The Voice, Toby Rowland, got it all just right as Sooners did what no other Sooners ever have
I wish another job for Toby Rowland, voice of the Sooners, maybe the best.
John Brooks was fantastic, a maestro, a major league talent calling football and basketball in the 70s and 80s and Blazers hockey, too.
Soundtrack of my youth.
Still, it feels like it’s Rowland.
So distinctive.
Sympathetic, but not sycophantic. Threading the needle just so.
When Oklahoma’s bad, he won’t tell you it’s good, though wishes it were.
A man for all seasons, too, which put him on the call Monday night in Omaha, Game 3 of the Men’s College World Series championships series, one contest to decide it, one chance to nail it if the Sooners did the job, which they did, and here it was, in full, because he captured it all, his voice cracking as it became official.
Sooner fans on their feet, phones in the air, they want to capture the moment.
Two outs, no balls and two strikes, Jackson Cleveland the pitch …
Got ’em, book it. They did it. They really did it.You can unhitch the wagon, put the ponies in the barn, the Oklahoma Sooners are the champions of college baseball.
They wouldn’t stop.
They never stopped.
The dogpile is on.The most improbable, inconceivable, unbelievable run in OU history.
1951 and 1994, you’ve got company.
The Sooners are the champs again in 2026.The most magical three weeks in OU baseball history. Un-stinkin’-believable.
The final score in the national championship game, it’s Oklahoma 13 and North Carolina 2.
Goodness, what a call.
Vin Scully might have laid out and let the crowd take over after “They did it.”
Jack Buck might have said, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I can’t believe what I just saw.”
Rowland can’t lay out too much because he’s got the best tagline in the game — “Unhitch the wagon. Put the ponies in the barn” — and the rest of what he said was just right, too, right down to his proclamation that brought all the other sports in, too, because it really was what he said it was:
“The most improbable, inconceivable, unbelievable run in OU history.”
The 2000 national championship the Sooners won at the 2001 Orange Bowl?
Close, but OU was ranked coming out of the gate, proved it was no fluke early by reeling off Red October and wound up winning it all, also by a 13-2 final score, over Florida State.
Also, that team held on, its defense carrying its offense at the end.
This Sooner baseball team did not hold on, but won going away: nine-hole hitter Kyle Branch going deep, eight-hole hitter Dayton Tockey going deep (again), seven-hole hitter Dasan Harris adding his sixth multi-hit since day two of the Lawrence Super Regional.
The 2000 softball national championship felt like it came out of nowhere and it kind of did. Never before had the Sooners been to the World Series. But they got there as a regional host, back when there were only eight and each one included eight teams. So OU was supposed to get there.
But this Sooner baseball team, after losing its last four SEC regular-season series and its first game at the SEC tournament, was judged to be nation’s No. 31 team, hence being sent to challenge No. 2 overall national seed Georgia Tech at the Atlanta Regional.
The team K.J. Kindler coached to the program’s first women’s gymnastics national championship in 2014 birthed a new following that’s led to big Lloyd Noble Center crowds since. But the 2013 team finished national runner-up.
Nope, Rowland’s right, there’s never been anything quite like this.
In conference play, a span of 30 games, OU scored at least 10 runs three times. In NCAA tournament play, a span of 13 games, OU scored at least 10 runs five times and once scored nine and twice scored eight.
Also in conference play, the Sooners allowed at least 10 runs 12 times, or 40 percent of their games. In NCAA tournament play, they allowed 10 or more runs not once and only four times allowed as many as five runs.
One must exit Sooner history to find real comparisons and still it’s difficult.
Buster Douglas? He knocked Tyson out, but he did not dominate the fight.
Villanova over Georgetown in ‘85? Now we’re talking. Coach Rollie Massamino’s Wildcats were an eight seed.
Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State squad that beat Houston’s Phi Slamma Jamma in ‘83 came from nowhere, but were still a six seed.
The ‘06 St. Louis Cardinals went 83-78 in the regular season, yet won the World Series.
Muhammad Ali was an 8-to-1 underdog to beat Sonny Liston on Feb. 25, 1964 in Miami and knocked him out; then was a 13-to-5 underdog in the rematch in Lewiston, Maine, and knocked him out again.
Maybe that?
It’s a fun exercise.
But you’ve got to dig deep.
Just as the Sooners dug deep in Atlanta, then Lawrence, then Omaha.
Just as Rowland dug deep to make an amazing call of an amazing championship, getting it all just right, crushing the perspective, without a script.
Why wish him another job?
I wish he called baseball 162 times a year, in the big leagues.
I’d finally have a team to listen to and watch.
He’s that good.
He proved it again.
People should know.