out of coaching for a few years (despite a 30-8-2 record) before landing at LSU in 1932. He led the Tigers to a 20-5-6 record over the next three years before, according to a long-standing but possibly apocryphal story, he was fired because he wouldn’t let Huey Long give halftime talks to the team.
Oklahoma, suffering a football drought since Owen’s retirement in the mid-1920s, quickly turned to the unexpectedly available Jones to revive its program. Jones stayed in Norman for only two years, 1935-36, and had a fairly modest 9-6-3 record. But he is regularly credited with laying a firm foundation at OU. The Sooners had five straight winning seasons (including 10-1 in 1938) after Jones left.
Jones had now decided to make coaching his career. He resigned from the Army and took the head job at Nebraska. He rolled up a 28-14-4 record over the next five years and took the Huskers to the Rose Bowl (their first bowl trip ever). However, his career in coaching suddenly and unexpectedly ended because, with U.S. involvement in World War II obviously imminent, he was recalled to active duty in the Army after the 1941 season.
Although no longer coaching, Jones continued to be part of football history. He served essentially as the athletic director at West Point throughout the 1940s when Red Blaik (who was a Jones protégé, serving on his staff in the 1920s) reestablished Army as a national power and superstars Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis won the Heisman Trophy in consecutive seasons.
Now, for those who don’t want to get overly technical, OU actually has a sixth B in the coaching hall of fame, Bruce Drake who was the basketball coach from 1938 to 1955 and whose creation, the Drake shuffle offense, is still influential (yet another B, Bobby Knight, is a disciple). But, on second thought, that’s another sport and another story.
Updated 12-18-2006
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