Forty-four years ago, Americans faced the first presidential election since the resignation of Richard Nixon. Would it be incumbent Republican Gerald Ford or Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter?
At the University of Tulsa, a freshman linebacker named Lovie Smith didn’t really have a dog in the fight.
It was an interesting time, the nation still celebrating its bicentennial anniversary. Black History Month had been nationally recognized for the first time in 1976, too. And only a year before — the aftermath of the Vietnam War still thick in the air — the requirement of 18- to 25-year-old males to register for Selective Service had been suspended.