by Clark on July 28, 2009
My father took me to an OU football game in Norman when I was eight or nine. I wasn’t much of a football fan at the time. I played shortstop and that was as far as my sports universe extended. But that day in Norman changed all that.
My parents belonged to the Sportsman Country Club in Oklahoma City. They had a package deal: tickets, charter bus and box lunch. One Saturday we got on the bus and headed off on an adventure.
I’m not sure who the Sooners played that day. It really isn’t important. I was enthralled by the excitement. Never before had I been in that large a screaming crowd, and it was great.
I clearly recall one play. It looked like the other team was going to score, their ball-carrier streaking down the sideline towards the end zone. But a Sooner defender reached out and punched the ball up and out of the arms of the other player, snatched it out of the air and ran the other way The crowd went wild, and I thought that was about the coolest thing I had ever seen.
It would be several years before I went to another game in Norman. Many of the games I would witness later would be more important, like The Game of the Century. But no game was more exciting that that first one with my dad.
What was your first experience of a home game in Norman?
by Clark on June 18, 2009
I’m a Sooner Born and a Sooner Bred…
I wasn’t even there for my earliest Sooner memories.
Mom was always fond of saying that I was born in the middle of July and had to be weaned by the second weekend of October because they had tickets to the OU Texas game.
My parents held season tickets for some years before and after was born. I have memories my favorite babysitter, Mrs. Owens, coming to stay with me while Mom and Dad went to Norman for games. A few times, I remember, she stayed over night when my parents went to Dallas for the OU v Texas game. Because my mother absolutely hated to travel by car, she is the only person I know who could turn the drive from Oklahoma City to Dallas a two day trip by spending the night in Ardmore on the way down and back. So, when they went to the Texas game, they were gone for three nights.
Like most small children I hated to be left at home with a babysitter for three (or four.. sometimes Mom liked to stay and shop in Dallas) nights. On the other hand, I remember Mrs. Owens liked to make the most wonderful chocolate meringue pie. She would do that if I got too fussy about my folks being gone. I made sure I was fussy. To this day, eating chocolate meringue pie makes me think of OU football.
Mom and Dad always brought me back something when they went to games. I remember pennants, little stuffed footballs and one of my favorites, which was a soft stuffed football player in OU uniform dangling by a string from a stick. Why that was my favorite I don’t know, but I played with it for a long, long time.
With an early childhood like that, it was inevitable that I would grow up to be a Sooner fan!
What are your earliest memories of OU football? How did you become a fan?
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