Rooting for ND, Oklahoma and recalling great memories

If I had my way, and odds-makers say I won’t, Notre Dame will play Oklahoma for the national college football championship on Jan. 7 in Santa Clara, Calif.

At the moment, neither of my choices is expected to make it that far. Alabama, as I write this, is a twotouchdown favorite to beat the Sooners in the Cotton Bowl Dec. 29 and Clemson is figured to be 11 points better than the Irish the same day in the Orange Bowl. Recognizing these two realities, I can still root, can’t I? And I will.

It’s personal. Two of my children graduated from the University of Oklahoma and one from Notre Dame. It seems I’m repeatedly running into conflicts like this. And others. When Geno Auriemma’s UConn women’s team dusted Alice O’Brien McGraw’s Irish last Sunday, I had a conflict there, too, because one of my daughters is a UConn graduate.

But, because I have had a long association with UConn basketball, enjoy a friendship with Auriemma and former men’s coach Jim Calhoun and I’m a Connecticut guy, that conflict is nowhere as intense as the others. How could I root against the UConn women even when they’re playing at South Bend?

Frankly, it was quite satisfying to see the way Connecticut’s women’s team wrapped up the defending national champs Sunday.

The football matchups are intriguing. I think the selection committee did its due diligence, that is to say its homework, and made the right calls all around.

Oklahoma and Notre Dame have a special place with me, because of visits I paid to both campuses in the 1980s. My first time at OU’s Norman, Okla., campus was in the early 1980s when my son and namesake, Owen III, was sports editor of the student newspaper, the OU Daily. I stayed with him in his dorm room for a day, and at the invitation of the newspaper spoke with the staff, a very interesting hour.

I also went to a coach’s press conference and the next day covered a football game — Nebraska, I believe, But the highlight of the trip came the afternoon of the day I arrived. I went to the practice field and was standing near midfield chatting with the sports information director when a long, soaring punt came our way. Instead of moving out of the way . . . I caught it. Yes, really.

A couple of people yelled things like “Whoa, sign him up!” I tried to nonchalant it, but I could tell a couple of onlookers were thinking, “Who is this 45 or 50-yearold stranger in civvies and a reporters’ pad in his back

pocket fielding our guy’s punts?” The best part, though, was that Owen’s fiancé, Lori, was watching from the end zone. She had been showing me around the campus while Owen was in class. Yes, she said, she had seen the catch and that made my day even better.

I’ve been back to OU many times, since son Owen remained there married Lori and became a newspaper man in Oklahoma City. They are now grandparents.

In the earIy ’80s I visited Notre Dame, stopping off after an assignment with the Whalers, and again, stayed in son Kevin’s dorm room. The PR people were very accommodating and set me up with an interview with the Irish coach, Gerry Faust, in his office. He wasn’t the greatest coach ND ever had (five years, 30-26-1) but he was surely the nicest guy.

That Saturday, I watched and wrote up the Southern Cal-Notre Dame game, the Trojans winning 14-7. Heck of a game. Wrong winner. Well, I thought so.

Good memories. But this is 2018 and it’s time for those of us who root for Oklahoma and Notre Dame to deal with Alabama and Clemson.

And if things turn out the way I’m hoping, it’ll be Sooners vs. Irish for the national crown.

And which do I root for then? I’ll just have to cross that bridge when — and in the unlikely event — I come to it.