Dallas ? Oklahoma State wrestling coach John Smith and basketball coach Eddie Sutton have had offices next door to each the last 10 years. All week, there was celebratory cake and cookies in Sutton’s office.

“All my wrestlers come up to my office and tell me how tempting the sweets look in coach Sutton’s office,” Smith said. “I tell them, ‘We have to make weight. Go drink some water out of the fountain.'”

As next-door neighbors, Smith and Sutton have shared philosophy about how to get the best out of their student-athletes. These days, though, they are sharing perhaps the most successful period in Oklahoma State sports history.

Smith’s wrestlers won their second straight national title March 20, and Sutton’s basketball team will keep chasing a national title Saturday against Georgia Tech in the Final Four in San Antonio. That comes on the heels of the football team playing in the Cotton Bowl — the Cowboys’ first Jan. 1 bowl game since 1949.

The golden era of Oklahoma State athletics has long been considered the mid-1940s. The basketball team won back-to-back national titles in 1944-45 and 1945-46. The football team won the 1945 Sugar Bowl in the only undefeated, untied season (9-0) in school history. And the wrestling team won a national title in 1946.

“I think if you talk to most of our fans, this period is akin to the 1945-46 time period,” athletic director Harry Birdwell said. “Although I’m not sure all our programs back then were as successful as they are now.”

Birdwell cites, in the last year, Big 12 Conference titles in women’s soccer, women’s golf, women’s tennis and an individual national title in equestrian as well as a runner-up finish at the NCAA championships for men’s golf, which has won eight national titles under coach Mike Holder.

OSU also is getting serious about investing in winning. Over the past two years, there has been a $55 million renovation to Gallagher-Iba Arena, consistently voted one of the toughest places to play for opposing teams because of the deafening support Cowboys’ fans provide.

And the football stadium, right in the heart of the Stillwater campus, is undergoing a $100 million renovation, spurred by a $20 million contribution from the school’s single largest donor — Dallas oil and gas tycoon T. Boone Pickens, a 1951 OSU graduate.

“I’ve told our other donors, it’s not a free ride,” said Pickens, who has pledged a total of $70 million in gifts to the school. “If we’re going to compete in the Big 12, we have to get our budget up to the level of Texas, Nebraska and Oklahoma.”

According to U.S. Department of Education figures, Texas leads the Big 12 with an athletic department budget of $64.8 million, followed by Nebraska ($52.4 million) and Oklahoma ($48.5 million). OSU is eighth in the Big 12 with a budget of $30.1 million.

“I’m 75 years old,” Pickens said. “It’s very, very important to me that this is all accomplished before I’m gone. And once we get to that level of competitiveness, it’s easier to stay there. It’s getting there that’s tough.”

From his office, football coach Les Miles watches the construction of a fourth deck on the south side of what is now Boone Pickens Stadium (no longer Lewis Field), replete with luxury suites and a club level.

“They’ve removed all barriers to our success with the upgraded facilities,” Miles said. “We’re going to have a state-of-the-art stadium.”

All this athletic success is especially heartening in light of the tragedy Jan. 27, 2001, in which 10 people tied to the OSU athletic department were killed in a plane crash on the way back from a basketball game at Colorado, including two players.

A permanent memorial to the 10 who died was constructed in the foyer of the refurbished Gallagher-Iba Arena.

Terrence Crawford, a junior, and Ivan McFarlin, a senior, are the only two current players who were on the team at the time.

After OSU clinched the Big 12 basketball title, Crawford told Sutton, “Don’t you think those 10 people up there are smiling down on us right now?”

Sutton said he pauses each day at the memorial to remember the good memories he shared with those who were killed.

“Those were 10 unbelievable people,” Sutton said. “Maybe the winning this season has helped heal some of the aching that still exists on this campus because of the loss of those 10 people.

“There will never be complete closure for the families or anyone who was a part of that. It will always be in your heart and in your mind. Because of that, for our coaching staff, Ivan McFarlin and Terrence Crawford, I know this (the Final Four) is a very meaningful event.”