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Sports department.

December 29, 2012 /

Don’t get me wrong, I was rooting for West Virginia. I may be a bookseller, but I’m also a sports fan. Big 12. Big 4 (As the Tulsa World calls the four area schools). I hated to see the Mountaineers fall to Syracuse (Syracuse?) but on the other hand, there is that new rivalry with established conference programs.

The prediction, early on, was that Gino Smith, the WV quarterback – a Heisman frontrunner – was going to come into the Big 12 and oversee the blowing out of the traditional powers on his way to a NYC trip to pick up the heavy brass statue.

Oooops.

That didn’t happen. In fact, Gino and the West Virginia program not only didn’t play up to expectations, they had to have been a disappointment to their own fans. They fell flat for fans of the Big 12, too.

The Conference has been represented so far by Baylor, which whipped up on UCLA, Texas (which looked like it was going down to defeat, but) rallied to vanquish Oregon State in the waning minutes. Hey! A win is a win! In that same vein, Texas Tech came from behind to win over Minnesota. 3 for 3. Batting .1000 to bring a baseball metaphor into a football story.

The bottom line is, going into Saturday’s slate of games, the Big 12 was representing itself pretty well, until those league newcomers lined up. I wanted them to win. Don’t get me wrong. I always want the conference teams to play well against the other leagues’ best.

WV… what happened? The team that was going to win it all in the Big 12 with the quarterback that was going to win the Heisman – lost. 38-14. Hey, Mountaineers! What happened?

Humility tastes best when it is first sampled by those who would swallow it with the most difficulty. West Virginia… welcome to the Big 12 Conference!

As a football fan that first wants the local schools to win, followed by the conference schools, I hated that West Virginia met its match in its first representation as a Big 12 school. On the other hand, if a conference team had to lose, best it was West Virginia, those upstarts that had all the pundits talking them up smartly.

Oklahoma. Oklahoma State. Texas. Texas Tech. Kansas State. These are teams that wait in the wings for a chance at the Mountaineers, in conference. West Virginia? It’s the off-season for you now.

Practice up.

(Oh. The picture? I decided that random images of the store need to be included for those who are just – tuning in, to use an old (but familiar to me) metaphor. There is no actual football going on inside, except during the games, on television… In the office.

There is a Sports Department. With actual books. Come and look!

It’s all over…

September 29, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Football season has ended. Quit. Done. No Mo. At least, my weekly predictions in the online contest are over.

I’ve entered the Tulsa World’s Football contest for the past several years, and a couple of times during the contests, I’ve had a pretty high ranking. Never won, but did well enough to have B-list bragging rights.

Right now, I am tied for last place with about 400 others. I know when it’s time to lay down the crystal ball. At least now I can concentrate on OU-Texas Week.

When I first moved to Tulsa, there was even a parade of sorts downtown. (Admittedly small and unofficial.) That was back in the time when the oil companies were really going strong and a couple of executives with allegiences on either side of the Red River made some big splashes supporting their teams. Barbecue followed.

Some things bring out the competitor in us, like driving on Elm Street in Broken Arrow, where motorists are in training for Olympic Tailgating (the car in motion kind). I remember when I couldn’t let the boys beat me at ping pong, since they were already trouncing me at every video game. I figured they’d beat me at table tennis soon enough.

We’ve even got chili cookoffs these days. Competitive brisket smoking. Some are able to combine all of the above in the morning before the college football game. Outside the stadium you’ll find the competition pretty steep among the tailgating, brisket-smoking, parading, ping-ponging videogamers, who’ll end up so distracted they’ll completely miss the game.

That’s my crystal ball’s prediction, anyway.

Competing in the business world:

Is Your Name Famous?

Traditions

September 20, 2010 / / 0 Comments

You do something the same way over time and it ends up either being a bad habit or a tradition. If you spit off the railroad bridge on Halloween night for good luck, that’s a tradition. If you spit on the dining room floor after sampling the pea soup – not so much.

The cameras zoomed in on the student section at the OU-Air Force game Saturday. The issue was the national anthem. Sitting in the student section with my daughter a few years ago, I was singing along (I’m a closet national anthem fan and sing it in the shower) and at the end, when I hit the word “Brave,” others yelled “Sooners!”

I got over my confusion pretty quickly. School spirit is pretty easy to recognize, especially when sitting (I should say “standing,” as we rarely sat) in the student section. When the Air Force Academy came to town this weekend, there was a call by Coach Stoops to “sing it right.”

Stoops is a blue-collar-work-ethic, patriotic, public figure. His discomfort over the altered words is understandable. He’d rather hear cheers on defensive stands to intimidate the opponent. He’s called out the crowd in the past a couple of times, thinking it ought to be a little more raucous at OU games.

It was great to see the television news video after the game. The camera crew pointed their lens at the crowd for the anthem finale and gathered in images of about a dozen singing faces. All I saw was “and the home of the – BRAVE!” It may not have been unanimous, but – then again – it may well have been.

Good for the students, and good for Coach Stoops. Not all school-spirit traditions pan out. Texas A&M students will remember the bonfire that got so out-of-control with tradition, that twelve people died when it collapsed. Singing “home of the Sooners!” isn’t quite so dangerous, obviously. Still, under the scrutiny of outsiders (and even some OU insiders) it was easily depicted as irreverent at best, to the extreme of unpatriotic.

I don’t think Sooner students are unpatriotic. By virtue of the respect and comraderie displayed after the game, there is a wellspring of patriotism for the country and its armed forces, and respect for the opinion of the coach.

Norman is the home of the OU Sooners. They did their administration proud when they made the Air Force Academy and its followers feel at home there. For all the negative views about college athletics, the Saturday activities showed a positive side to fans and fanaticism.

Read about the Home of the Other Traditions!

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