The Daily Oklahoman from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma • 27

academy.com 2h Academy 0 SPOHTS OUTDOOHS Sports HhI1mSiiiIIVW The Perfect Thursday Ho liday Gift Rtght stuff, low price. newsok.com DECEMBER 13, 2007 City to host Rangers and White Sox Doping in baseball: Mitchell Report due today Sources: Report will name 60 to 80 players, including MVPs, All-Stars Exhibition will be played March 28 at the Brick Stay up-to-date on News0K.com Go to NewsOK.com for updated news on the Mitchell Report. schedules. The Rangers will play at Frisco, Texas, against their Dou-ble-A team, and the White Sox will play the New York Mets in the annual Civil Rights game in Memphis. "Any time you get two major league teams to come to a Triple-A ballpark, it's good," Allgood said.

"It's become kind of a jigsaw puzzle to put all of the pieces together, to get two major league teams to play out of their markets for exhibition games. So we're real pleased." One of the White Sox top young hed last week at the winter meetings between the Rangers and White Sox," said RedHawks executive director John Allgood. 'We're just waiting for the contract to come." Rangers media relations director Rich Rice said the team has not yet officially scheduled the Oklahoma City exhibition game against the White Sox. "It's headed that way, but I haven't gotten the final green light on it yet," Rice said. "It's not definite, but it's looking that way." The day after Texas and Chicago are expected to play at The Brick, they will conclude their preseason By Ronald Blum AP Baseball Writer NEW YORK George Mitchell's report on doping in baseball will name MVPs and All-Stars and call for beef-ed-up testing by an outside agency to clean up the game, The Associated Press learned Wednesday.

The report will not address amphetamines, which long have been recognized as part of the baseball drug cul- By Bob Hersom Staff Writer The Texas Rangers and Chicago White Sox have reached an agreement to play in Oklahoma City this spring. The Rangers and ChiSox are scheduled to play a 7:05 p.m. exhibition game March 28 at Brick-town Ballpark. "We had a verbal agreement reac ture, two sources with knowledge of the findings told the AP. But it will include names of 60 to 80 players linked See MITCHELL, Page 5C See RANGERS, Page 5C IN FOCUS: Yard Dawgz coach Gary Reasons One man, many hats He's Yard Dawgz top dog, an FSN analyst and a family man Page 4C: All-City cross country Westmoore's Katelin Cherry, left, and Deer Creek's Adam Young are The Oklahoman's Cross Country Runners of the Year.

Look inside to find out who else made the team, and read The Okla-homan the rest of the week for our other fall sports all-city teams. Coming tomorrow: Volleyball. BY NATE BILLINGS, THE OKLAHOMAN ARCHIVE College football: Smooth transitions There's a wrong way to leave a job and a right way to leave By Matt Patterson Staff Writer For a football mogul, Gary Reasons' office isn't much bigger than a cubicle, but it suits him just fine. Reasons, who took over as president and coach of the Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz arenafootball2 franchise in September, spends little time in the space anyway. The 45-year-old former New York Giants linebacker is constantly on the move.

On weekends, he's a college football color analyst for Fox Sports Net. The rest of the week, he's building the Yard Dawgz on and off the field. "I live on a calendar," Reasons said. "I have to prioritize quite a bit." It's Reasons' second stint with the Yard Dawgz. He coached the team in its first season, 2004, but later moved on to work with Long Wave a local technology company owned by Phil Miller.

It was Miller who purchased the Yard Dawgz from Jeff Lund in September. Along with his meticulous preparation for telecasts, Reasons is trying to make the Yard Dawgz into a money maker, something the team was not last season. For Reasons, who once owned a JOHN ROHDE jrohde oklahoman.com With his sudden departure from the Atlanta Falcons to the Arkansas Razorbacks, Bobby Petri-no replaces Nick Saban as the poster boy for how not to switch coaching jobs. But they have company. Former Oklahoma State coach Les Miles lied for a solid week while prepping his team for the 2004 Alamo Bowl, and then for a few more days afterward before accepting the LSU job.

Four weeks before Miles left the Cowboys, coach Urban Meyer made the move from Utah to Florida after insisting he would do no such thing. This led to the moniker Urban Liar. Petrino, Saban, Miles and Meyer all went where they wanted, and they lied to get there. They also adhered to the cardinal rule of switching See REASONS, Page 6C jobs: They lied to the people they were leaving, not to the people they were joining. Exactly how is a coach supposed to leave? Is there a proper way for a coach to switch jobs? Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione was posed these two questions and spoke for 47 minutes.

When he was finished, Castiglione chuckled and said, "I'm still not sure I've given you any answers." Houston Nutt's move from Arkansas to Mississippi was Getting to know Gary Reasons Age: 45 Occupation: President and coach of the Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz arenafootball2 franchise; color commentator for Fox Sports Net Family: Wife Terri; Children Nick, Randi and Lacy. Home: Edmond Notable: Reasons was a See ROHDE, Page 6C 91, winning two Super Bowls. He retired in 1992 as a member of the Cincinnati Bengals. Yard Dawgz Open House Oklahoma State football Gundy looks for play caller to fill the void Brewer, Meacham are in-house candidates BY STEVE GOOCH, THE OKLAHOMAN Where: Ford Center When: 6:30 tonight Tickets: Free Gary Reasons is a former NFL linebacker who is now president and coach of the Yard Dawgz and a college football analyst for Fox Sports Net. Oklahoma football Fiesta will feel like home for Knall By Mike Baldwin Staff Writer Southern Mississippi got the football coach it wanted.

Larry Fedora landed the type of job he wanted, an established program that's won, not a rebuilding project. Oklahoma State fans understand why their offensive coordinator wants to move up the coaching ladder. Their most pressing question is how many, if any, OSU assistant coaches might join Fedora in Hattiesburg, Miss. At a press conference Wednesday afternoon in which 1,000 USM fans welcomed their new head coach, Fedora, now Oklahoma State's former offensive coordinator, said it's too early to speculate who might be on his crowd," said Knall, who lives five minutes from the team hotel. "All my friends and family are gonna come out.

It's more than a blessing. I couldn't ask for anything better." On top of that, Knall's father, Phil, has been on the Fiesta Bowl committee since the early 1980s and will help escort the Sooners around town to different functions and events. But this Fiesta Bowl is special to Knall for another reason, too. This year, he has WEST VIRGINIA VS. OKLAHOMA WHEN: 7 p.m., Jan.

2, 2008 WHERE: Univ. of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Ariz. TV: FOX, KOKH-25 (Cox 12) RADIO: KRXO-FM 107.7, KOKC-AM 1520 OU notebook: Regents approve stadium renovations, Page 6C By Scott Wright Staff Writer NORMAN One of the primary goals Oklahoma punter Mike Knall wrote down he always writes them down before the season was to win a national championship. That won't happen for the Sooners this year, but you won't hear Knall, a Scottsdale, native, complaining that the Fiesta Bowl is their consolation prize, either. "It's cool to play in one of the biggest bowls and play right in front of my home TEMPE ARIZONA OKLAHOMA STATE VS.

INDIANA WHEN: 4:30 p.m., Dec. 31 WHERE: Sun Devil Stadium, Tempe, Ariz. TV: NFL Network (Cox 252) RADIO: KXXY-FM 96.1 Mike Knall OU punter is a Scottsdale native See KNALL, Page 6C See FEDORA, Page 6C.