“We had gotten recommendations for him from the Cowboys and other people who really said he would be a great recruiter,” Boren said. “After he got here, I attempted to work with him. My impression of him was that he meant well, that he was a sincere person, he probably had moral scruples and so on and so forth. He just was not well organized. We did everything to try to help him get more organized.”

Boren said he quickly realized Blake was not the man for the job. But Boren was not ready to make a change.

“The reason I put up with him for what, three seasons, I thought, having fired Schnellenberger very shortly (before), we don't want to get the reputation of every new coach gets a year or so and that's it, then you change coaches,” Boren said. “I thought that would be a bad reputation for us to have. So I thought maybe it'll work out. We'll give him a chance. He assured me that if he didn't work out, that he'd be the first person to come to me and say, ‘I resign.' That's not the way it worked out.”

Boren had hired Joe Castiglione as athletic director in April 1998 and asked Joe C. to spend the season evaluating Blake and report to the regents. But Boren said the decision became quite clear as that season wore on. A 34-3 loss to Texas seemed to seal Blake's fate.