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By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
"Football is the defining ingredient in the Sooner (athletic) tradition."
— University of Oklahoma media guide
Somewhere Bud Wilkinson is rolling over in his grave. Somewhere the Selmon brothers are probably asking each other what happened to their school.
It is spring on the plains, when the traditional third favorite season after football and football recruiting — spring football — begins and people in Oklahoma are still excited about ... basketball?
It is practically April and the opening of Oklahoma spring practice has been elbowed out of prominence on the state's sports pages. The Sooner Nation is more focused on people still dribbling the dang ball this week instead of those running with it or slinging it.
There's your March Madness.
Advertiser library photo • March 23, 2002
Move over King Football and share the stage with King — and Queen — hoops. We're told only three schools have managed to put both their men's and women's basketball teams in the Final Four in the same season and Oklahoma, of all schools, is now among them as the surprise guests.
Kelvin Sampson's Oklahoma basketball team is taking over.
Not Stanford, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kansas or Connecticut. It's Oklahoma that joins Duke (1999) and Georgia (1983).
What in the name of Barry Switzer and Brian Bosworth is going on here?
The answer is a lot. Kelvin Sampson's Oklahoma men are 31-4 and, winners of 12 in a row, playing Kansas Saturday in Atlanta. The women are 31-3 and will meet Duke Friday at the Alamodome in San Antonio.
That's quite a double play for a school that has been known for its rich football legacy but for which basketball has usually taken a distant backseat.
They've been playing football in Oklahoma since before it was even a state. Sooner football has seven national championships and owns the NCAA's longest winning streak (47 games). Meanwhile, once a decade or so, when a Waymon Tisdale, or Stacey King comes along, basketball is, at best, acknowledged.
Consider, for example, that 12 years ago Oklahoma had dropped its women's program and, just six years ago, it was floundering at 5-22 with a coach it hired out of the high school ranks.
And, who would have thought that the Oklahoma men's and women's teams would be the first from the Big 12 to reach the Final Four?
All this success is forcing some rare self-examination. As a poll question The Daily Oklahoman has been asking its readers, "Is the University of Oklahoma still just a football school?"
Maybe not for much longer.
