I’m curious if what I’m about to propose is sacrilege, simply wrong, or conceivably right. Because the way I see it, the NBA could give Sooner football a run.
Not in tradition, no way. Only the Celtics and Lakers could ever match up there.
Not in attendance, because no NBA game in Oklahoma City will ever draw even 20,000 without a new arena, while the Sooners seem likely to fall just short of 90,000 for every foreseeable Saturday in Owen Field’s present configuration. And perhaps not in passion among each team’s biggest fans, because it will be a long time before locals feel the NBA in their bones the way some in the Sooner Nation feel it in theirs.
But here’s my thought.
Say three years, five years or 10 years down the road the Oklahoma City Whatchyamacalits win an NBA title. And pretend every previous season, at the very least, Clay Bennett, Sam Presti and, things remaining the same, P.J. Carlesimo never failed to get their team to play hard and stay out of trouble. Well, assume all that and I can see 200,000 people at the parade.
I can see parade day being a state holiday. I can see people within a 50-mile radius taking the day off to take part. And I can see Oklahoma City, the newest little market that could, the absolute toast of the nation.
I can’t see that for another national championship.
For that, I can see 50,000 Sooner fans making the trip to the Rose Bowl or whichever stadium has the title game, and I can see the governor of our state and the governor of the opponent’s state making some kind of silly wager and I can see the Sooner Nation rising up.
But I can’t see maybe a million people taking ownership.
Apparently, there are some things you can’t find on the Internet. Even so, I’m pretty sure more people identify themselves as metropolitan Oklahoma Citians than have ever graduated from OU, living and dead. They won’t all be Whatchyamacalit fans, yet might if there’s a championship in play.
Nor is it clear this football program can win 11 or 12 games every season. But for one 8-4 campaign, Bob Stoops has done it and in most of those seasons, he’s kept OU in the national-title hunt deep into the year. Such consistency is his greatest accomplishment (because it sure isn’t recent Bowl Championship Series success).
But even Barry Swtizer dealt with mortality, losing four games three consecutive seasons from 1981 to ’83, just as Bud Wilkinson went 31-19-1 over his last five seasons (including a 3-6-1 stinker in 1960).
And if those guys can do that, then Stoops can, too. Or he can ride off into the sunset and the next guy might not be so great and pro basketball begins in November and, well, you know, things can always change.
In the end, Sooner football is going nowhere, in this newspaper most of all. Here, it will always be king. Just don’t underestimate civic pride.
Don’t forget the two most popular teams in our nation’s history, each one for a week or two, were a hockey team in Lake Placid, N.Y., and a women’s soccer team that finished up at the Rose Bowl.
That’s right, hockey and soccer.
Don’t think the citizens of a city that’s been minor league forever until now can’t catch the same kind of pandemonium for pro hoops.
Clay Horning
366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com
Local Sports
July 11, 2008
Hoops could give Sooner football a run
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