Mayer: Cowboys, Sutton easy to cheer for

In case the Kansas University basketball team gets derailed in its quest for a third straight NCAA Final Four, my loyalty compass will home in on Oklahoma State. There’s a long, warm KU-OSU history underlying that affection. If our guys can’t win it all, I want O-State on the victory stand.

Coach Eddie Sutton is a class act. Saw him play as a Cowboy from Bucklin, Kan., and I’d love to see him win the big one before he retires — even if he did help beat Kansas and Wilt Chamberlain in 1957. Eddie might not get another good shot. The Bill Selfs, Roy Williamses et al will have other chances. I doubt Eddie at 68 will be this well off again. If he wins it all, will he step aside this spring for son Sean?

Sutton is easy to cheer for. His team’s demeanor minimizes taunting and hot-dogging and adds to the appeal. What a gallant gesture here last season, to go over and congratulate KU seniors Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich even if they were whipping him again while winding up brilliant four-year careers. Consider how tough it was to bring the Pokes back from that Colorado plane disaster. No ordinary guy could have carried that off as well as Eddie and Co.

It happened mainly because OSU and its people are still enough “hickified” to care about each other and to try to pick each other up in a crisis. If that’s “rube” stuff, send me a truckload.

Yet my OSU support runs a lot deeper than all that. OK, it’s politically correct to say you want what’s best for the Big 12 Conference, “our league.” But I still think of OSU as a friendly neighbor in the Big Eight Conference days and still find it hard to warm to the Texas contingent. Kansas and Oklahoma State and their people have had a great relationship for a long, long time. The money-oriented Big 12 has broken up a wonderful family and may never regenerate the old warmth and conviviality.

No secret why you find KU cheering for OSU and vice versa in the Kansas City tournament this weekend. Each ought to bust a gut for the other; it’s so easy because they don’t meet.

The foundation was laid with Phog Allen of Kansas and Hank Iba of then-Oklahoma A&M getting together as fierce competitors but also as close friends who had deep respect for each other. You never saw two coaches try harder to beat each other. But they’d sit and jolly and cackle and philosophize until daylight when they weren’t orchestrating things on the court. It was such a privilege to sit in on some of those wondrous sessions — Doc with that infectious laugh and sparkling eyes and Hank with that gravel voice created by complications from chickenpox as a kid.

But it was KU’s role in getting OSU into the conference that created an institutional warmth that never has waned.

From 1948 to 58 we had the Big Seven Conference after Colorado was appended to the old Big Six. Why, I’ll never know for sure, but when there was talk about admitting Oklahoma State and creating the Big Eight, there were opponents, enough that could derail the amalgamation.

Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton, right, talks to guard Daniel Bobik during the Cowboys' 75-56 victory over Eastern Washington. OSU won its NCAA Tournament opener Friday in Kansas City, Mo.

Sure, Oklahoma A&M was a “smaller school” and a “state” entity such as Kansas State College, later University. But it had two national basketball titles to its credit (’45 and ’46), played some pretty good football and had a good all-sports format, particularly in wrestling. O-State was in the Missouri Valley Conference at the time.

Phog Allen was dedicated to OSU’s admittance due to his ties with Hank Iba. So was Dutch Lonborg, the low-key but accomplished Jayhawk athletic director. Supersalesmen like this had little trouble convincing the Big Enchilada, KU chancellor Franklin D. Murphy, to start the bus. Before long the good guys were beginning to shove the bad guys into the ditch. You never wanted to go against Franklin Murphy when he was in an attack mode.

From 1959 through 1996, then, it was the Big Eight with Oklahoma State as a full and productive partner. The O-State people never have forgotten KU was the linchpin for getting it into the mix.

Evidence of OSU’s gratitude came in 1960, when Kansas had won the Big Eight football title by whaling previously unbeaten Missouri, 23-7, at Columbia. Missouri (with a big boost from TCU, still bruising over the transfer of Bert Coan to Kansas) headed up a “defrock Kansas” movement. Things got darned heated at the decisive meeting at the league offices in Kansas City.

Fact is, with the Tiger hustlers in the lead, the rules on the matter were changed in the middle of the deal. What’s Johnnie Cochran think about that? Up to then, it would have taken a 5-2 vote of the others to let KU keep the title and the blemish to stay on MU’s record. Kansas State and Oklahoma State were the pro-KU people and held firm. But after the rules-mongers prevailed, a 4-3 count was required. MU got its win and an Orange Bowl trip.

There was and remains thick bad blood between Kansas and Missouri, but Oklahoma State’s loyalty justified the efforts of the Jayhawks to get the Pokes in the league.

There have been so many great sessions of Jayhawks and Cowboys for football weekends in Lawrence and Stillwater and prior to basketball games, before travel became so automated. OSU had a couple of great sports publicists in Otis Wile and Pat Quinn, who were in the same league as KU’s incomparable Don Pierce.

Surprise, surprise, Kansas is my darling for the 2004 national tournament. But if Kansas gets sidetracked, little wonder I’ll don the orange and black of the Stillwater clan. Let’s win the big one for Eddie!