I had some idle chat in the check out line Saturday at Walgreens on Main Street.
It was on my first visit to a store since mid-March and of course I had to ask the guy standing six-feet in front of me the question ever on the minds of anyone who lives in Norman:
“You think we’ll have a (Sooner) football season?” I asked.
“Oh, I think we will play. I just don’t know how many people are going to be in the stands,” the man said, as he moved toward the plexi-glas barrier that separated customers fom the check out clerk.
Then, he turned and said, “We got to play to pay for those other 20 something programs.”
That’s a good point.
And he ought to know. It was Barry Switzer saying it.
Or at least I think the man behind the mask was Barry Switzer. It sure sounded like him. Had the thinning hair and the staccato football coach cadence in his voice that we Sooner fans know very well.
If games are not played . . . the consequences for sports at Oklahoma are dire. It will look a lot worse than the Sooner Schooner’s crash on Owen Field
He didn’t say, “Dammit, we’re going to go out there and play football!” like one might expect Barry to have said.
But Coach has mellowed in his elder years. Actually, he’s always been pleasant to fans, and it was clear to him I was a fan.
Still, there was that Coach Switzer look in the eyes that let me know, damnit we’re going to play football.
Yes. It was Coach Switzer.
It made me remember the famous Barry Switzer quote from his coaching days back in the 1970s, which I will paraphrase:
I didn’t invent the monster, I’m just here to feed it.
Indeed the Sooner program is a monster, financially, and otherwise.
If there is no football season in 2020, it will be like Daenerys Targaryen losing Drogon. And that would not be good for the Sooner Kingdom.
Oklahoma football not only pays for all the other sports at the university — from women’s soccer to men’s tennis and everything in between — it also contributes to non-athletic expenses at OU. That likely won’t happen this year.
OU Athletic Director Joe Castiglione has shied away from predicting the financial impact COVID-19 will ultimately have on the department.
But 10 days ago the OU Board of Regents approved a budget that projected a $25 million drop in revenue for 2021. And that is assuming there will be a season.
That’s a little more than the net revenue the department had in 2018 after paying all expenses. (At the time OU was 3rd highest in “profit” in the NCAA).
Even if games are played this fall the reductions in the number of fans in attendance, to meet social distancing requirements or merely because some fans will be reluctant to join a big crowd and risk exposure to the coronavirus, means a severe drop in ticket sales and consequently the revenue.
Oklahoma has sold out its football games since 1999.
OU Regents did not give football coaches salary increases this year, despite the fact the Sooners appeared in the college football playoffs. (But don’t feel too sorry for Lincoln Riley. He makes $6.4 million a year.)
Yes, Coach Switzer was right back in the day when he said that Oklahoma football is a monster. It still is. It is a monster that has protected the rest of sports at OU and even to some extent the university itself.
If games are not played to feed it then the consequences for sports at Oklahoma are dire. It will look a lot worse than the Sooner Schooner’s crash on Owen Field last fall.
Right now there is uncertainty. The picture will become clearer as football season approaches.
In the meantime, Athletic Department officials are planning on a season.
A newly built version of the Sooner Schooner is complete and ready to go.
But the department is also trying to prepare for scenarios that include a shortened or interrupted season.
Or no season at all — a scenario my friend Tommy expertly explores.
After all it would take only a handful of player infections to bring OU football and all of college football to a crashing halt.
Despite what Barry says.
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