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Guaranteed winner in Jets-Vikings MNF game
Published: 10/11/2010 6:12 PM
Last Modified: 10/11/2010 6:12 PM

It's a couple of hours before a Jets-Vikings Monday Night Football game is scheduled to kick off and I've got the winner for you:

Vikings?

Jets?

Regardless of who scores more points, the winner will be Southwestern Oklahoma State University.

That's the alma mater of Jets coach Rex Ryan. Upon learning his alma mater (he and twin brother Rob played football there in the 1980s) was staging an athletic fund-raiser auction, Ryan donated four tickets in his private suite to tonight's MNF game.

Southwestern State assistant athletic director and auction coordinator Rouben Tourian contacted corporate partners willing to provide transportation and lodging for the winning bidder. School officials hoped the package would fetch perhaps $10,000. Instead, the high bid was $30,000 and it pushed Southwestern State's auction haul to more than $155,000.

Tourian said in an email to the Tulsa World that the winning bidder for the MNF game was Tulsa-area businessman David Balezentis, who owns and operates Granite Fiberglas Pools & Spas. Tourian said Balezentis played basketball at Southwestern State in the 1970s for George Hauser, who is in the school's athletic hall of fame.

Southwestern State isn't fully funded in athletics and is just beginning to tune up athletic facilities, according to Tourian, so the auction payday will provide a big financial boost.

It's a win-win situation. Balezentis will get to watch the pilot episode of the Brett Favre-Randy Moss Show from the suite of the Jets' head coach.




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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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