Yup, it's another year of Oklahoma-Texas. Cotton Bowl gets split down the middle, tens of thousands of drunks flood the streets, and the Red River Rivalry is settled for another year by 60 minutes of football.
I was born in Oklahoma. I then spent the next seventeen years trying to get out of the state. The University of Oklahoma educated almost everyone in my family. Until I was about eight or so I thought the state song was "Boomer Sooner." My middle brother's suggestions for PTBNL names: Leroy, Lucious, Dewey. (I actually gave them more than a passing thought.)
But, despite all the recruiting by my father, I foreswore Norman for Boulder. In the end, Oklahoma and I had different agendas, different paths. The state struggles economically under increasingly reactionary governments. My hometown of Tulsa has leadership comparable to that of a horse trailer, choosing to throw all their economic eggs into the telecommunications boom... and subsequent bust. How many classmates from my high school graduating class have fled the state? A couple dozen still live in town, but I know more who live in DFW than in T-Town.
All the while, Texas has moved foward, invested heavily in its universities, and fostered diverse cities that are friendly to young people (i.e. under the age of 60). Austin's exploded with the rise of Dell. Houston is a diverse, vibrant city. Even Fort Worth has a lot going for it. Texas is now the economic engine that runs the Southwest. Oklahoma is nothing but a place to draw brainpower from.
Texas is, well, my kind of place. Take the Dixie Chicks vs. Toby Keith melee. The Chicks are from Austin and suburban Dallas. Toby Keith is from Clinton, a sizeable town west of Oklahoma City. Who do I side with? The Chicks. Toby Keith is an over-the-hill grandstanding loser of a country singer. The Chicks, though, are young, diverse, and didn't bow to the constricting force of the Country-Star-O-Matic (formerly Adult-Contemporary-Star-O-Matic) machine in Nashville.
I like Texas. It has its head screwed on straight. Big and pompous and producer of the biggest scumbag politician of the decade, sure. But, hey, it's the Lone Star State, where Molly Ivins can live in peace alongside Rick Perry.
The University of Texas, a vast and powerful research institution, is producing world-class science and medicine. The University of Oklahoma, meanwhile, goes on and on about gimmicks. "We have the largest natural science museum! We have more National Merit Scholars! Our buildings are made of brick! We have French impressionist paintings!" While Texas is 53 in the US News listings, Oklahoma isn't in the top 100 -- while the University of Tulsa is. Colorado has produced more Nobel Prize winners than all the universities in Oklahoma combined. They want to be a great academic institution, but they'd rather drop millions on stadium improvements than on academic improvements. Texas, as a university, is so far ahead of Oklahoma that it's like comparing Oxford to a middle school.
So, here on the eve of the greatest rivalry in college football, I have just four words to say about the game between the world-class university in Austin and the glorified high school in Norman:
TUCK FEXAS. BOOMER SOONER.
(and hey OU, mind sandbagging when you come to Boulder later this month? Not like a loss will really hurt you....)
