Tales from Oklahoma State Football

by Pat Jones

What happens when two of the best running backs in NFL history are on the same college campus at the same time? You win a lot of games, of course.Barry Sanders and Thurman Thomas were teammates at Oklahoma State in the 1980s, when the Cowboys made history by producing three 10-win seasons in a five-year span.Pat Jones spent 11 seasons as Oklahoma States head coach and five seasons as a Cowboy assistant under Jimmy Johnson, who would later become an NCAA champion at Miami (Florida) and a Super Bowl champion with the Dallas Cowboys. Jones, who had the pleasure of coaching Thomas and Sanders, accumulated as many behind-the-scenes OSU football stories as Sanders and Jones accumulated yards. Jones shares his recollections in this book, which provides insight into one of the most exciting 10-year periods in Cowboy football history. The book details Johnsons five-year stay in Stillwater and the first five years of the Jones era, including Sanders Heisman Trophy season in 1988. What role did Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones have in steering OSUs football fortunes? What happened to allow OSU to contend for a national title in 1984? How did a lightly recruited and soft-spoken kid from Wichita, Kansas, come out of nowhere to produce the greatest season by a running back in college football history? Pat Jones answers those questions and tells you how the Cowboys caught lightning in a bottle

185 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2007