"Is this Heaven?"

When I was in Sunday School before fifth grade - I'm not sure when exactly, but know it was before confirmation classes started - our class was asked to draw what we thought heaven would be like. Some of us drew a picture of our family in a big house. Others drew streets with gold bricks. And one boy drew a picture of a really large pizza. I don't remember what I drew, but I know now my picture would be vastly different today than whatever it was then.

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Every Saturday, except one, I will make a point to be in front of a television for about four hours no matter what I'm doing. When I lived in DC, that meant driving to Mackey's in Crystal City, Virginia (a part of Arlington,) and joining fellow alumni from the University of Oklahoma in watching the Sooners play. In Chicago, it's a plethora of options because I live so far from the alumni association's locale. Once last year, because of the campaign, I watched the game on ESPN360 in the campaign office before a tele-town hall conference with voters. But I rarely, if ever, miss a Sooners game.

There are a rare exceptions where I have not been able to watch Oklahoma play online or on television. The first was in 2004 when I was in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, running a phone bank for a campaign, where no television in miles carried the game. The second was the week after watching the Kansas game on ESPN360 last year when the Kansas State game wasn't online while I sat in the office running another town hall conference. The fourth was while I was in Liberia, but this is a technicality because my dad recorded the game and I watched the game after my return (and after I watched the Bedlam Series against Oklahoma State.) But the last time was the most magical one.

Last weekend, instead of going to the bar in Chicago to watch the Pay-Per-View game, instead of going online in hopes of catching it, I drove to Norman and went to the game. For the first time since I was a college student I handed my ticket to a gate official and walked into Oklahoma Memorial Stadium (technically, it is the Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, but most of my time in school it was just OMU. From now on I'm just calling it Owen Field, which is the playing field's name.)

This was the most amazing experience I could remember. The lights, the sounds, the upgrades! Never have I seen so many students spoiled over the toys they get to enjoy now versus what I had just six short years ago. The upper deck is complete. The north scoreboard is not a color screen (it was a yellow-light LED display before and just a clock with the score when I was a freshman.) The south scoreboard, which is the main one, now is one large HD television - and how amazing of a television!

But what doesn't change is the tradition. The band still performs the same opening rituals; the intro to Oklahoma! (the state song) their rendition of You're a Grand Old Flag, the band outlining OU on the field, the national anthem. The fans still energize with the drum major bending backwards to where his British Guard-like hat barely grazes the grass as he marches from one end zone to the next. The team's intro video still electrify the entire city before the team takes the field, which is never complete without James Garner proclaiming "This is Oklahoma Football!" at the end of the video as he has done for years now (my favorite part, really.) And for me, this is what I wanted more than anything.

Watching the game on television gives me the perfect view almost every time. I can see the replay without worry and can have a beer during the game, which is not possible when you are at most college football games. But I don't get the pregame traditions. I don't get to set with 85,000 of my closest friends as we scream bloody murder at the opponent's offense.

Yes, it is always perfect weather when you're watching the game inside, and yes it saves a lot of money. But you can never experience the thrill of a game like you do when you are sitting in the stands staring at Owen Field, hoping your quarterback will make the next big play or screaming your face beet red to help the defense stop the drive on Fourth and Inches. And for me, that was what had been missing since my last game at Owen Field in 2003. If this was my heaven, I'd take it and never look back.

I just hope it isn't another six years before I go back.

"(I) want to build a university our football team can be proud of."

Nearly 64 years ago, shortly after World War II had ended and America was breathing a sigh of relief for the boys who returned back home, one state was stuck in turmoil. From the late 20's on into the 40s, and even 50s but we'll get to that in a bit, Oklahomans had suffered through much. The Depression destroyed families and ruined economies. Drought led to the Dust Bowl, eliminating farms in the blink of an eye, if you were lucky enough to blink during the dust storms rolling through the plains. More than a million fled west to California, where they were treated with derision, called "Okies" with the same venom as African-Americans were called--well, you know what they were called--and segregated just the same. Once the Dust Bowl subsided war struck. Just like Americans from the other 47 states, Oklahomans left in droves to protect the world from the evils of Hitler's Third Reich and Hirohito's Empire. And just like everywhere else, many of the young men never returned home. But this isn't about why you should feel sorry for Oklahoma. Instead, it is about how Oklahoma turned their fortunes around all by themselves.

Sometime after the war, the Regents at the University of Oklahoma recognized the state was in a perpetual state of depression, and not just financially. They, along with the university's president, George Lynn Cross, decided the best way to lift up the school's spirits was through football. The teams of old, before the war, before the dust's plague, were tough teams that brought great entertainment to those living in Norman, Oklahoma City, Stillwater and Tulsa. It seemed football would be just the thing to make them happy again.

Searching far and wide, the team landed upon Jim Tatum, an assistant coach at the Iowa Pre-Flight School. Tatum would do exactly what the school needed, bring in the highly-talented war veterans. When the Regents met with Tatum, and his colleague whom Tatum insisted on bringing along, the board knew they had their coach, but it was their assistant and not Tatum himself. Listening to Cross, they extended the offer to Tatum but demanded that he is only allowed to take it if he brought his assistant along. A year later, Tatum left and the assistant, Bud Wilkinson, took over.

Fast forward six years, to 1953, and Wilkinson has taken the Oklahoma Sooners from a good squad of soldiers who could win the Big Seven Conference with regularity and beat upon Texas with emotion and transformed it into a national program, with its first Heisman Trophy winner in the form of Billy Vessels in 1952 and had already won 31 games straight and a national championship in 1950 (before falling to Kentucky in the Sugar Bowl.) But it's what happened that year and the next several years that transformed more than a football team.

In 1953, Oklahoma was a team on the brink of something special and the men and women in the state could feel it, too. As the team, first led by Gene Calame, fell early to Notre Dame to open the season followed by a tie against Pittsburgh, few outside of the state thought Oklahoma was poised to do much that season. But then Oklahoma rolled through Texas and cleared away the competition in the Big Seven Conference. The next year saw little change in the way of the excellence, despite a new class of players with Jimmy Harris as their leader, as OU cruised through their schedule without a blemish.

1955 saw the most powerful team Oklahoma and Wilkinson had put together yet. After blowing by a non-conference slate of North Carolina, Pitt and Texas and then throttling the Big Seven, Oklahoma faced their old coach, Jim Tatum who was now leading Maryland, in the Orange Bowl. Prior to the game, many thought OU had no chance against an East Coast team and that their No. 1 ranking would be given to the deserving Terps after the bowl game. Unfortunately for the prognosticators, Oklahoma upended Maryland, surprised America and put the Sooners on the brink of something thought unachievable: this football team had just won 30 games straight.

The next year can be labeled by many as a repeat season, but you can hardly label anything as repetitive when you are talking about doing something no one else did. The sporting world no longer remained the only section that knew Oklahoma was more than dust and turmoil. With the musical Oklahoma! becoming a movie, Mickey Mantle a fledgling outfielder with the Yankees and the Carl Albert the Majority Whip of the House, Oklahomans were making a name for themselves as a hard-working lot that refused to take anything standing down. When the season ended on the Sooners, not only had they captured another conference title and beat up Texas yet again, but they refused to let more than half of their opponents score upon them and snapped Washington's old winning streak of 39 games. As impressive as the winning streak had become, it was even more impressive when you realize that the graduating class of football players that year never lost a football game during their collegiate careers. One player, Jerry Tubbs, lost his first game of his life in 1957 as a linebacker for the NFL's Chicago Cardinals.

The streak continued for seven more games when Oklahoma faced Notre Dame, the very team they last lost to in 1953. After the first half, with a scoreless tie glaring at the team on the new electronic scoreboard, Wilkinson prayed the team would escape with a 7-7 tie. In the fourth quarter with just under four minutes left, David Lynch ran the ball around the right of the line and punched into the end zone for the game's only score. With the streak stopped at 47 games the stadium, and nation, fell into shock. The fans didn't know what to do. Shortly after the teams were shaking hands on the field, the stadium opened into applause congratulating both the Sooners and the Irish. A half-hour later, fans still sat in their seats hoping for a few extra minutes of play.

And while the streak ended on that day, November 16, 1957 (which was also, incidentally, the 50th anniversary of Statehood,) the passion and pride Oklahomans felt afterwards for their team, their school and their state never died. Today, after highs and lows in Oklahoma Football, after tornadoes have ripped through the state countless times and one deranged man tried to cripple a city that fateful April morning in 1995, pride in being an Oklahoman continues unabated.