'Out there in the form of a herd of limousine cattle'

Growing up as an U.S. Air Force brat with base gyms and swimming pools, I cared deeply about sports and fitnes s when I arrived as a student at the University of Oklahoma. I played football for the highly esteemed coach Jim Darnell at Midwest City High School.

At the time, the only sports or recreational facilities available to the non-scholarship athlete at OU were four racquetball courts in the football stadium.

I set out in 1975 to use advocacy journalism to prompt OU President Paul Sharp to raise the money needed to create something like what they already had at Oklahoma State University. By 1976 my writing in the student newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily, was specific.

I pointed out OSU students were blessed with a fully featured Colvin Recreation Center. Sharp was a historian and never seemed to get the point in my two meetings with him. It did not happen, no matter how much I advocated as a columnist in the school paper.

I became an avid bicyclist while we lived in Germany for three years, so I rode and raced my bicycle extensively while cross training by running while at OU. I personally had no shortage of sports and recreation because I developed my own. I played racquetball.

Being persistent about helping my fellow students, I began advocating again when William (Bill) Banowsky became the OU president in 1978.

Our meetings about this agenda were completely different than those with President Sharp. Banowsky was stunned that OU had next to nothing for the regular student. It only took two meetings and for him to tour the OSU Colvin Recreation Center in Stillwater before he promised me it was going to happen.

I will never forget his promise about how he would find the money, when he said, “It might be out there in the form of a herd of limousine cattle.” Later I figured out he might have been talking about Bob Funk Sr.

Banowsky got busy and with a major gift from the Huffman family built the Huston Huffman Fitness Center, now called the Sarkeys Fitness Center.

Once I had Banowsky's ear, I proposed the idea of OU allowing students to run in the Lloyd Noble Center around the entry level inside on bad weather days. When the school approved the idea, a fellow student journalist created a cute cartoon illustration to go with another student's article about the innovation.

I was gone from OU before what the students later called the "Huff" was opened, but I am still proud of my part in its construction.

I still ride my bicycle every day for more than an hour, weather permitting, although racing fell away years ago as I am now 65 and retired.

Darnell taught us football players at MCHS that you do not perform well on game day if you are not prepared. That life lesson has transferred into everything I have ever done or am preparing to do. Once of life's best lessons sports imparts.

Having done many more things in sports since this advocacy journalism, this agenda probably has positively effected the most people.

Why do you love sports? Email us your response at NICsportsdesk@oklahoman.com.