By Clay Horning
Does anybody remember when Kelvin Sampson first arrived?
I do, and he was all about drumming up interest, creating atmosphere and becoming the cheerful everybody’s-invited face of the program.
After Sampson dropped anchor in Norman, they found ways to put students on the floor, turn up the volume and create a new excitement. My memory tells me they pulled it off until Oklahoma lost one-too-many first-round tourney games and the split was born — the Sampson bashers over here and the swear-by-Sampson-ites over there … and never the two shall meet.
It’s been a long time since there was much buzz for the men’s tenant at Lloyd Noble Center. There’s been buzz for this game (Bedlam) or that game (Texas), but the last time it was season-long there was Hollis Price to thank, and the last time folks really got pumped because basketball was around the corner Sampson was still playing ambassador every bit as much as he was the coach.
A very long time ago.
I have no idea who’s next, though I get a kick out of the odd television poll that has viewers voting for Sherri Coale, because I think she could pull it off and, wow, what a story it would be.
But why would she want to kill herself to win 20 games next season when she’s bound to win another 30 with the team she’s got? And the there’s the problem of the job being offered in the first place.
But Coale remains a fair blueprint for what needs to happen across the hall of Lloyd Noble’s Center’s recent and swanky men-on-this-side, women-on-this-side expansion.
The men need a charisma transplant.
The face of their program needs to be out front, driving the bus and asking everybody to hop on. He doesn’t need to be down there in the bunker cursing all the fabricated SOB’s that never gave his program a chance in the first place.
After his honeymoon, even when he was winning big, Sampson always looked like he was trying to get even. With who is anybody’s guess, but he was always defending himself and his team for slights real and, more frequently, imagined.
It was not the face of a program you’d drive through a blizzard to cheer home to victory. And the Sooners need to find that guy, and that guy needs to know how to win and run a half-court offense — two things, it turns out, that don’t always go together.
And that’s just the start.
David Boren, Joe Castiglione, the ticket manager, whoever runs things down there, should start over with the fan base.
What fan base? Exactly.
Just kick the donors who show up a couple of times a month out of the building. Just do it, already. You’ll inspire more where they came from with your new exciting product and you’ll make room for the real fans in the process.
Heck, even when they’re there, they’re telling everybody to sit down.
And quit screwing the students. Two sections that go all the way to the top? Ridiculous. Give them an entire side of the arena and give them as many rows as they need. After a while, they’ll start shuffling Top Dog from the arena floor up to the concourse like they did in the good old days.
Oh, yeah. Bring back Top Dog.
Just go find the right guy, blow it up and start over.
Make it exciting again.
It’s not that hard.
Clay Horning366-3526cfhorning@normantranscript.com
