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?
