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Rest in peace, naysayer
Published: 6/27/2011 9:13 PM
Last Modified: 6/27/2011 9:13 PM

The sports world lost a naysayer -- and I mean that in the nicest way possible.

Former Oklahoman sports writer Bob Hersom died.

Hersom covered the University of Oklahoma football beat for more years than I can remember and through multiple regime changes.

During the Gary Gibbs era at OU, the Sooner coach tended to use the word "naysayer" quite a bit during press conferences. I'm not picking on Gibbs. We all have words that we use frequently in conversation without realizing it. One of Gibbs' standards just happened to be "naysayer."

For instance, if you pointed out to Gibbs some sort of negative about the program, he would talk about how he wasn't dwelling on negatives like all the "naysayers" out there. Of course, members of the press were probably honorary members of the naysayer club since they kept asking questions about this thing or that thing that went wrong.

Hersom got tickled at all the naysayer references, so he thought it would be funny to get a bunch of t-shirts with the word "naysayer" printed on the front and distribute the shirts to all the media guys who showed up at the next press conference. Hersom didn't actually do it, as far as I can remember. But he at least seemed to enjoy the idea of doing it.

Years later, if you wanted to make Hersom laugh or smile, all you had to do was call him a naysayer.

Rest in peace, naysayer.



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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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