By TERRELL LESTER
Editor at Large
SOONERS: Jason Carter, a Jenks graduate, left, and Blake Ferguson, a Broken Arrow graduate, will help lead the OU Sooners this year
It’s a year-round phenomenon, this sport of football.
No longer is the Labor Day cookout viewed as a rite of passage from summer fun and frolic to fall football fanaticism.
No longer do fans rhapsodize about the crisp autumn air and the arrival of football.
Fans, particularly in Oklahoma, celebrate football year-round.
They rhapsodize in the fall as they rhapsodize in the summer.
Sure, the celebration and rhapsodizing might intensify in the fall, but the intensity level runs pretty doggone high during the other primary seasons, i.e., Winter Recruiting and Spring Practice.
Fan talk of District Titles and State Championships, Bowl Games and National Championships is on an Orange Alert level all year.
From Guymon to Idabel, from Sooner Nation to Cowboy Country, from Skelly Stadium to Sports Center, football is the lifeblood that courses through the veins and arteries of every Oklahoman worth his salted peanuts.
And when the football teams that represent the old alma mater, be it high school or college, finally bid farewell to two-a-day summer workouts and welcome with open arms the Friday night kickoffs and the Saturday afternoon showdowns, Oklahomans will collectively put away their workaday woes, pick up their pennants and pompons and raise their voices for auld lang syne.
Come September, football is back.
But did it ever really go away?
Football just took a timeout. To give the fans time to restock the fridge and digest preseason prognostications.
Sooner fans talk of unbeaten seasons and Heisman Trophy repeaters.
Virtually every conversation among Sooner faithful begins and ends with quarterback Jason White and his chances of adding a second Heisman Trophy as college football’s premier player.
Of course, at OU the calendar is a big conversational topic, particularly the dates of October 9 and December 30.
The first date means the annual Red River Shootout with Texas in Dallas. The latter date is the renewal of the Bedlam Series, and this year the game is in Stillwater.
Those two dates alone are something to talk about…if you’re a Sooner fan.
Cowboy fans talk of remodeling and reloading.
And they talk of the Sooners visiting Stillwater.
The Cowboys are looking for replacements for key skilled players lost to graduation and the baseball draft. But as the Cowboys look ahead, they have the Cotton Bowl from last season and a facelift to Boone Pickens-Lewis Stadium this season to crow about.
Golden Hurricane fans talk of bowl games and a return to glory.
Tulsa fans talk, too, about the impressive coaching debut last season of Steve Kragthorpe, their first bowl appearance in more than a decade, and the best program turnaround in Division I.
Quarterback James Kilian gives TU faithful plenty to talk about as he leads the Hurricane into Kragthorpe’s second season and an ambitious schedule that includes visits to Kansas and Oklahoma State.
And, Kilian is the much-talked-about eight-man football player who has become an all-Western Athletic Conference quarterback.
The college fans find something to talk about year-round.
They talk of new recruits and returning favorites.
They talk of tailgating and menu planning.
The high school fans talk of county rivalries and hamburger joints.
They talk of district games and how many wins it will take to make the playoffs.
At Jenks, the fans talk of continued excellence, where anything less than a State Championship is cause for school-wide walkout.
With seven titles in the last eight years, and three all-stars returning, Jenks is taking dead aim on extending the most impressive streak in Oklahoma.
Running back Freddie Carolina, quarterback Andrew Brewer and linebacker Phillip Dillard are the crème de la crème of Class 6A talent and the core of an Oklahoma dynasty.
Dillard, 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, is one of the nation’s premier linebackers and has committed to the University of Nebraska.
Brewer is a 200-pound quarterback, standing 6-foot-3 and has the confidence honed by a stirring comeback victory over Edmond Santa Fe in last year’s title game.
And, Carolina is cut from the same fabric as former Jenks running back and current OU performer Kejuan Jones. The 5-foot-9 Carolina has plenty of speed and is difficult to take down, if he can be caught at all.
As always, the path to the State Championship will run through Union. The Redskins are the only team to derail the Jenks Express over the last eight years, and the two South Tulsa County schools split their two meetings last year.
Off-season move-ins Mackenzi Adams at quarterback, Dominique Franks at running back and Tony Moore at any position he chooses give the Redskins additional weaponry to train on their primary rival across the Arkansas River.
Only one of Tulsa’s nine public schools, Memorial, is found this year in Class 6A, comprised of the top 32 schools based on average daily attendance. The other eight are in Class 5A, made up of the next 32 schools based on attendance.
While Jenks and Union are expected to wrestle over the gold ball in Class 6A, with Broken Arrow and Owasso giving a distant chase, the 5A title should be a bit more flavored toward Tulsa.
Washington and East Central have the skilled players and recent success to make a run at the 5A championship. With a few breaks, Bixby and Bishop Kelley could offer some stiff resistance.
And, just like the college football fans who talk about calendars and red-letter dates, Tulsa high school football fans also have similar anticipations.
For instance, September 17 promises a showdown of epic proportions as East Central travels across town to Washington.
But what bigger high school game is there in Tulsa, or in Oklahoma, or in the United States than Union and Jenks?
That game, which has drawn attention from ESPN, documentary film crews and USA Today, annually attracts turn-away crowds.
Union and Broken Arrow will be the talk of two towns when the two old rivals square off September 3 at Broken Arrow.
Suffice to say, all the fan talk is, well, just that: talk.
It’s time to turn that talk into action.
And, in Oklahoma, there is no better action than football.
On Friday nights. On Saturday afternoons. There’s nothing better than football. And on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, during any season of the year, there’s nothing better in Oklahoma to talk about than football.
Updated 08-26-2004
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