My take on the Pride of Oklahoma controversy

 

Imagine a dozen giant elephants wearing kilts and guzzling from beer steins, all the while singing a gaelic song consisting entirely of two notes pronounced repetitively.

“Oom pah, oom pah, oom pah”.  And then repeat for 24 more measures of music.

Then imagine this same troop of normally affable musicians of the animal kingdom all pissed off and stampeding.

That’s the Pride of Oklahoma tuba section this week.  They boycotted band practice on Monday in protest of Director Justin Stolarik’s unpopular changes to the band.

This is a big deal. The fact the tuba section brought this attention to themselves is a big deal. Usually this group goes about their business without regard to any recognition or notice from the rest of the world.

The tubas normally only get a passing glance while engaged in their pre-game rituals, including one in which the uniformed musicians create an arm-in-arm circle and weave back and fro in a motion that resembles some sort of drunken dance in an Irish pub. And they’re OK with that.

Hey, if you’ve ever been in a marching band – high school or college – you know my description of tuba players is spot on.

Tuba players do not have the type A personalities of trumpeteers.  They don’t have the manual dexterity of clarinet players.  Or, the tonal tricks of the trombone players.

But tuba players are the bedrock, the foundation, the core of a band. They’re solid guys and gals who normally go about their business like Snow White’s seven dwarfs.  Whistle while they work fellas.  Dependable.  The Scotties to the Captain Kirks.  They are a likeable bunch.

So, when I read (and saw on the TV news) that the Pride tuba section was leading what some might call insurrection among the ranks of the Pride of Oklahoma – an organization I was privileged to be a part of back when Barry Switzer was hangin’ half a hundred on Iowa State – well, I took pause.

OU President David Boren, himself a former high school saxaphone player (which in our musical animal kingdom is something akin to a Lemur monkey), continues to have a public relations disaster on his hands.  And, he had a hand in creating it. He hired Stolarik despite his not being among any names recommended by the OU search committee commissioned to find a replacement for departing Pride Director Brian Britt.

Boren did this to appease Max Weitzenhoffer – the T. Boone Pickens  of the university fine art department. Weitzenhoffer has given truck loads of money and gifted a world class art collection to OU such that Boren can advertise that Oklahoma is not merely a football school.  Weitzenhoffer even got a job out of the deal – a seat on the OU Board of Regents.

For whatever reason, Weitzenhoffer wanted changes in the Pride. He wanted Stolarik to be hired to make them. Well, Stolarik has done that and along the way he has become the most despised man on campus since then acting OU President David Swank fired Barry Switzer in 1988.

Oh, by the way, the OU regents meet today in Tulsa.

So if you see a bunch of guys with giant brass instruments slung over their shoulders and hitchhiking the Turner Turnpike today, you know where they are going.

A big complaint from the Pride students is that Stolarik is not teaching the band what to do.   They say their performances in the first three Sooner football games fell short of the Pride’s traditional standards.

This is true. 

As much as I don’t want current Pride members to think I’m ragging on them, I must honestly say the band’s performances haven’t been so good. The first one wasn’t good at all. The sound was weak. Alignment and step had some glitches.  But, they’re getting better. The halftime of the Tulsa game was not bad. I liked the Phantom of the Opera theme, OK.   I tried to ignore the kids who were out of line and out of step. I tried to not look at the 40 or so members who didn’t march in the pre-game show because Stolarik doesn’t want to march freshmen.

All this began when Stolarik messed with the traditional pre-game show. The run-on from the tunnels was messed with. The fanfare was dropped entirely (only to be re-instated when Pride section leaders met with Boren in the president’s office and complained).  The Pride PA announcer omitted the “Priiiiiide of Oklahoma” in game one because Stolarik didn’t put it in the script. How dumb is that?

This is like Howard Schnellenberger messing with Sooner traditions.

We might remember that the Boren who dismissed Schnellenberger is the same Boren who is at the center of this controversy.

Well, maybe. It’s not looking like Boren gets it this time. Heck, he helped create this problem by thumbing his nose at the School of Music in order to hire Weitzenhoffer’s boy, Stolarik.

An email obtained by the OU student newspaper shows Boren described opposition to Stolarik as being a “small organized campaign”.

Well, true enough, if he was talking about the tuba section – which is about a dozen kids.

He should have called it an “organized campaign of highly talented lower brass players.”

But the complainers also include a lot more folks than that. It includes a large group of Pride alumni.  I know, because I belong to the Facebook group that has gone private over this matter in order to shield current Pride students from the vitriol spouting about the program.  Even non-band nerds are complaining about the Pride on football message boards.  The majority think this Wisconsin transplant has offended the traditions of the program. It is like turning the Sooner Schooner into a motorized golf cart with horses painted on the side.

The opposition forces have gotten a little out of hand. Last Saturday the alums were wanting football fans to stand in silence when the Pride performed –an orchestrated protest advertised in advance by instructions written in chalk on campus sidewalks.

Well, that didn’t happen. It wasn’t a good idea anyway, because what Sooner fan worth anything stands in silence to Boomer Sooner? C’mon people. It’s like a DNA thing that when Boomer starts the sympathetic nervous system of fans kicks in to cause uncontrollable standing and clapping.

Besides, these students deserve better.  Regardless of how you feel about Stolarik, his idiotic changes, or Boren bending over to some money bags regent, these kids (tuba players included) deserve our support. They are doing the best job they can in trying times.  You may think it’s easy, but learning a marching routine and memorizing music all in a week’s time – in the late afternoon heat of August and September – is a bitch. You don’t even have much opportunity to spy on the twirler in her short shorts to ease the practice.

Likewise, boycotting isn’t the answer. That just increases the chances the boycotting Pride member turns the wrong way on the 40-yard-line during halftime (which, I can say never happened to me – but I still have nightmares about the possibility some 35 years later).

So, what’s Boren to do with this public relations nightmare?  How does the university Save the Pride? (another plea chalked on campus sidewalks).

“Coach” Gene Thrailkill hasn’t been the director of the Pride since he retired in 2001.  His successor, Brian Britt, was one of his students. The traditions, which include the pre-game show (yeah the same pre-game show that started every home game for three national championships for the Sooners, folks), are in large part Thrailkill creations.  Britt carried them on.

Hundreds of recent graduates and all current Pride members never played for Coach Thrailkill. Some might not even know exactly what he looks like.  But, Coach is the Obi Wan Kenobi of the marching band at OU.  His right-hand man, the arranger of much of the music written for the Pride in the last four decades, Roland Barrett, is the Yoda. (Barrett is still on the OU School of Music faculty and is writing halftime shows for other colleges, but Stolarik has not asked him to contribute at all to the Pride’s shows this year.  Stolarik has instead copied shows from his past employer, the University of Wisconsin. Note, the tuba section improvised an On Wisconsin rendition on their post-game march out of the stadium late Saturday night – perhaps a precursor of the rebellion mounted this week.)

Thrailkill and Barrett mark a mystical force that permeates the Pride program whether Stolarik  or Boren like it or not.

The changes to the band program – including changing football game traditions — have caused a disturbance in the force.

So, the only thing Boren can do now to prevent a ripple effect is meet with Coach and encourage him to call off the tuba section before the trombones join them, then the trumpets and then, oh God, the percussion section starts moonlighting at UCO or something.

Boren can propose that Stolarik dedicate an entire halftime to the accomplishments of former Pride Director Gene Thrailkill.  He can ask Barrett to write the music.

It’s called kissing the ring. It’s like Bob Stoops recognizing Barry Switzer as the “king” when Stoops was hired in 1999.

Then in the Pride practice – while the football team has a bye and an away game – restore the pre-game in toto.  And get Stolarik some help, whether he wants it or not. Right now he is obviously in over his head.

This better happen soon, because the OU-Texas game is just around the corner and if the Longhorn band senses any division among the Pride, then halftime at the Cotton Bowl is over.  The Texas football team may suck this year, but their band has that “I’ve been workin’ on the railroad” song finely tuned and they are loaded for bear.

Seriously, if there is a lesson to be learned from all this, it is don’t mess with traditions that people think are important. The fact they are important to 19 and 20 year olds who weren’t around when Coach directed the Pride or when Barry coached the Sooners, is, frankly, pretty awesome.

Another thing, David Boren’s political clout has taken a huge hit over this. Surely he knows these current Pride members are the future doctors and lawyers and politicians that fund the program and much more of the university.  Some day one of their bank accounts might even rival that of a fat cat regent.

If he doesn’t know that, then it is time for Boren to leave the president’s office and go sit in retirement on one of Molly’s benches somewhere near that awful big breasted sculpture next to the Max Weitzenhoffer School of Musical Theatre.

Perhaps he can be serenaded by the “oom pah” of the tubas on their way to practice. Or where ever they decide to sway in a circle and toss a few brews.