Pickens believes in OSU’s potential
After attending all but one home game in 2017, Oklahoma State mega booster Boone Pickens has every intention to make them all in 2018, beginning when the Cowboys open their season Thursday against Missouri State.
Pickens plans to be at the stadium that bears his name when OSU kicks off against the Bears at 7 p.m, he said in a statement issued on his Twitter account Wednesday.
For the second straight season, he will not meet with the media ahead of the opener.
Pickens suffered a series of strokes in December 2016.
Some highlights from Pickens' statement:
• "I'm in this to win a national championship. Turning 90 as I did last May only fuels that fire. Time for me is winding down, but I remain an optimist that Mike Gundy can and will deliver on a national championship. The sooner the better. At 90, I don't buy green bananas."
• After briefly discussing his friendship with Ronald Reagan and Reagan's acting role in "Knute Rockne: All American," Pickens paraphrases a line from the film to compare it to his desire for Gundy to win a national title: "Mike, go out there with all you've got and win just one for the Boonester."
• "Mike and I healed a lot of wounds last year."
• Pickens goes over the growth of OSU's "Athletic Village" under athletic director Mike Holder and makes a proposal: "When the timing is right, I think serious consideration should be given to naming the village in honor of the one who made it happen. 'The Mike Holder Athletic Village.' He deserves it. Mike has dedicated his life to this school. Mike is like a son to me, and is one of the humblest people I know. He'd fight the naming honor to the end."
• A Boone Pickens statue in coming soon to Boone Pickens Stadium: "I'm honored that the university has commissioned a sculpture of me to stand at the entrance to the West End Zone at Boone Pickens Stadium. I'm hopeful it can be in place for next year's football season." He wants a Barry Sanders statue, too.
• Pickens' boyhood home, "The Holdenville House," is being moved to Karsten Creek, OSU's golf course: "I've also decided that's where — hopefully in a decade or so — I will be buried."