I Regret To Inform You Oklahoma Is A Basketball School
“I’m ready for basketball season.”
The surrender cobra of sentences and Oklahoma football fans have been muttering them since early October. The changing landscape of college football, a lackluster showing in a new conference, last year’s quarterback playing for the currently undefeated number one team in the country, and (most significantly) losing to Texas have mixed together a misery stew the likes of which hasn’t been tasted in Sooner country since the 90s. These disheartened fans, stomachs distended from swallowing disappointments, have been deceived, swindled, bamboozled into believing the Great Lie—that The University of Oklahoma is a football school.
I know differently because I was born in 1990 and my conservative Christian parents did not allow us to watch anything they deemed obscene or demonic. That rule mainly came into play with films like THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS but I have to assume it is also the reason I didn’t watch an Oklahoma football game until I was nine years old. Since football never graced our living room, my dad would drive across Tulsa to my grandparents’ house where they paid for cable television and provided a safe space for him to not cry in front of his children.
Instead of Howard Schnellenberger and John Blake, I watched Kelvin Sampson coach scrappy offenses and lockdown defenses to NCAA tournament after NCAA tournament. I knew Bedlam only as a game that took place either in Lloyd Noble Center or Gallagher-Iba Arena. I saw Eduardo Najera get knocked out against Michigan State. I wore t-shirts emblazoned with the greatest mascot in college sports.
I want to be the very best like no one ever was
Even after Bob Stoops won a national title in 2000, ushering in two decades of Top Daug erasure and football school gaslighting, if you had asked me who my favorite Sooner athlete was I would have said Hollis Price. I will forever remember his six three-pointers against Arizona in the Sweet Sixteen, one of which was a heat check from the logo causing Sampson to scream and Price to shrug.
There is a lot to remember when it comes to Oklahoma basketball. That heartland hardwood has a history.
Oklahoma is tied for 12th in all-time NCAA tournament appearances and has produced numerous All-Americans including Wayman Tisdale, whose prowess on the court was matched only by his prowess at slappin da bass.
In the last fifteen years alone, the basketball program has been home to four recognizable NBA talents in Austin Reaves, Buddy Hield, Tre Young, and Blake Griffen. (I used to walk to class on the same route as Blake Griffen and one time I saw him jaywalk across Lindsey Street in front of a black truck with Longhorn plates and thought I was going to witness a murder).
However, the program’s success goes back further than Kelvin Sampson in the 90s and Billy Tubbs in the 80s. In fact, the timeline begins before the Switzer Era or the Wilkinson Era.
In 1939, years before Bud Wilkinson would lead Oklahoma to its first football national championship and a record setting 47 straight wins, the Oklahoma basketball team participated in the first ever Final Four where they lost to eventual champions Oregon.
In 1947, Oklahoma battled all the way to the championship game but ultimately lost to Holy Cross.
In 1988, Harvey Grant, Stacey King, and Pearl Jam inspiration Mookie Blaylock led the Sooners to the championship game where they lost to Kansas, a team they had beaten twice during the regular season.
In 2002, the aforementioned Hollis Price led Sooners made it to the Final Four and lost to Indiana, who went on to lose the championship to Maryland, a team Oklahoma destroyed in the regular season.
In 2016, Buddy Hield won several national player of the year awards and led the Sooners to the Final Four where they lost to eventual champions Vanderbilt in the most lopsided loss in tournament history.
If you’re counting, that is five Final Four appearances and two National Championship appearances for The University of Oklahoma. Those numbers make OU tied for the most Final Four appearances without a national title and the most championship appearances without a title. The Sooners hold the record all on their lonesome for the most NCAA tournament wins without a National Title.
That is some real basketball school shit right there!
Some real…
…sad…
…basketball school shit.
The kind of thing that would lead a university to develop a smokescreen as a defense mechanism. Sure, that defense mechanism would go on to accumulate 7 national championships, 50 conference championships, 167 first-team All-Americans, and 7 Heisman Trophy winners but it’s a smokescreen nonetheless.
A lack of hardware cannot take away from one of the winningest basketball programs. A basketball program with history and tradition. A basketball program seemingly incapable of having the decency to just roll over and be bad.
Because, my friends, the truth is that The University of Oklahoma is a basketball school.
A miserable, cursed basketball school.
