NMSooner'80
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This was the year that I moved back to Oklahoma for awhile. It was after the '83-84 basketball season, but I heard a lot about the charges of "no class" directed at the OU men's basketball team, led by the KU cheerleaders of the Kansas City area media.
It wasn't hard to get quotes, even after the fact, from the fluky '84 tourney title game in KC, when KU's players said they basically had more class than OU and wouldn't cut the nets down to celebrate as a result. I read an old Eschbach column in the Edmond Sun that said Billy wanted to write Saint Larry Brown and Co. a good-luck wish on the ride home from KC after that, then he saw the snarky KU quotes in the press and shredded his letter on the spot.
In this pre-internet age, it was still possible to read this crap when some rare "OU friendly" media person would find it and quote it. I also stumbled across a preseason issue of the KC Star that fall, and it was truly despicable. It made it sound like the whole '84-85 OU men's team was packed with criminals who'd beat you up and steal your wallet. And of course, this contrasted with their own image of the wonderful lads from Lawrence.
I don't even recall anyone on that particular '84-85 team doing anything controversial, but they were still the epitome of evil in the media triangle of KC/Topeka/Lawrence. It was so absurd that one of my brother's buds, a weak-willed OU alum from the KC area, believed everything bad that he was reading about OU and started repeating it as gospel (same guy has a son who's now at KU, which is no surprise, but I digress).
That weird KU mindset even invaded the southern Oklahoma media, but only for one year. The Daily Ardmoreite hired a news writer who was a KU grad, and he was someone who fancied himself as a college basketball expert. That clashed with the typical editorial stance at the time in Ardmore, where a hard-working guy named Ron Powell was all about covering the Oklahoma schools and not some rival school from over 350 miles up the interstate.
I wasn't living in Ardmore at the time, but I did pretty much have access to the paper on a daily basis anyway. I don't know what happened with the pro-Beaker dude, but I've guessed that he offended his readership to the point that he was politely urged to head north after that school year.
His crowning moment, though, was in this "New Year's Wish" column that started out about the local news scene, but digressed into typical Squawk drivel near the end. He took that opportunity to wish that "Wayman Tisdale would head for the NBA and forget about a national championship that is well out of reach," and then decided it would be a good idea to wish his KU boys "best of luck in their quest for a national title...." UGH!
If you know your history, OU came a lot closer to a national title in '85, although Tisdale did bolt for the league, and also won the Big 8 title. I'm still convinced one reason Waymand bolted was how he was always being pummeled by a wave of Brown's no-talent White stiffs in Norman on a day that OU won anyway. KU also didn't even win its own invitational, also known as the Big 8 postseason tournament. It was OU over ISU that day, although I'll never forget what my brother told me after going up there for the championship game. He said, "Man, you wouldn't believe how much they HATE us up there...." Luckily, he has more sense than his old OU pal and has hated KU with a passion ever since.
One other silver lining about the earlier time in '84. Mark Turgeon was one of the KU smart-alecks who took verbal jabs at OU after that alleged morality-play in KC when they won. The OU student body never let him forget it, and made it a point to ride him as unmercifully as what he deserved. That time period should have also cured most OU fans from ever "rooting for the conference" where KU is involved.
It wasn't hard to get quotes, even after the fact, from the fluky '84 tourney title game in KC, when KU's players said they basically had more class than OU and wouldn't cut the nets down to celebrate as a result. I read an old Eschbach column in the Edmond Sun that said Billy wanted to write Saint Larry Brown and Co. a good-luck wish on the ride home from KC after that, then he saw the snarky KU quotes in the press and shredded his letter on the spot.
In this pre-internet age, it was still possible to read this crap when some rare "OU friendly" media person would find it and quote it. I also stumbled across a preseason issue of the KC Star that fall, and it was truly despicable. It made it sound like the whole '84-85 OU men's team was packed with criminals who'd beat you up and steal your wallet. And of course, this contrasted with their own image of the wonderful lads from Lawrence.
I don't even recall anyone on that particular '84-85 team doing anything controversial, but they were still the epitome of evil in the media triangle of KC/Topeka/Lawrence. It was so absurd that one of my brother's buds, a weak-willed OU alum from the KC area, believed everything bad that he was reading about OU and started repeating it as gospel (same guy has a son who's now at KU, which is no surprise, but I digress).
That weird KU mindset even invaded the southern Oklahoma media, but only for one year. The Daily Ardmoreite hired a news writer who was a KU grad, and he was someone who fancied himself as a college basketball expert. That clashed with the typical editorial stance at the time in Ardmore, where a hard-working guy named Ron Powell was all about covering the Oklahoma schools and not some rival school from over 350 miles up the interstate.
I wasn't living in Ardmore at the time, but I did pretty much have access to the paper on a daily basis anyway. I don't know what happened with the pro-Beaker dude, but I've guessed that he offended his readership to the point that he was politely urged to head north after that school year.
His crowning moment, though, was in this "New Year's Wish" column that started out about the local news scene, but digressed into typical Squawk drivel near the end. He took that opportunity to wish that "Wayman Tisdale would head for the NBA and forget about a national championship that is well out of reach," and then decided it would be a good idea to wish his KU boys "best of luck in their quest for a national title...." UGH!
If you know your history, OU came a lot closer to a national title in '85, although Tisdale did bolt for the league, and also won the Big 8 title. I'm still convinced one reason Waymand bolted was how he was always being pummeled by a wave of Brown's no-talent White stiffs in Norman on a day that OU won anyway. KU also didn't even win its own invitational, also known as the Big 8 postseason tournament. It was OU over ISU that day, although I'll never forget what my brother told me after going up there for the championship game. He said, "Man, you wouldn't believe how much they HATE us up there...." Luckily, he has more sense than his old OU pal and has hated KU with a passion ever since.
One other silver lining about the earlier time in '84. Mark Turgeon was one of the KU smart-alecks who took verbal jabs at OU after that alleged morality-play in KC when they won. The OU student body never let him forget it, and made it a point to ride him as unmercifully as what he deserved. That time period should have also cured most OU fans from ever "rooting for the conference" where KU is involved.