With bowl games and such in flux, I didn’t post after the excellent Bedlam series game in Norman on November 28, when our Sooners finished the season strongly by shutting out #12-ranked OSU, 27-0. As put it at the time, “Oklahoma beat Oklahoma St 27-0, potentially costing the Big 12 $4.5M. The Cowboys have been knocked out of BCS contention. The only chance the league has now of putting a second team in the BCS is if Nebraska beats Texas next week.”

If you watched the game, you know that this literally came within one step of happening. Colt McCoy revealed this week that he did not know that the clock runs on incomplete passes until it hits something out of bounds. Had he scrambled for just one more step, it’s likely the ball he launched would not have hit the ground until time had run out, flushing Texas’s undefeated season, conference championship, BCS Championship game bid, and McCoy’s Heisman hopes right down the Bevo Basin. The Longhorns are extremely lucky that ball didn’t stay in the air for an extra ½ second.

Had it done so, Nebraska would be in the Fiesta Bowl, Texas would be a BCS at-large team, and Oklahoma probably would have been chosen one earlier in the pecking order and be heading to the Alamo Bowl. Instead, with five losses, our Sooners have been invited to play the 8-4 Stanford Cardinal in the Brut Sun Bowl (December 31, 1:00 PM CST on CBS). Cardinal running back Toby Gerhart is one of the five finalists for the 2009 Heisman Trophy, but Stanford’s starting quarterback is injured and will not play in the bowl game. OU can tell them a few thing about losing starters to injuries.

The Cowboy Marching Band played Carry On Wayward Son and Bohemian Rhapsody for their halftime show. The Pride’s seniors voted on their favorite tune from the past four years for the opener, and they selected the theme from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which they had last performed in 2006. (I know it was done once before that, then once in 1993, and maybe before that but I don’t think so. I could be wrong.) The concert number was New Divide from Transfomers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, and that was followed by the (at least) 32 seniors who will join us as Pride Alumni after the Sun Bowl.

That includes outgoing drum major Jason Marshall, who was presented with a Bob Stoops autographed football on the field after the game by assistant athletics director for marketing Charlie Taylor, who himself served as drum major of the Iowa Hawkeye Marching Band and knows first-hand how difficult the job is. The Norman Transcript reported on Jason’s final game, in no small part because his mother was there to see it:

Shirley Marshall wasn’t missing her son’s final strut across Owen Field Saturday, even if she had to be wheeled in on a stretcher.

And for the first time this season, she didn’t.

Wheelchair, yes. Stretcher, no.

I say “at least” 32 new alumni because the number is likely to be higher. Most of you remember that Pride auditions involve enrolling in the class, signing up for audition material, and so forth, so the band department has a strong idea by July 1 how many people are going to audition for each year’s band. This year, there was a significant drop-off from the number of people signed up on July 1 and the number who showed up for pre-camp just six weeks later.

There was some burn-out—with three BCS bowl games in the previous three seasons and a 2007 term that included the Oklahoma Centennial and the Macy’s® Thanksgiving Day Parade, I can certainly sympathize with those now-alumni who felt they got five years’ worth of experience in three seasons. When I had this year’s Macy’s parade on TV, I got tired just thinking about that year. And I didn’t even go!

But most of those folks had made up their minds before July 1. The attrition is largely due to the economy. Students used to piling on work hours in the summer to save for the fall and spring terms found that there were fewer hours available in 2009. Others realized that they needed to keep working during the fall to make ends meet, and that just wouldn’t work with a class schedule and the grueling Pride schedule.

Remember, that means a minimum of six hours per week for road games. For home game weeks, it’s ten hours of rehearsal and six hours of game (from rewarm through post-game concert), and that’s not counting downtime before the game when things like work are impossible. And it also doesn’t count road trips (this year twice to Dallas, for the BYU and Texas games), pep bands, individual practice, or the rest. The minimum committment this season averaged to over 12 hours per week, and that’s without full-band trips to Stillwater, Lincoln, or (sadly) the Big 12 Championship, and does not include the upcoming bowl trip. Add in the extras and most Pride members probably spent around 250 hours on Pride and its related activities during the Fall 2009 semester. Each.

That’s why the new programs that Karen Renfroe mentioned both here and on the mailing list this week. The endowed spots are, I think, a particularly great idea—a way to make sure that every position in The Pride has a uniform, an instrument, and a stipend for the student in perpetuity. All those new Yamaha trombones a couple of years ago were great (and still are), but won’t it be even better when we know that each and every one of them gets replaced every ten years? And the same with everything else?

That alone takes a big headache off the hands of students who play the more expensive instruments. Combine it with a stipend and we’ve really got something. Granted, a stipend can’t financially replace 250 hours of work (a version of “The Pride” that paid minimum wage would look a lot different than the tradition we know—there’d probably be five people auditioning for each spot), but even a few hundred dollars per semester can be incredibly helpful.

I think all any of us want for future Pride generations is a level playing field, so that anyone who wants to be the band and passes the auditions can be in the band—that the time or cost of doing so will not prohibit talented students from being part of this organization. It’s a difficult challenge, more so in an economic downturn, so I hope everyone who has the means to do so will seriously consider the programs Karen has outlined.

As for the Sun Bowl, we already have the game on our Events calendar and will add any more opportunities to see The Pride in El Paso as we learn about them. Maybe later this week I'll post about why a college football playoff is still a horrible idea, but I'll leave you with this hint:

Finals start at OU on Saturday. If the football team were in the BCS top sixteen for a "playoff" system, then the best case scenario is a home game. On Finals Saturday, and again after Finals are over, and again the day after Christmas, and so on. Or worse, a road game on the same timeframe. Or at a "neutral" site with one week's notice. As a Pride member, do you think you could have managed that kind of December schedule? Would you consider it an OU football game with no college trappings except the team itself? Do you think anyone at any of the schools wants this?

(Maybe more later on that.)