NMSooner'80
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I lived out of state in the early Billy Tubbs days, other than when he got the job in the spring of 1980. So I wasn't exposed to a lot of daily coverage. In those days, there was no internet, but there was a Big 8 sports magazine that also started covering basketball around 1983. That exposed the reader to media around the region, and the two biggest bunches of "homers" were the ones who covered Nebraska football and Kansas basketball.
That said, the odd relationship between OU men's basketball and the Oklahoma media seemed to really take off in early 1984. And it wasn't so much "what was said" back then, but more of what wasn't said.
You would have thought the team, led by sophomore Wayman Tisdale, got all kinds of positive press. After all, they put on a great show early in the season by winning at Syracuse on national TV (CBS). But, it didn't seem to go that way.
I was finally able back then to get the Sunday Oklahoman at newsstands out west. It was odd to read a lot of negativity, mostly from non-OU fans, when the DOK really emphasized receiving and printing letters to the editor. It got weird when OSU fans started going off on Tubbs about "running up the score" after an early 1984 Bedlam game in Norman. The fact was that the Sooners won by only 13 after leading by 26 with about three minutes to play. I guess the only Aggy-pleasing thing Tubbs could have done was to clear the bench sooner and blow the game (ugh). But, he didn't, and being Aggies they had to vent about it.
But it really started getting weird after two "controversial" road wins. The first was in Boulder in January of that year. OU struggled but won in triple-OT. I knew, from hearing a Colorado AM station rant about it, that the atmosphere was pretty hostile.
I didn't find out until a few days later that the CU fans threw stuff on the court, and that Tubbs was accused of flipping off the crowd. The DOK didn't staff the game, and from what I was told a few months later (when I moved back to the state) that they took the word of a virulent anti-Tubbs guy in the Denver media. So "what wasn't said" led to the myth of the "finger" (for the first time).
The second "controversy" came in Lawrence, of course. OU got blamed for a hostile crowd, and was also accused of another "finger" (this time by Darryl "Choo" Kennedy). I saw film on it when I arrived in Oklahoma later in the year. It was NOT "the bird." And somehow the story morphed into how "Tubbs did it." Of course, the pro-Beaker homers hammered on it for years, even when Wayman Tisdale passed in 2009. A "retired" local writer from Kansas took that occasion to rip Wayman and OU all over again.
Once again, the DOK could have investigated it to see who was telling the truth back in '84. It didn't happen then, either. I guess they were happy with the Kansas/KC media branding OU as an outlaw program for the next several years (the '85 season preview for the league, in the KC Star, said people would have to lock their doors and hide their kids when OU came to town - I saw that clipping personally).
OU won the league that year, too, fairly comfortably, and also won the league tournament by beating Iowa State in the finals. My brother went to the 1985 Big 8 tournament while in med school at OU, and he came back shaking his head over how hateful the place was when OU was playing. As we all know, it got even worse by 1988 and beyond.
During the '85 season, the unchallenged DOK "letter writers" hammered away at Tubbs and his team. Amazingly, they got a great rebuttal that I'll never forget. It came from Mike Dillingham, an OU basketball walk-on and younger brother of an OU football player. He told the true stories of his interactions with the entire Tubbs family and how ridiculous some of the anti-Tubbs critics had become. Dillingham also incorrectly predicted that the DOK wouldn't print his letter. I think a lot of people were glad he did.
If it ever seemed odd that the "letter writers" were so one-sided - and they also loved to go off on OU football (like after the '84 OU-Texas "tie"), it could be explained by something I was told by a guy who was a veteran of small-town Oklahoma sports writing. He said the guy who did the hiring at the DOK back then, really didn't want to hire OU grads. He openly preferred either small-college grads or out-of-staters.
They did have a couple of old pros at the DOK who weren't anti-OU, and in fact one of them wrote a column in '86 that ripped a "national guy" who called him to get the "angle" that Switzer's football team would be the "black hats" to the wonderful "white hats" of Terry Donahue and UCLA. I think that local guy was probably enjoying it that Barry's bunch pounded the saintly Bruins, 38-3. But, once those guys started leaving the market, it became rare that OU caught a break like that from one of its own local guys.
In fact, one of the "new blood" guys arrived in early 1987 and promptly ripped the '87 Sooners for being "too cocky" in a road win at NC State. That was a head-scratcher. But it was more the norm back then for them to let other media hammer on OU without any sort of challenge from the OKC area.
Like I said, it's often what "isn't said" in the media that can have an effect. And it sure did on OU's image, and often negatively.
And though it was rarely a "Bedlam thing" in the media where basketball was concerned - other than those times when OSU played its one good game of the season, against OU in Stillwater, some things were happening behind the scenes in those pre-internet days. This probably set the stage for what we've become used to seeing from the OKC media, although it involved OU football coverage.
That bit of news came from another guy I knew in the market, who left OKC around 1987 and has since passed away. He told me once that their Sundays in the newsroom often got rather interesting during football season. They had OSU fans actually measuring game stories of both OU and OSU back then, and if OU got one more column-inch of coverage, they started calling the DOK to complain. To me, things like that definitely could get a staff rather gun-shy about "fairness."
I have no doubt that led to outright bias that started showing up around 1988.
That said, the odd relationship between OU men's basketball and the Oklahoma media seemed to really take off in early 1984. And it wasn't so much "what was said" back then, but more of what wasn't said.
You would have thought the team, led by sophomore Wayman Tisdale, got all kinds of positive press. After all, they put on a great show early in the season by winning at Syracuse on national TV (CBS). But, it didn't seem to go that way.
I was finally able back then to get the Sunday Oklahoman at newsstands out west. It was odd to read a lot of negativity, mostly from non-OU fans, when the DOK really emphasized receiving and printing letters to the editor. It got weird when OSU fans started going off on Tubbs about "running up the score" after an early 1984 Bedlam game in Norman. The fact was that the Sooners won by only 13 after leading by 26 with about three minutes to play. I guess the only Aggy-pleasing thing Tubbs could have done was to clear the bench sooner and blow the game (ugh). But, he didn't, and being Aggies they had to vent about it.
But it really started getting weird after two "controversial" road wins. The first was in Boulder in January of that year. OU struggled but won in triple-OT. I knew, from hearing a Colorado AM station rant about it, that the atmosphere was pretty hostile.
I didn't find out until a few days later that the CU fans threw stuff on the court, and that Tubbs was accused of flipping off the crowd. The DOK didn't staff the game, and from what I was told a few months later (when I moved back to the state) that they took the word of a virulent anti-Tubbs guy in the Denver media. So "what wasn't said" led to the myth of the "finger" (for the first time).
The second "controversy" came in Lawrence, of course. OU got blamed for a hostile crowd, and was also accused of another "finger" (this time by Darryl "Choo" Kennedy). I saw film on it when I arrived in Oklahoma later in the year. It was NOT "the bird." And somehow the story morphed into how "Tubbs did it." Of course, the pro-Beaker homers hammered on it for years, even when Wayman Tisdale passed in 2009. A "retired" local writer from Kansas took that occasion to rip Wayman and OU all over again.
Once again, the DOK could have investigated it to see who was telling the truth back in '84. It didn't happen then, either. I guess they were happy with the Kansas/KC media branding OU as an outlaw program for the next several years (the '85 season preview for the league, in the KC Star, said people would have to lock their doors and hide their kids when OU came to town - I saw that clipping personally).
OU won the league that year, too, fairly comfortably, and also won the league tournament by beating Iowa State in the finals. My brother went to the 1985 Big 8 tournament while in med school at OU, and he came back shaking his head over how hateful the place was when OU was playing. As we all know, it got even worse by 1988 and beyond.
During the '85 season, the unchallenged DOK "letter writers" hammered away at Tubbs and his team. Amazingly, they got a great rebuttal that I'll never forget. It came from Mike Dillingham, an OU basketball walk-on and younger brother of an OU football player. He told the true stories of his interactions with the entire Tubbs family and how ridiculous some of the anti-Tubbs critics had become. Dillingham also incorrectly predicted that the DOK wouldn't print his letter. I think a lot of people were glad he did.
If it ever seemed odd that the "letter writers" were so one-sided - and they also loved to go off on OU football (like after the '84 OU-Texas "tie"), it could be explained by something I was told by a guy who was a veteran of small-town Oklahoma sports writing. He said the guy who did the hiring at the DOK back then, really didn't want to hire OU grads. He openly preferred either small-college grads or out-of-staters.
They did have a couple of old pros at the DOK who weren't anti-OU, and in fact one of them wrote a column in '86 that ripped a "national guy" who called him to get the "angle" that Switzer's football team would be the "black hats" to the wonderful "white hats" of Terry Donahue and UCLA. I think that local guy was probably enjoying it that Barry's bunch pounded the saintly Bruins, 38-3. But, once those guys started leaving the market, it became rare that OU caught a break like that from one of its own local guys.
In fact, one of the "new blood" guys arrived in early 1987 and promptly ripped the '87 Sooners for being "too cocky" in a road win at NC State. That was a head-scratcher. But it was more the norm back then for them to let other media hammer on OU without any sort of challenge from the OKC area.
Like I said, it's often what "isn't said" in the media that can have an effect. And it sure did on OU's image, and often negatively.
And though it was rarely a "Bedlam thing" in the media where basketball was concerned - other than those times when OSU played its one good game of the season, against OU in Stillwater, some things were happening behind the scenes in those pre-internet days. This probably set the stage for what we've become used to seeing from the OKC media, although it involved OU football coverage.
That bit of news came from another guy I knew in the market, who left OKC around 1987 and has since passed away. He told me once that their Sundays in the newsroom often got rather interesting during football season. They had OSU fans actually measuring game stories of both OU and OSU back then, and if OU got one more column-inch of coverage, they started calling the DOK to complain. To me, things like that definitely could get a staff rather gun-shy about "fairness."
I have no doubt that led to outright bias that started showing up around 1988.
