The secret to Oklahoma’s Barry Switzer’s mystique has always been this ‘super’ power

When Corby Davidson of KTCK 1310 approached Barry Switzer about joining a radio show for an interview in 2000, the former Sooners and Dallas Cowboys coach said no in only the way Barry Switzer can, in full HD color.

At the time of the proposal, Switzer was three years removed from his firing as the head coach of the Cowboys, and Corby’s radio partners, Mike Rhyner and Greg Williams, routinely crushed Switzer on air.

“Why would I want to go on air with those two sons a’ (you can figure out the expletive)?” Switzer asked Davidson.

Davidson told Switzer, “If people got to know the story teller side of you and the human behind it all I think it could do wonders for your reputation around this area. If you do one interview with those guys it will completely change.”

Davidson said this week, “He ended up coming on our show for the next three years. To this day I get more response from his time on air with us more than anything we’ve ever done.”

Switzer’s interviews on The Ticket are some of the best content that station has ever produced.

Davidson is a native Oklahoman. He knew that if you spend so much as 20 seconds with Switzer, you’re a fan of the man for life. You may hate the Sooners, but you’ll love Switzer.

Winning a football game mattered to Switzer, but for him winning a conversation with you is always about making you feel like you walk away with the W. The man can connect with anybody, rich, poor, white, Black, green, or red.

ESPN.com recently published a wonderfully charming, inspiring, story about the 87-year-old coach who continues to power on. Whatever shortcomings he may have exhibited as the head coach of the Cowboys from 1994 to 1997, are forgotten. Replaced by the traits of a coach who once ruled not only his state, but college football with a personality can flip a boulder.

“Coach loves people. He’s got an amazing memory to time people and places. He’s a great listener,” Oklahoma football coach Brent Venables said this week on the SEC Coaches’ conference call. “What he’s had to overcome in his childhood, people looked at him as this amazingly successful coach who was humbled, grounded and he’s just incredibly relatable.”

Barry Switzer’s ‘super power’

Scott McKnight was a 21-year-old intern at a law office in Oklahoma City in 1991, when Switzer walked into the lobby. McKnight, who is an OU alum and now an attorney in Fort Worth, was introduced by his boss to the coach he grew up idolizing.

The exchange was brief, and if that was the only meeting McKnight ever had with Switzer, it was good, and enough.

Three weeks later, McKnight was with the firm’s junior lawyers at a crowded lunch time spot in OKC. McKnight was the “no one” of the group.

“Barry is there with a few friends, and he walks over to our group and he sticks out his hand at me and he says, ‘I know we’ve met and I am sorry I can’t recall your name. I am Barry Switzer,’” McKnight said.

For an Oklahoman who revered this man like a biblical figure, this is an out-of-body experience that the worse case of amnesia can’t erase.

“He knew exactly what he was doing. I am the young kid around all of these older lawyers, and he wanted not to ‘punk’ them but to make me feel good,” McKnight said. “His super power is to make the lowest person in the room feel like they are the No. 1 person in the room.

“He apologized for not remembering my name. No famous person does that. I am nobody. He’s been doing that for more than 50 years and he’s a genius at it. He went out of his way to make some 21-year-old law clerk to look at the rest of those lawyers in the group like I was the one who mattered. I have heard story after story like this.”

Davidson saw it at the party that Jerry Jones threw when he was inducted into the Pro Hall of Fame, in 2017. Jerry’s party came with a Justin Timberlake performance, and umpteen security member. Along with so many current and ex-Cowboys, Barry attended.

Switzer chatted with a Cowboys offensive lineman, who was a low man on the roster hoping to make the team.

“At the time Barry would have been about 80, and he squares the guy up to show him how to pass block,” Davidson said. “There is this security guy who’s standing close, and he’s a big guy. He’s just there to make some extra money. Not saying anything.

“Barry says to the guy, ‘Come over here big boy!’ And he has this security guy telling how to block this Cowboys offensive lineman. The security guy is smiling ear to ear. I am assuming the guy knew who Barry was, and they all start talking and the guy is telling him about his background. Barry says, ‘I recruited a kid out of there,’ and it’s a very sweet moment from a guy that no one was talking to and Barry made him feel like $1,000.

“I have seen this so many times. I’ve been at his house, and his former players show up and they’re always in a group. There is always some hanger-on type, and that’s the one Barry makes sure he knows who they are. He looks them in the eye, shakes their hand, and remembers their name. He makes them feel good about themselves. Most people of that stature don’t care, and they don’t do things like that.”

Switzer came from not just nothing but a dysfunctional childhood that said he should be a nobody. He never forgot it.

He won conference titles, national titles, and a Super Bowl but he is beloved not for those but rather his ability to win people over, and to make sure they all know they’re somebody, too.