What an amazing life!
T Boone Pickens transcends Bedlam football. The man was a pioneer, a visionary, and yes…a corporate raider, but what a life story.
He was the epitome of the boom/bust oil industry mentality. And when he made it back big again in 2000 playing natural gas he said what the heck and just basically leveraged his alma mater Oklahoma State University.
He didn’t donate to O State. No. He with his half billion dollar donation in essence bought enough shares of a state funded university to become the university’s de facto CEO.
I absolutely loved his balls. His audacity. His will to win.
Boone Pickens could very well have been a Dan Jenkins fictional character in Dead Solid Perfect. Pickens could have been the fictional oil tycoon Big Ed Bookman straight out of Fort Worth in Semi Tough.
He bought a state funded university and in 2011 his college football team won a Big 12 championship and almost made it to the BCS National Championship Game at a school which had a high school level stadium before he ‘acquired’ his college football franchise.
That wasn’t Mike Gundy’s team, that was T Boone Picken’s team. Kind of like Neil Gorsuch isn’t Donald Trump’s Supreme Court Justice but is Mitch McConnell’s justice. Same thing.
Mike Gundy is a nice coach, but the 2011 Big 12 championship team was a testament to Boone Pickens not to Mike Gundy. If you doubt me google the locker room celebration and see who the players were centered around in the locker room.
As an OU fan I absolutely loved the guy. He had guts and it didn’t faze him a bit to take on big boys OU and Texas on the football field. I’m sure he wanted to fire Gundy several times for not be able to beat OU more than twice, but I’m to assume Mike Holder held that impulse in check.
His ranch in Mesa Vista in west Texas was amazing. Google it and take a virtual tour. Who else would have done this?
He loved to fish and loved labs. How could I not love T Boone Pickens?
What a shame for O State they have lost their most interesting alum and their team owner. T Boones Pickens was the Jerry Jones of college football and to be frank Mike Gundy has been the Jason Garrett of college football.
Again…I’m not dogging Mike Gundy because the best man at my wedding was a Midwest City guy, but this was not a Mike Gundy era—this was a T Boone Pickens era at O State.
He’d show up in Stillwater and hold his own Boone pressers. He’d hint at more Boone dollars on the away. He’d push Gundy to the side and give his public takes on the team. He dared Gundy to take the train wreck Tennessee job. I laughed my ass every time he got on Gundy for not beating OU.
I’ve always wondered to myself who he would have hired if Holder had allowed him to fire Gundy. I always drooled at the prospect of Boone hiring Mike Leach at some point. Oh my god. Could you have imagined Boone and Leach together?
Bedlam football will not be the same without T Boone Pickens.
I will miss him greatly because he was a larger than life character who made O State relevant on the national stage.