Why was Bob Stoops autographing hard hats at a construction site?
Published: 4/13/2012 7:51 AM
Last Modified: 4/13/2012 9:15 AM
The Oklahoma coach was expressing his gratitude.
It was lunchtime Thursday afternoon at the corner of Lindsey and Jenkins, catacorner from Owen Field. OU was serving barbecue to what appeared to be a hundred construction workers taking a break from the cranes and beams. Stoops went from table to table, saying thanks for the 5-story $75 million student housing center going up around him.
This was a ceremony marking the "topping off" of the structure. Stoops was among the special guests there, along with the likes of Lon Kruger, Sherri Coale and athletic director Joe Castiglione. Fundraisers and designers and other OU dignitaries lunched as well.
It was a big deal. It will be a bigger deal when Headington Hall opens in the fall of 2013 and athletes from all sports move in.
Still, you can already sense the dividends the housing center will pay.
"It's a game-changer," Stoops said earlier this week. "It's going to make a difference in recruiting and the life our student-athletes. We're all excited about it."
A quick story to illustrate what he's talking about…
In the spring of 2003, OU hosted an NCAA regional at its brand new Headington Family Tennis Center. I asked coaches Paul Lockwood and Mark Johnson about the difference between their old home courts – picture cracked, scuffed, fenced-in handball courts in the South Bronx – and their new ones.
The old courts were in a hidden enclave of campus off Jenkins, which wasn't a bad thing when recruits came to visit. Without fail, the two coaches would wait till nightfall to, um, show recruits their future home. They'd zip down Jenkins, and sort of wave in the courts' general direction without slowing down. You might be able to glimpse the top of a net, but that was all.
And that was precisely the idea. Talk about a brutal recruiting albatross.
Nearly a decade later, I'm not sure Stoops, Kruger or other OU coaches speed past Bud Wilkinson Hall, the outdated athletic housing center which only looks like it's been standing since Bud was winning 47 in a row. I wouldn't blame them if they did.
Teenage hotshot jocks like to be dazzled anymore. It's why uniforms increasingly glow like lightsabers. Why coaches sell them on making SportsCenter's "Top 10 Plays" as much as the dean's list.
Headington Hall, then, will come in quite handy. It's well worth a few autographs and some brisket to the workers putting her up.
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
