NORMAN, Okla. — College football fans tend to prefer that university presidents be seen, not heard. The University of Oklahoma’s president, David L. Boren, has been a flagrant violator of that precept.
He urged a 2006 loss to Oregon be expunged after the Sooners bore the brunt of poor officiating. He pledged in 2011, at the height of conference realignment, that Oklahoma would not be a “wallflower,” leaving open the possibility that it might depart the Big 12 Conference. And in 2015, he gave the league a public diagnosis of “psychologically disadvantaged” after none of its teams qualified for the first College Football Playoff.