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I have been an Oklahoma Sooner fan since the 1950s. Like a lot of native Oklahomans, I was raised in the culture of both Oklahoma Sooner football and the unique history that is Oklahoma. My family roots are in Okmulgee County, Oklahoma per my sister, Geraldine Middleton Williams’ legacy book recording of the Middleton/Morgan/Childs/Eddington family histories, “Converging In Okmulgee County, Oklahoma”, on file in the Henryetta Public Library and elsewhere.
My first personal exposure to the excitement of Sooner football came during my elementary years at Roosevelt Grade School in Henryetta when a classmate, Gary Merryman, brought to school a football autographed by many of the members of a recent OU National Championship team. That experience brought the true greatness of national pride in Oklahoma Football to life for me and it has been a factor of great importance in my personal life ever since.
In the years to follow, I listened to most Sooner football games on the radio. During the fall season of 1963, the intensity of my Sooner enthusiasm became firmly established. Saturday afternoons for the next several years found me washing cars, changing oil, and fixing flats at my Dad’s By-Pass Texaco gas station in Chelsea, Oklahoma. The excitement of Bob Barry’s radio voice held me in absolute command as I went about my duties. Through the 1960s and decades to follow, those radio broadcasts were such a vital connection to Sooner football for me and I am sure to many others of my generation.
Some of the most memorable games involved the greatest names in college football history. I recall how devastating were the runs of Gayle Sayers. And all the intensity of the OU/Texas games. Sometimes I pity the young fans of today who have the luxury of the high definition flat screen television broadcasts of practically every OU game. Back in the 1960s through the 1980s I desperately struggled to find a radio station within range of my AM radio at home or in the car in order to hear each game. Sometimes it was not possible or perhaps the reception would come and go allowing only occasional updates.
But the most exciting and surely the most pleasurable of all the Sooner victories have come during those seasons when the teams were challenged by injury or during rebuilding years when they would sometimes lose to teams they should have defeated and yet find a way to beat a supposed championship team or a team assumed to be an overwhelming favorite.
Well the Sugar Bowl game on January 2, 2014 must go down in my log book as the sweetest and most satisfying game I can recall. Of course, it is important to note that my memory may not be that great anymore. But the pregame hype, the newspaper report in the Houston Chronicle, the ESPN clowns all climbing on the Alabama/McCarron bandwagon was so disheartening and yet, a fantastic setup for what was to come. They couldn’t have scripted the program any better for all of us Sooner Fans.
I haven’t screamed, chortled, hollered, yelled, or laughed more in years! Yes my ATT U-verse on the flat screen TV allowed me to enjoy every second of the action. And like so many other OU Sooner fans, I was not truly able to relax and accept the outcome until Geneo Grissom scooped up the fumble caused by Eric Striker’s stripping of McCarron. What a hilarious end to a classic Sooner Magic performance. BOOMER SOONER!!
