BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Friday, September 2, 2005 7:00 pm
They just might revoke Sherwood Taylor’s schooner credentials for this.
The former Oklahoma defensive back has gone to the dark side.
He’s talking like a dang Nebraska corn shucker, praising all things Devaney and saying things like: “I hope WE beat OU.”
Wait, Sherwood?
We?
“I’ve gone over to the other side now,” he said with a laugh.
OK, the good people in Norman, Okla. — where Sherwood and his wife Julie reside — might give him a pass on this one.
It’d be just plain wrong to egg a guy’s house for rooting for Nebraska when his son’s the team’s starting quarterback.
Yep. Oklahoma boy Zac Taylor will be Nebraska’s main man tonight in the season opener against Maine.
Seventy-eight thousand pairs of eyes making sure Zac throws, walks and spits correctly?
No problem. Take it from a mother.
“He was never one to go way up or way down and he’s still that way,” Julie said. “He wouldn’t get real upset or wouldn’t get real excited. That’s exactly how his dad is.”
Sherwood, who lettered for the Sooners from 1977-79, said Zac was always a natural with football.
He could throw the pigskin “the right way” without instructions since the third grade.
It was also about that age when Zac once came down with a case of strep throat. The flu was threatening to keep Zac out of a flag football game and he didn’t much like it.
“He wanted to go play flag football and we finally said, ‘Sure, go ahead and play,’” Sherwood recalled. “This spring, again he got real sick at Nebraska, but he said, ‘I’m going to practice. That’s what I’m going to do.’ That’s just always been the way Zac is.”
Who won that flag football game?
“Oh, he won.”
Sherwood is remembering another story now.
Mom and Dad made Zac take a couple years of band when he was in middle school.
The quarterback in band class? Sounds dangerous to the ears.
Instead, Zac turned band into a competition and did his best Doc Severinsen impersonation. Becoming the first-chair cornet player became equivalent to finding the end zone.
“His buddies and him were so competitive in everything they did. They really fought for that first chair,” Sherwood said.
Being first chair in the Taylor family is not always easy. Zac has three siblings — Kathryn, Quincy and Press (named after the late basketball star Pete “Press” Maravich).
Kathryn is an award-winning Special Olympics swimmer, other sister Quincy is tearing up soccer fields, and brother Press is playing the role of John Elway for Norman High.
“No one can carry a high platform in this house too long,” Sherwood said. “Someone will quickly say or do something to take them down.”
On Thursday, the attention was squarely on Press, whose high school team won a 36-33 thriller against rival Norman North at Oklahoma’s Owen Field.
Press drove his team down the field in the final two minutes and scored from a yard out with 23 seconds left to give his team the win.
Today, Zac gets his chance to step to the platform.
Never mind that he’s wearing scarlet and not crimson. Dad’s pumped.
“In all honestly, I couldn’t have thought of a better place for him to go than Nebraska,” he said. “They were always my favorite team to play because it was the best contest.”
There is only one minor problem for Sherwood.
“When I say something to people around town about ‘the game’ this weekend, they think I’m talking about OU.”