An old-friends selfy, taken about 10 seconds before we went onto the field for a pregame Alumni Band Boomer Sooner. That’s 1984-86 Drum Major Dondi Cupp in the middle, and Brian Britt on the right. An ace drummer back in the 1980s, Brian is now Director of the Pride of Oklahoma.
It had been 30 years since I played my trumpet in front of 80,000 or so rowdy spectators. Fortunately, expectations are modest for the Pride of Oklahoma’s Alumni Band homecoming performance. I hadn’t practiced much, but like anyone who’s ever donned a Pride uniform, I can play “Boomer Sooner” in my sleep, even three decades later.
The Pride had a rough couple of years in 2013 and 2014, with a new Director that turned out to be controversial and short-tenured. Predictably, the alumni had strong and varied opinions about how best to deal with the situation. The University’s fairly brilliant solution was to convince my 1980s friend and bandmate, Brian Britt, to come back and take over for good. Our Pride is in good hands. So this year’s alumni band homecoming was a one of the biggest (and best, I’m told) ever — a reunion, a reconciliation, and a celebration. I made it a priority to be there.
The real, current Pride of Oklahoma
The sports pages the next day described the amusement of the alumni band as a perennial hit. Hopefully, we’re back in a mode where the band alumni make the newspapers only once a year. Maybe I’ll become a regular, too.
The phrase “Boomer Sooner” is repeated fourteen times in our famous fight song, and the song itself echoes through the stadium dozens of times before, during, and after every game. But to true Sooners, “Boomer Sooner” never gets old — even if the folks playing it do. Spending a beautiful fall day on the OU campus is a sure reminder of all the reasons to be proud of the place. Live on, University!
The Pride’s student leader — the Drum Major who now does that famous pregame “strut” down the field — is Kyle Mattingly, the son of of two of my old bandmates. (Sorry about the background: It’d difficult to do ANYTHING at OU without getting one of the many NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP banners in the picture.)
A seemingly major breach of stadium security: If you held a credible-looking musical instrument and wore a crimson polo, you could “march” right onto the sidelines. Of course I abused the privilege. That’s me with the Texas Tech “Raider” mascot in the last image.
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My mobile phone and the relaxed mood actually allowed me a to take a “selfy” in the middle of the field in the seconds before we started. I felt a little bad for my lack of discipline and decorum until I looked at my photo and saw those two young women behind me who had abandoned their assigned spots to take a picture together.
Finally, here’s an image — stolen from a bunch of Facebook shares with my apologies to its uncredited creator — of what we the alumni looked like on the field. Squint and you’ll see me in the middle of the second row.
*This modified Blues Brothers quote had multiple apt meanings in this context.
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As in past events, I had the benefit of a handful of Superfans who rushed from point to point with a backpack full of Gatorade and snacks for Scott and I. Their heroics required quite a bit of athleticism and Leadville knowledge — just to be active spectators! Big thanks to Shane Merz and to Mike and Christopher Short!
WHO CAN GO THE DISTANCE? WE’LL FIND OUT, IN THE LONG RUN: The races themselves? An Ironman event is a 2.4 mile offshore ocean swim, a 112 mile bike race, then a 26.2 mile (marathon distance) run – all in one day with just 5 minutes or so in between to change your shoes. It usually takes us around 13 hours – starting at sunrise and usually finishing in the dark. The hilly South African bike course was especially brutal (imagine mixing 5,000 feet of vertical climb and nasty winds into those mileages), but at least the area’s much-discussed great white sharks resisted the allure of the nearly 2,000 black-wetsuit-clad swimmers out in Nelson Mandela Bay. (Before the start, the race announcer told us we might be “lucky” enough to see dolphins swimming near us in the bay, so we should look for their dorsal fins. I had a mild suspicion that this was an ingenious fib to prevent widespread panic should anyone spot a shark out there making an otherwise-harmless appearance.)
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