He won three national championships at Oklahoma, and led the Cowboys to win Super Bowl XXX against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Frank did serve five months of the term and therefore missed seeing Barry play his senior season of high school football.

[5][3] Barry and his brother Donnie were at home with their mother on August 26, 1959, when she took her own life with a .38 caliber pistol on the back porch.

[6] Barry accepted an athletic scholarship and played football at the University of Arkansas, where he joined Pi Kappa Alpha.

During his senior season in 1959, he was a Razorbacks "Tri-Captain", leading Arkansas to a 9–2 record, a share of the Southwest Conference championship, a victory over Georgia Tech in the 1960 Gator Bowl, and a No.

[8] When Fairbanks accepted the position of head coach of the New England Patriots following the 1972 season, Switzer was the obvious choice to succeed him.

He was so successful that by his seventh season in 1979, the St. Petersburg Times wrote that Switzer was the high priest of what Billy Sims, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1978, described as the church of OU football.

During his sixteen years as head coach at Oklahoma, his teams won eight of the thirteen post-season bowl games they played in, and 54 of his players were selected as All-Americans.

He defended himself as having innocently overheard the information while lounging on the bleacher behind some corporate insiders—at a stadium where Switzer was watching his elder son compete in a track meet.

[19] Switzer succeeded in getting the better of several famous contemporaries, including a 12–5 mark against Tom Osborne, 5–3 against Jimmy Johnson, 3–0 against Bobby Bowden, 3-0-1 against Darrell Royal and 1–0 against Joe Paterno, Bo Schembechler, and Woody Hayes.

On the next to last play of the game, however, there had been an apparent interception by Oklahoma's Keith Stansberry of a Texas pass thrown into the end zone.

Recruiting has always been something like pimping, I guess, but it never bothered me until I looked in the mirror one day and said to myself, ‘Hey, Switzer, what is a fifty-year-old man doing chasing eighteen-year-old boys around the country?” On March 30, 1994, he was hired by the Dallas Cowboys.

[21] Switzer was hired the day after Jimmy Johnson, who had won the last two Super Bowls with Dallas, announced his departure from the team.

While the Cowboys did narrow the score to 24-14 (after a missed field goal from 27 yards) with a minute to play before halftime, Switzer elected to try reach for more points with passes on the suggestion of offensive coordinator Ernie Zampese rather than his idea to run the ball.

The result was three incompletions that saw Dallas punt the ball away with enough time and favorable field position that saw San Francisco score a touchdown pass to lead 31-14 into halftime.

The only ignominious loss was a game against the Philadelphia Eagles, which saw Switzer elect to try and convert a 4th and 1 situation from his own 29 with two minutes remaining.

The season saw Michael Irvin suspended for the first five games after pleading no contest to felony cocaine possession after being found at a party with topless dancers and drug use.

Switzer, who was returning to the team's training camp facility in Austin, said there were children at his Dallas home and he put the gun in his bag to hide it from them.

[29] Switzer's penchant for being a players coach came to haunt him later with disagreements over quarterback Troy Aikman, who felt the team had a lack of discipline along with poor practice habits.

All of this came to a head with the 1997 season, complete with Aikman delivering a heated rant on the sideline during the preseason about not wanting to be the "bad cop" in the routine all the time.

[30] The Cowboys started off well, winning three of their first four games, but a sign of trouble brewed with their one loss, which came against the Arizona Cardinals after they blew a 22–7 lead and lost in overtime.