The Boone Pickens era has been weird.
On one hand, we had to deal with the irony of being the only cowboys in history to have annexed someone else’s land. On the other, every time gas gets more expensive, we can at least be happy that our football team is probably getting a cut.
In the end, I expect that the good will outweigh the bad. For every reason to feel bad about the Boone era (i.e. Sean Sutton probably deserved another year). There is a better reason to feel good.
Reason No. 8,198 to enjoy the Boone Pickens era: it is not totally unreasonable to believe that we could hire Kansas’ coach within a week of said coach winning a national championship.
This news makes us giddy. It is weird how much this experience has turned us all into high school girls. I have done nothing but smile since Rivals.com reported that Larry Brown called us with interest in the job. He called us!
And you are crazy if you do not think that Mike Holder spent the whole weekend drawing hearts around pictures of Bill Self that he keeps in his Trapper Keeper.
In keeping with the high school girls theme, American sports pundits have been particularly catty in covering the Bill Self situation. Some have been incredulous toward the idea that a coach would ever leave Kansas for the “lowly” Oklahoma State basketball program. Others have been flat-out disrespectful. ESPN columnist Gene Wojciechowski referred to our storied program as a “hoops graveyard.”
Although I understand that it might seem strange that a coach would consider leaving one of the nation’s top basketball programs to come to OSU, let’s try to keep some perspective.
This is not some small upstart program. This is Oklahoma State. We play in the house Mr. Iba built and Eddie Sutton remodeled.
Sure, Kansas is an elite program, but what do they have that we cannot match?
They now have three NCAA championships. We have two.
Dr. Naismith invented basketball. Mr. Iba perfected it.
They have Phogg-Allen. We have G.I.A.
We have had two of the most successful coaches of all time.
Plus, we do not make our players wear Adidas (ba-zing!).
Is it really that hard to believe that a guy who played and coached here would want to come back?
Sometimes it feels like the 20 year period between Mr. Iba’s departure and Eddie Sutton’s arrival negates our program’s history.
Some of that is our own fault. For instance, we would rather pay a guy to wear an oversized jersey with advertisements and beat-box the McDonald’s theme song so the fans do not get bored during timeouts than market our program’s history and tradition.
But that tradition still exists.
Mr. Iba won two gold medals as head coach of the Olympic Men’s Basketball team as well as the first back-to-back NCAA National Championships. And let’s not forget that Mr. Iba essentially invented “motion offense” and help defense.
Eddie Sutton brought the program back to life taking us to two Final Fours along with making OSU a mainstay of the NCAA tournament.
Add all this (and a big bag of money) to the fact that the team is set-up nicely to compete for a Big 12 title next year, and our program looks a lot more enticing.
All things being equal, any coach would be crazy to leave Kansas for Oklahoma State, but all things are not equal. Bill Self is one of us. For this reason, outsiders are like Will Smith’s parents: They just don’t understand (yes, I am that lame).
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