Hard night for Hard Edge

By Michael Kinney

Jeff Melton was expecting a big night Thursday. Not only was his favorite team playing for a national championship, but his business, Hard Edge screenprinting and embroidery, was on the verge of having its most profitable day this year.

But that all came crashing to a halt by 10:30 p.m. It was around that time that Oklahoma's hopes of winning a second BCS championship were being trampled by Florida on the field at Dolphin Stadium in Miami. At the same time, Melton's hopes of the big payday were vanishing in front of him as he watched the game in his warehouse.

"Everybody started showing up about mid fourth quarter," Melton said. "When we were three points behind, I thought we were still in it. Still plenty of time. We can still pull this out. I would say after they scored, and it was a 10 point lead with four or five minutes to go, we still had a little bit of hope. But when it got to about two or three minutes left in the game, we figured it would have to be a Sooner magic miracle to pull this off."

As owner and manager of Hard Edge, Melton had a personal stake invested in whether the Sooners could pull out the victory. It was a gamble that didn't work out the way he wanted.

"We are the official Nike printer for this area," Melton said. "If anytime Oklahoma or Oklahoma State goes to one of these big events like a national championship or something, we are going to be the ones printing it for them. The Sooners didn't pull it off and we go home. That's what hot market printing is. You are ready to go if they win. If they don't win, you send everybody home."

If Oklahoma had won, Hard Edge would have started printing out more than 50,000 Oklahoma national champion T-shirts. That doesn't include the 200 pre-made shirts that were sent to Nike and were waiting on the sideline for the winning team. According to Melton, Nike will destroy those.

Melton said he had several thousands of dollars invested in the project. But because OU failed to win, that is money he is unable to get back.

"But if they win, we make that back easily," Melton said. "In the first hour or two. Some of my friend ask how much money do you have bet on the game. I'm like, a lot more than I would like to have on it. But my return would be way big if we win. I'm out a couple of thousand if we lose. It's an investment and a gamble."

It's not just Melton who missed out on making a tidy sum of money because the Sooners lost. His employees were expecting a big paycheck also.

"We had 26 workers per shift, running 10 hour shifts continuous until the job is done," Melton said. "We were looking at 30 hours of production. So three shifts with 26 people each. We have to get all this prep work ready to go, we burn all the screens. Test prints and have got hours and hours of labor. Thousands of dollars worth of time with dozens of employees. And when they lose, it's just money loss."

Unfortunately, this is not new to Melton. Oklahoma has lost its last three national championship games and five consecutive BCS bowl games. All of which Hard Edge would have profited from if the Sooners had prevailed.

Even though Hard Edge has contracts with the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Cowboys and the Oklahoma City Thunder, he won't forget this Oklahoma loss anytime soon.

"It's not the end of the world," Melton said. "It is to me because I am a huge Sooner fan. Whether I was doing this or not, I want OU to win. But when we have got this on, it is more incentive."

Michael Kinney 366-3537 mkinney@normantranscript.com