FAMOUS FIRST WORDS
Game time unofficially starts for many Sooner fans when they hear catchphrase
NORMAN — It’s football time in Oklahoma.
Those words will echo around the football stadium at the University of Oklahoma about half an hour before kickoff Saturday evening. Just as it has before every home game for nearly two decades, that phrase will act as the Sooner fans’ call to arms.
Or at least foam fingers and pompoms.
Like the schooner driving on the field and the band’s drum major bending over backward and the “There’s Only One” video playing on the Jumbotron, the catchphrase “It’s football time in Oklahoma!” has become part of the pregame hype. It signals the start of the buildup. It provides that
first goosebump moment.
Game time unofficially starts for many a Sooner fan when they hear those words.
In a tradition-rich sport like college football, new rituals aren’t automatically accepted. But “It’s football time in Oklahoma!” has become part of the fabric of game days in Norman.
“It’s just fun,” said the man behind the catchphrase. “It’s an exciting way to start the whole thing.”
And Saturday night when OU faces Akron, Jim Miller’s words booming from the stadium speakers will signal the unofficial start to the season. That’s heady stuff for something that got mocked and laughed at the first time it was used. So, what’s the story behind the iconic phrase? It starts with Miller. He grew up in southeastern Kansas, but living less than 20 miles from Oklahoma red dirt at a time when good college football was hard to come by in the Sunflower State, he became an OU fan.
In 1988, he took a job in the OU athletic department. A few years later, he started to do fill-in duty for James Jennings, who was then the public-address announcer for football games. In 1996, Miller took over full time. The first words he said before every game were at best formal and at worst clunky and boring.
“Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of President David Boren ... “Not horrendous. Not great either. It sure didn’t make anyone want to get out of their seat and cheer.
Before the 1999 season, Miller was in Knoxville, Tenn., working a gymnastics event. He used to be one of the main announcers used by USA Gymnastics for competitions all over the country, and one day during the event, Miller happened to have the radio on as he was driving around town.
He heard someone say, “It’s football time in Tennessee!”
“It just hit me — ‘That’s a neat way to start,’ ” Miller said earlier this week from his home in Norman.
If he tweaked the phrase a bit, changing Tennessee to Oklahoma, he might have a better way to kickoff game day. He took his idea to the folks in the athletic department’s marketing office. Would it be OK to start with “It’s football time in Oklahoma!”?
The marketing folks didn’t seem to care one way or another, so Miller decided to give it a try. The reception wasn’t great. “Everybody was like, ‘Huh? What is that?’ ” Miller said. He laughed. “There was one guy in the press box when I started doing it who was like, ‘What are you doin’ that for? That’s stupid,’ ” Miller said. Goosebumps now. Cold shoulder then. But none of that deterred Miller. He continued to use the catchphrase, and perhaps the timing was right for new traditions. That was the season, after all, when Bob Stoops and Mike Leach and Josh Heupel ushered in a new era of OU football. At a time when Sooner Nation was coming to grips with five-receiver sets and no-huddle offense, perhaps “It’s football time in Oklahoma!” didn’t seem quite so radical a change.
By the next season, Miller started to see the catchphrase popping up all over. On athletic department mailers. On the website. Even on commercials. The car dealers ads always got him. “It’s like, ‘Hey, that’s my line!’ ” he joked. Miller didn’t know it at the time, but his line was actually a spin-off of someone else’s.
John Ward was the radio announcer for the University of Tennessee from 1965 to 1999. The Voice of the Vols, as he became known, had many memorable catchphrases, but before every game, he would set the scene in the stadium, then alert listeners that the Vols had just come out of the locker room and run onto the field.
Then he would always say, “It’s football time in Tennessee!”
In the same way that Ward’s phrase resonates with Tennessee fans, Miller’s does likewise with OU fans.
“It gets the competitive juices flowing in this old body,” longtime Sooner fan Jim Hatt said.
OU alum Ashley Moriarty said the words “It’s football time in Oklahoma!” are the cue to “get on my feet, get loud and support my team.”
Miller marvels about how things have changed since he first used that catchphrase. There were crickets then, but there are cheers now. “It really has kind of taken on a life of its own,” he said. He loves that those words have become part of Sooner football, something that always has been part of him.
It gets the competitive juices flowing in this old body.”
JIM HATT
LONGTIME SOONER FAN