RIP Billy Tubbs

A little over 40 years ago, I had an unpaid office position in the OU basketball office. It was a position that Dave Bliss created for me, where I'd get three hours of credit for doing some independent promotional and statistical work for the program. So that meant I was there for the transition. Billy was always great to me, even thought he inherited me in the process (I served under Bliss' Grad Assistant, who was there for the entire semester, Spring of 1980).

I moved out of state after graduation but still made it back for at least one home game each year, until my return in the summer of '84. The Wayman Tisdale signing was a special deal, but the team before he got there was pretty exciting. The OU-Cal Irvine NIT home game was a wild ride but very thrilling in the end.

During Wayman's freshman year, Billy was hit by a car while jogging. Something despicable came out of that, but I'll hit on that later. Around that time, he became one of the "black hats" in college basketball. I'm still not sure how he became vilified by the ESPN types of the world. I guess it was became his team wasn't boring and unathletic. The "big three" in the old Big 8 conference sure didn't like it that a lowly football school was invading their rarified air. That animosity actually started in '79 when Bliss' team won the league (and the tournament), but it really took hold when Billy's teams started beating up on KU, KSU and Mizzou.

His teams were so much fun to watch from about 1982-90. They did it without McDonald's All-Americans (except for Tisdale and Jeff Webster). He did have a pretty good team in '92, but they had some injuries late in the year and were one-and-done in the NCAA. I think he finally burned out a little bit, and I think he got tired of overcompensation by various administrators at OU who were too paranoid after the football team's issues of 1988-89. But I was so pleased that he returned to Oklahoma and helped out on some TV games, even after he turned 80.

I mentioned the jogging accident. It brought out TWO very despicable acts by "haters." One is fairly known. It was when those classy Aggy types created a T-shirt mocking his injury (it read "I jog with Billy" on the front and had nothing but a tire mark on the back). I can't imagine someone celebrating a near fatality, even it involved a bitter rival. The second was when a hateful slug of a writer named Randy Holtz, a former Missouri "Antler" (the scumbag student section), started calling Billy, "Treadmarks." He hated Billy that much! And he wasn't too shy about leading the "big lie" about a so-called "flipping off the crowd" scene in Boulder back in 1984. I've had reliable sources tell me it never happened. Holtz kept repeating that lie and kept the stupid nickname going while serving as a columnist for Basketball Times. I canceled my subscription because of him.

Those big-time KU homers, including a clown named Chuck Woodling at the local paper in Lawrence, invented a similar incident in Lawrence that year. Woodling is the same classless jerk who took the occasion of Wayman Tisdale's death to rehash the '84 "incident" and basically said Tisdale deserved no sympathy after his passing, because of it.

I can probably think of a few more blatant lies told about Billy, but I will shut it down there. He was definitely a fun loving, decent guy who coached his way despite it being a bit different from the national "norm." I'm glad he did it "his way," because it made for fun times at the LNC for the better part of 14 seasons.
 
I was fortunate to have graduated from OU in 81 so I was there for the Bliss championship, the drop to mediocrity or worse and then the hiring of Billy. I remember his first year he said he was going to have a run and shoot offense but he hoped it would eventually evolve into run and score, and boy did it ever.

The next decade was some of the most fun I have ever had following OU sports. The NIT game, Waymon and the boys coming out party at Syracuse, Mike Treps announcing Tim Mc..........Alister, the Andre Turner missed call that may have cost us a final four (ok, that wasn't much fun!), the Georgia Tech hot house game (still sweating from that one), the UNLV ice game (Larry Johnson and Gerald Paddio), the Kansas win and Choo Kennedy pointing to his finger where his Big 8 championship ring was going (and the controversy surrounding that), the Missouri game mic drop (no matter how bad the officiating is.....), Billy saying when he played a top 10 team "this is a top 10 conference game", back to back home wins over the #1 ranked teams in the country (Kansas and Missouri), 97 points in a half, the Loyola Marymount games (I'm still breathing hard just watching those), Billy holding the ball at Missouri because of the refs putting Waymon in foul trouble, the Skeeter meter......on and on and on, all due to Billy Ball.

Thanks coach, you gave this OU fan the ride of a lifetime. God bless!
 
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Thanks for the breathtaking recap, Sooner Season! I enjoyed the ride down Billy Ball memory lane! Those were fun days, to be sure.
 
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