The following story was written as an
assignment in the Depth Reporting class at the
University of Nebraska School of Journalism. The
author is a senior from Lincoln.
By CHARLES HARPSTER
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.-When disc jockey
Steve Rivers of radio station KOMA predicted
during his evening show a two-touchdown
Thanksgiving Day Oklahoma victory over
Nebraska, the "shuckers" from the north struck
back.
A screaming dorm of NU freshman girls
telephoned Nebraska cheers from Lincoln. From
Bassett, Neb., a high school student wrote, "Our
geometry teacher, Mr. Dan Miller, said we will take
the wishbound (cq) slush and make cornmeal
mush."
"1 thought Oklahoma fans were bad," Rivers
said, "but they don't compare with Nebraskans in
spirit." They come darn close, however.
The Game to decide who really is Big Red in
the Big Eight has been called the Game of the
Decade (the Century?) by its most hyperbolic
promoters. . It could end in a dull, thudding
scoreless tie.
Without the fans it would be just another game.
But, like a championship soccer match in Brazil,
the public is part of the game. As an OU public
relations man put it, "Oklahomans, since the
Wilkinson era, had forgotten how to be greedy
fans."
KOMA, with a 50,000-watt power plant
bringing in Sooner fan mail as fast as the
Wishbone-T gains yards, has stacks of out-of-state
letters generated by The Game.
La Bolt, S.D. Luck, Wis. Aztec,
N.M. Julesburg, Colo. Rock Springs,
Wyo. Letters, poems, predicitons and
drawings, all depicting how the
Huskers are expected to be carved
Thanksgiving Day.
Take, for example, " 'Twas Thanksgiving Day
in Soonerland":
"Now Pruitt! Now Mildren! Now Joe and
Leon!
On Chandler! On Roy and John!
To the 50! To the 30! and down to goal!
Now score away, score away, score away all!"
A Cornhusker visitor to Oklahoma
City-Norman would find sympathy only at the
Nebraska Embassy. Just outside of Will Rogers
World Airport, on Interstate 35, a billboard
reminds him "There is only one Big Red in the Big
8-Boomer Sooner." At McDonald's you get a
"Beat Nebraska" sticker with your Big Mac.
The Junior Achievement people are passing out
"Beat NU" matchbooks. Store signs urge an OU
victory. There are posters, bumper stickers, and
wishbone brooches. In a state where front license
plates haven't been required since metal-scarce
World War II, plastic OUSA license tags are a
bumper crop.
Has the entire town gone berserk, as some
Oklahomans think Lincoln has? Not quite. If is
true everyone is talking about The Game. And in
stores there are $4 OU ashtrays, $9 OU plaques
and $30 OU wall clocks. But the GO BIG RED
clothing boom familiar to Nebraskans seemed to
be small business around Oklahoma City.
In Oklahoma, big games are
measured against the annual third
game of the year with Texas. How
does The Game compare? Some
sources said nothing beats a victory
over Texas, but most authorities put
the Texas game No. 2 this year.
OU students are higher on this game than on
any in history, said ticket manager Red Reid.
Evidence, he said, is found in the card section,
which is turning away volunteers for the first time.
There was a pep rally Monday night with
entertainment by a newly formed Norman group
called, "The Coming Storm." A bigger rally is
planned for Wednesday. Dwight Short of
Henryetta, Okla., a member of the Sooner Rally
Council, announced last week that there would be
no boundaries to restrict groups vying for the
Sooner Spirit Award.
Last week a shot fired into the Black People's
Student Union and several arson-connected fires
diverted the attention of many students from the
game. Capt. David D. Stenhouse of University
Police said Owen Field was under 24-hour guard,
with men working 1 2-hour shifts.
Wishbone-T formation. Splitend Jon Harrison is
split to his left. This is basically a running
formation, however, if Harrison is not covered
quarterback Jack Mildren is capable of throwing to
him while tolling to his left.
Stenhouse said Owen Field is always guarded
before televised games because equipment is stored
inside. He added that "because of incidents the
last couple of days" security had been tightened
around the Tartan Turf field. The field is reputed
to be flammable, according to assistant OU sports
information director Bill Hancock.
Campus police said little trouble is expected
after The Game, regardless of the winner. After
OU games at Texas, Stenhouse said, "people walk
the streets of Dallas, shoop and holler.but there's
not that much to do in downtown Norman."
"This games means a hell of a lot
to Oklahomans," said Ernie Wilson,
owner of the Town Tavern on Boyd
and Asp Street, a short walk from
Owen Field. "I've never seen a game
built up like this," he said. "If we
lose, I might not open up after the
game."
"Nebraska fans may be the best in the Big 8,"
he said, adding a feeble request not to be quoted.
"They're even better than OU fans. The closer
Oklahomans get to the stadium, the meaner they
get."
Rumors were circulating that scalpers were
asking up to $ i00 for a good seat, but anonymous
calls to numbers listed under "miscellaneous for
sale" in the student newspaper indicated prices
between $25 and $35. The following night,
however, one $35-ticket seller was asking $75,
with plans for asking $100 closer to game time.
Scalping tickets is legal in Oklahoma-that is,
it's not illegal. Ticket manager Reid said a Regents'
ruling forbids selling tickets on OU property, but
the ruling provides no means of enforcement.
Capt. Stenhouse said "our orders are to disregard"
scalping.
At last count, 97 sports writers
from 65 papers in 22 states will be
bumping elbows Thursday in the press
box, aptly named. The New York
Times will be there, along with three
papers from Philadelphia.
In - anticipation of the demand, the 72-man
capacity of the press box was expanded to a
capacity of more than 100 during the layover
between the Iowa State and Kansas games,
Hancock said. It may not be enough, he said,
because 30 writers might cover the game in the
open air.
Hancock said the athletic department decided
last week not to allow press box space to any more
writers, "regardless of their prestige." Aghast
eastern papers since have been turned down, he
said, and "little bitty Oklahoma papers we hadn't
heard from all season are coming out of the walls.
Nothing turns on an Oklahoman as much as
football."
Malcolm E. Rosser, 70 vice president of the
Halliburton Oil Co. in Oklahoma City, and John L.
Champe, 76, a retired NU anthropology professor
living in Lincoln, have bet a silver dollar on the
OU-NU game every year since 1930. Since the
early 30s, Rosser recalled, they have passed back
and forth the same 1926 silver dollar.
Rosser said he has the edge on possession time
and is confident he'll get the dollar back after The
Game. In a recent letter to Champe, Rosser wrote,
"I will pay for the silver polish. I'll expect you to
pay the postage."
Soon after The Game, Oklahoma City Times
columnist Wayne Mackey will take a $3.50 check
to the Western Union office. The check will pay
for a 19-word cablegram to Pearl Kiser, Mildred
Cordell and Tressa Cole, in care of the Tollman
Towers in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The three Oklahoma City women, who left last
week on a 35-day tour of Africa, told Mackey they
couldn't bear the suspense of not knowing the
score until they returned.
The typical Sooner booster is not Cecil 'X
Samara, widely known as OU's No. 1 fan. "He's
far and away the most radical fan we've got,"
Hancock said.
Samara sells flags and patriotic
emblems from his northwest
surburban home in Oklahoma City.
Since 1952, when he drove his bright
red 1923 Ford to the Texas game,
Samara has driven to most of the
Sooner's important away games. On
the way to Chicago, Pittsburgh, and
five times to Miami, Samara has been
seen in the "Big Red Rocket", with
the loudspeaker blaring "Boomer
Sooner" and the model T's
"sy-REEN" wailing.
"I could be in the stands 24 hours a day
watching OU football, eating hot dogs and sleeping
between halves," Samara said. Sitting in hie Sen
amid the greatest collection of OU football
memorabilia, or trivia, ever amassed, Samara told
of a game in 1958 which Oklahoma lost.
Driving back to his hotel, Samara said, he ran
into the back of his police escort with his model T.
"Tears came down my cheeks," he said, showing
how with his fingers. "Not from hitting the cop
but from losing the ball game." On Dec. 4 Samara
will celebrate his 55th birthday at the
Oklahoma-Oklahoma State football game. "Right
on," he said. "All I want's a victory."
"The kids think he's God," Hancock said of
Samara. "But everybody else in the state is
embarrassed." "He's the most obnoxious man in
the United States," said Oklahoma City Times
columnist Frank Boggs.
Robert Martin, sports editor for the OU student
newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily, has received
several letters and poems from Sooner fans, but he
said he couldn't print some because they were in
bad taste. He printed this one, from the
self-described "Poet of the Ozarks," Charles
Hastings Smith of Bartlesville:
Sooners, Let's Bury Nebraska
And embalm them all with defeat
Hang crepe on their locker-room door
And make their funeral complete
Sooners, Let's Bury Nebraska
And make their grave long and deep...
Cover them over with touchdowns
And leave their fans to weep.
Sooners, Let's Bury Nebraska;
Let's bury their short-lived conceit...
Let's dump their ratings beside them
Interred by the claw of the cleat,
And so the poem goes on. The death image also
runs through the "Big Game Contest" sponsored
by the Daily Oklahoman and the Oklahoma City
Times. "To bolster the morale of the Sooners,"
the papers will send free to contest entrants a
black armband with the inscription "Bury
Nebraska."
Other Big Game spin-offs around Oklahoma
City might come up in a discussion of taste.
Several Sooner fans in downtown Oklahoma City
weie seen chuckling over a "misspelling" on a
50ent poster which put an extra "s" in the
middle of Nebraska.
The Cornhuskers are not without support in the
Oklahoma City area, however. "My husband helps
me sing 'There is No Place Like Nebraska'," said
Mrs. Ulah Paul Floyd, NU class of '41, who sits in
enemy territory at the OU-NU games. "I'm pretty
fond of this Oklahoma team, but I can't forget
that 1 was born in Omaha," she said.
"I'll always be a Nebraska fan," said Donald N.
Bykerk.a 1950 NU Law College graduate formerly
of Lincoln, now practicing law in Oklahoma City.
M'm going to sit right in the middle of the
Oklahoma section with Nebraska banner and all."
Bykerk, with a son at Oklahoma University and
daughter at Oklahoma State, said he "knows both
sides." "Oklahoma spirit is tremendous," he said,
"but no better than in Nebraskaland."
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1971
THE DAI LY NEBRASKAN
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