Rah Oklahoma!

OK. So as you may (or may not) have guessed from my "Boomer Sooner" post, on the 23rd of September I went to my very first OU football game. Unfortunately due to general incompetence and busyness on my part I never actually got to post the full write-up of the event and now it's all a little foggy but I will try my very best.

First of all I need to say that I don't really understand American football. The playing time is an hour but a game lasts four hours with all the breaks for adverts and huddles in which the players are given instructions for their next play. I know that what you most want is a touch-down and then you want to convert it by kicking the ball through the posts which apparently is very exciting and calls for a little celebration (more on this later). I know that each team has a certain number of attempts to move the ball 10 yards in their direction (3 I think) before the other teams gets to have a go at doing the same thing. I know that each "team" has two entirely separate teams depending on which direction they're moving in - the offensive team and the defensive team. I also know that the players make very few decisions about their plays (if any) and that the coach does all the strategy stuff and they just act out the directions. I know this because Amanda's brother gets to pass the instructions from the coach to the players on the team that he is currently training with. I think it involves wild gesticulation but I'm not really clear on the logistics.

Right. Now that's all said and done I also want to make clear that all of that stuff is not the exciting part of an OU football game. Remember I mentioned earlier about the "little celebration"? Well that was possibly down-playing it a bit but let's start at the very beginning, it is the very best place to start you know...

Before the game and before you even enter the stadium Norman is descended upon by thousands of people. So many people in fact that the population of Norman automatically doubles in size on a game day. These people set up in car parks all around town and do this thing called tail-gating which seems to involve drinking beer out of actual fridges and eating burgers which they cook on their giant gas-powered barbecues whilst sitting on their chairs under their gazebo. This also often seems to involve watching the pre-game commentary on their satellite TVs (satellite included) and usually some father-son bonding involving a ball being thrown around and narrowly missing innocent passers by. Then a couple of hours before the game along comes The Pride. They march down the streets of Norman and into the stadium playing endless renditions of Boomer Sooner and other marching band classics including (or course) "Oklahoma!" Eventually they reach their destination and so do we, climbing the seemingly hundreds of steps to our seats and we're only half way up the bleachers! The stadium is full of people looking full of cheer, sporting the crimson and cream (red and white as was helpfully translated in my international student orientation) colours of the Sooners. I'm ready too, Amanda and I popped to Walmart and bought me a hooded jumper with OKLAHOMA in the big collegiate letters on the front. The game is on!

Actually the game is not on... yet. There is more spectacle to be had before any playing can occur. The players have to stretch for what seems like hours in some sort of chessboard formation while the many, many coaches check that they're doing them right. Eventually they get up from the floor and throw a ball about for a bit and do some other inexplicable warm-ups that I have never read about in any of my running-related sporting research. I suppose they must be "football specific" or something, I'll give the coaches the benefit of the doubt. They are paid enough. Middle Tennessee are warming up too, they're looking a bit haphazard despite their snazzy kit. I begin to hope that this will not be a car-crash for them. Eventually the players leave the pitch and from here the order of things gets confused.

It could be the band that comes first or it might be the cheerleaders though it could just as easily be the Rough Necks. It's all bit of sensory overload and with so much time passed I'm not sure I'm capable of untangling it. Let's go with the band for argument's sake. They march into the stadium do some fancy marching in formation, play Boomer Sooner yet again and take to their spot on the bleachers. Then the Rough Necks take to the field. I'm not really sure who or what the Rough Necks are apart from being college boys in little red and white uniforms with giant paddles in their back pockets. They are in charge of the Schooner which rides around the field at the opening of the game as well as inexplicably beating the goal-post with the aforementioned paddle. The Schooner is one of those old-style covered wagons which you see in movies involving trails, plains and Native Americans and it is pulled by two horses called Boomer and Sooner (well what did you expect them to be called?) A Rough Neck rides this thing around the field with the Rough Neck Queen sitting up front, all dressed up and twirling a paddle while whooping with pride (or something). Out of the back is another Rough Neck dangling out of the back waving a flag with yet another holding his legs. Whilst this is going on the rest of the Rough Necks who are not involved in the schooner spectacle are inexplicably beating the goal post with their paddles. I can't help but wander what else they beat with their paddles, which are the size of a child's cricket bat, when there isn't a game on...
Then of course there are the cheerleaders. Middle Tennessee hasn't even bothered to bring their cheer-squad or their band so we only have 3 squads tonight who rotate around each quarter and of course Boomer and Sooner II, people in furry horse costumes who manage to do magical things such as backflips from within their suits. There's the pom squad who do fancy dancing and a couple of more acrobatic teams that do all that fancy pyramid stuff with cheermen at the bottom doing the throwing. I wonder who these men are and what is their motivation... Anyway, the cheersquads form a corridor of cheer and through this on come the footballers. They all take their places and now the game really is on.

I don't remember much about the actual game except for the endless pauses for ad breaks and time outs and so on and so forth. I remember that it was indeed the car crash that I'd feared for Middle Tennessee - OU won 59-0. So the game was perhaps not as exciting as it might have otherwise been. Half-time was fabulous though with more marching and bandness. I really wanted the band to spell out "Oklahoma" or draw a schooner but alas that seems to have gone out of favour and now it's all about asymmetrical patterns across the playing field. The baton twirler had her solo moment though which is probably the important thing though I do worry for her once she's all grown up. What do baton twirlers do once the world of college football is over for them? Maybe she can be a baton twirling coach or something, I don't think pro-teams have twirlers... The band did the rounds and stood in various aisles (including ours) to rouse cheer amongst the crowd. We shouted "OU" a lot and held our arms above our heads in O and U shapes. We sang "Boomer Sooner" often and went "ooh" and "ahh" and cheered whole-heartedly. OU scored so often though that the score celebrators began to get a bit tired of back flipping in the end-zone and poor Boomer and Sooner and the Rough Neck Queen were quite exhausted with all that whipping around the pitch every 15 minutes and put in rather half-arsed performances towards the end of the game.

Eventually when it was clear that OU had won we went home full of cheer and university pride (as well as good intentions of posting a blog quicksmart) and wondering if Heythrop could ever get quite such a large crowd out for its intercollegiate football matches against UCL...