What's the Oklahoma standard?
Though some seek to lower it, concerning the Sooners, it's all about history
This isn’t a Kelvin Sampson column, though I will say this:
Though we were never great fans of each other; though I could do without his perpetual bunker mentality; though on his way out of Norman, after NCAA issues and program slippage, I wrote that I hoped he’d find peace and that whoever replaced him already had …
I still wanted him to get his national championship Monday night in San Antonio.
Perhaps that boulder on his shoulder has been reduced to a small chip over a glorious 11-season Houston tenure, and still I wished for him a victory that might shake the rest of it off.
Then again, who among us would willingly give back the thing that’s made us one of the very, very, very best at what we do?
Probably not him.
Maybe I’m softening.
Maybe I just wanted him to win.
Doesn’t mean I have to love the bubble-over-the-basket drill, does it?
I digress.
Along with those thoughts, came these:
Is Houston a better basketball job than Oklahoma? Should it be a better basketball job than OU? Does Houston have advantages OU doesn’t explaining the vast difference between the programs?
The answers are yes, no and, if it does, it’s all about the coaches, Sampson having built the Cougars into a better program, leading fan, booster and community interest to soar, while the Sooners have been stuck in the mud.
Leaving the lesson to be thus:
OU should be a far better men’s basketball program than it’s been lately.
It should be a top 25 program, it should finish in the top half of its conference year after year, it should be in the tournament every season and it should do something once there.
The disappointing seasons should be the ones it fails to reach the Sweet 16, not the ones it fails to reach the tournament at all.
Why?
History, that’s why.
Billy Tubbs proved it could be done. Sampson proved it could be done. Not quite like those two, but Lon Kruger proved it could be done, too. Indeed, Kruger’s a great case study.
He did not enjoy Tubbs’ nor Sampson’s success, yet his program was always moving forward.
The seasons he lost — 2011-12: 15-16 (5-13 Big 12); 2016-17: 11-20 (5-13) — were understood to be temporary misfortune, before a march back toward prominence began, and they were.
Because if OU men’s hoops can’t duplicate the success of its two most successful coaches, it should at least do that.
That should be the standard.
The Oklahoma standard.
If it’s already happened over an extended period, there’s no reason to accept it shouldn’t continue happening over an extended period.
Has the standard been relaxed for football?
Perhaps by Joe Castiglione’s athletic department, which foolishly gave Brent Venables (and Porter Moser) a ludicrous buyout that’s frozen it from enacting change at the top since.
Yet, not by the fans, who rightfully expect more.
After 10 seasons of Gary Gibbs, Howard Schnellenberger and John Blake, there was a faction ready to erase the standard in the name of loyalty — the regent vote to remove Blake was 4-2, not 6-0 — but David Boren and Castiglione made a whale of a hire in Bob Stoops, who won a national championship, even before the Sooners caught up in the facilities arms race of the time, and played for three more.
After him, Lincoln Riley went to a bunch of playoffs — four-team playoffs — so the standard remains the standard.
For a moment, pretend coach Patty Gasso’s Sooner softball team quit being a perennial top-two, -three or -five program and became a top-10 to -15 program.
After two, three or four seasons of it, of not reaching the World Series every year, of not getting a super regional every year, folks would wonder if Gasso still has it, perhaps wanting her to pass the baton to her son, J.T., or beyond the family entirely.
They wouldn’t be wrong.
There’s a standard.
That it’s ridiculously high is the residue of Gasso’s own greatness.
Take a look at Jennie Baranczyk’s Sooner women.
They’re just now getting back to the standard Sherri Coale established from the 1999-2000 season to the 2012-2013 season, one Coale, eventually, could not maintain herself.
Still, the standard remained the standard because somebody proved it could be done over a long period, and here’s Baranczyk fulfilling it again.
These days, you’re apt to hear it can’t be done. That the wealth cannot be spread. That it’s a whole new world, the rules have changed and the standard must be relaxed, diminished, forfeited.
It’s not only dumb, but self-fulfilling.
What’s the Oklahoma standard?
You know, the athletic one, for the state’s flagship university, not the one following natural disasters, though it’s very high, too.
Check the history.
You’re bound to find it.
Gasso, K.J. Kindler, Mark Williams, Baranczyk, Ryan Hybl and a couple tennis coaches whose names I’ve yet to commit to memory are hitting it.
Venables, Moser?
Nope, but they’ve still got a chance.
Also, time is running.
It’s always running.
Because there’s a standard.
Great column. You’re so right, the standard is missing for both football and basketball and it explains all the “Joe got go” on social media. Upholding the standard starts at the top.