You would think that after all these years, Oklahoma City and Tulsa would have found peace with each other as they were growing up. It's seems as though there is still quite a rivalry between these two sisters. Are we still the same blood-thirsty rivals we have always been. Tulsa is a charming, cosmopolitan and clean city! Oklahoma City is a hospitable, high spirited and heralded city! Tulsa has always had that reputation for being a beautiful young mistress; whereas, Oklahoma City use to tag along as her big overall wearing tomboy sister with bifocals and nappy hair. She made Tulsa look that much more beautiful! Over the last ten years, things have changed... Big sister, OKC has had a make-over and went out and invested in a new wardrobe. Tulsa is still wearing the same well kept clothes she's worn ten years ago and she's aged a bit, looking more like Joan Rivers dressed as Miss Scarlet! She's (OKC) even dating someone who Tulsa wanted eight years ago, his name is MLS. Now, Tulsa has put on her daisy dukes and she still can't get MLS's attention; that ole bee hive hair-do and false eyelashes just won't do! You see, Tulsa use to always play hard to get! Meanwhile, OKC makes no beans about strutting her stuff on the streets. She's getting popular; yet, she doesn't have to drop a handkerchief or extend a leg to get attention. A simple smile and an occasional glance will do! OKC has been a real active girl lately, working out and getting more solid and with some fine muscle tone. Tulsa on the other hand has remained virtually the same, however she's been sitting around the buffet tables and eating up all the profits. Tulsa will eventually make one more attempt to get MLS. While OKC isn't around, she is going to get out of those daisy dukes and attempt to get MLS to go skinny-dipping with her. She has forgotten that those thighs developed just a little bit too much cellulite on the back of the buttocks, she looks as though she has been spanked with a waffle iron. Why can't we all just get along? Oklahoma City has been trying to tell Tulsa how to get a new wardrobe and look better, she has tried to share some of her secrets; however, Tulsa doesn't want any advice from OKC. She knows that she looks better than OKC on her worst day. She'd rather do it alone and stay away from those clothing store sales because she insists that she's not going to give the government another penny. Tulsa still looks charming, but that clown white and pancake make-up just won't hide those wrinkles anymore! You'll soon need a face lift and the sooner you get one, the better! Because if you sit around for another ten years, you'll look like Bette Davis playing Miss Daisy! We are pursuing MLS and he's taking a liking to OKC, we have always supported you Tee Town, now we need your blessings!
okay, that's just way too weird... after living in both Tulsa and OKC for a number of years, I've got some advice for both "ladies": SHUDDUP BEFO Y'ALL GIT B**** SLAPPED!
I didn't think people from OKC could be as condescending as Tulsa's Southern Hills crowd but I now stand corrected... Excuse me here for fantasizing about a franchise that has no concrete proposals on the table of any kind yet (been doing this for the past few days anyway) but it would certainly be wise (hint, hint) for the team to be Oklahoma's team and not OKC's or Edmond's or Tulsa's. Not a fan of new mayor LaFortune but could see him try to put something together $$$-wise for Tulsa (private & public) while Humphries sits on the sidelines like a doofus afraid that an MLS team would steal the thunder from his efforts to secure another doomed arena pointy-ball franchise, giving a plum of a patronage job to his buddy Mick Cornett... "...and around the first turn it's OKC way ahead of Tulsa... and, WHOA NELLIE, here comes Edmond on the outside... BUT WAIT A MINUTE... THE RACE HASN'T EVEN STARTED YET..."
As a summer time citizen of Tulsa when I come back from KU and the Wizards, I was quite astonished to read John Klein writing a headline type article pushing for MLS to come to Tulsa, for Tulsa to build a stadium for a team. But once I figured out that the whole gist was "Hey, let's not let those OKC bastards steal something we've been turning down for four years", I knew that Tulsa would never have a team. We had some great plans to revitalize downtown, but they got voted down. A key component of those plans? A soccer specific or mostly soccer specific stadium, 'bout 20k seats or so. But of course that gets voted down, so, I say as a proud Tulsa citizen, we don't deserve MLS. I don't even really believe that Oklahoma deserves a team. But then again, I think OKC is an ugly ugly city. Aside from the new stuff they have built, I truly wish Tulsa had something comparable. But I don't want a MLS team in Oklahoma, I know that the potential fan base is there, that OKC could build a stadium, but I think that they will be another KC, drawing 8k a game. This post is probably a little bit rambly, but oh well. I wish Tulsa had gotten its stuff together and built a stadium before, but now I think its just too far behind OKC in terms of mustering support for such a project. So damn the shortsighted people of Tulsa.
Would rather hear east/west high school smack, college smack, soccer fanbase rivalries smack, and the general "your city sucks" smack, not to forget my personal favorite: the "my Tulsa librarian can beat the sh** out of your OKC librarian" smack than the barbie-doll metaphors seen here (does that make Garber into a Ken doll?-- if so, is this "Earring Magic Ken?")
<h4>Just trying to see who is still awake out there! ***Stereotyping***</h4> Please take no offense to the comments made at the beginning of this thread. Which comments did you love about Tulsa? Which comments did you love about Oklahoma City? Which comments offended you about Tulsa? Which comments offended you about Oklahoma City? Isn't it strange that when you personify these cities they take on a different character. This is what I was talking about in one of my earlier posts--stereotypes. How are we going to rid the rest of the country about the stereotypes they have about Oklahoma when we (OKC-TUL) are still stereotyping each other? Are we going to agree to support an MLS team for Oklahoma and support it regardless of where it is? <h3>Tulsa Broken Arrow Sapulpa Oklahoma City Edmond Norman Moore Midwest City Yukon</h3> I too have lived in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. The two cities are different--let me tell you and I love them both.
The Cleveland of the South... Sad but true...OKC will probably get an MLS team instead of Tulsa. Here's why: 1. Oklahoma Citians still have the loot and motivation to build in and around Downtown. Tulsa wouldn't pay a penny to improve anything in town unless it involved Southeast Tulsa (See the eight-lane path on Memorial around 71st and compare it to the nearly gravel road on North Peoria, even though both areas of town have the same number of people...oh, right, those North Peorians are poor urban folk.) 2. Capital's still OKC. The solons from N.E. Oklahoma still answer to the metro area first, and any St. Gov't weight would be thrown. That's why all the turnpikes in Oklahoma are around Tulsa. 3. Eddie Gaylord (think Rupert Murdoch in Klan Robes) could throw his billions around. Those Nichols Hills snobs may be soulless yuppie scum, but at least they want to improve OKC. 4. These two towns detest each other. If it weren't for the fact that all the literate people in Oklahoma are north and east of the Arkansas River, OKC would have tried to pawn Tulsa off on Kansas. Therefore, beating Tulsa to MLS will be done just for spite. ...and here's why a team will TANK in "the city" 1. As prementioned, OKC is REALLY right wing. They make Rush Limbaugh look like Ho Chi Minh. Just read the Daily Dissapointment ("The Worst Newspaper in America" -- Columbia Journalism Review). So right wing, in fact, that one letter to the editor that the DD printed called the '94 Cup and soccer in general "A UN plot to indoctrinate children into multiculturalism." Not exactly bottom land for growing a crop of soccer fans. Tulsa is also conservative, but that John McCain/Barry Goldwater sort. 2. The Soccer Gods will smite MLS if they pass up the chance to bring back the Tulsa Roughnecks. 3. More on the Daily Oklahoman... to a man (and woman), the Sports Dept. are hostile towards soccer. John Rhode, Berry Trammel, et. al. are the classic old school soccer bashers. If it ain't OU or the Dallas Cowboys, it don't get run. 4. If Gaylord gets involved, he'll just move it with his other crap in Nashville. But then again, it could work... 1. That soccer boom that hit Tulsa and took root during the Roughneck Era also tapped a bit into OKC. Plus, a few Tulsans might make the 90 min drive to games (Unlike easterners, we Midwesterners think nothing of hopping in the car and driving two hours to shop/watch a game/eat/visit someone) 2. Natural Rivalry with Dallas, which is something they need. A Burn-OKC home-and-home is a nice warm up for OU-Texas. 3. Gaylord Again. If he gets involved, that will force his paper's sports staff to respect the team. 4. Tulsa is Frasier, OKC is Fear Factor; Tulsa is REM, OKC is REO; Tulsa is sushi, OKC is catfish; Tulsa is brilliant but inept, OKC is dumb as a bag of hammers but wealthy.
If the MLS really want to get off the ground in the central area of the U. S. they need to look at three key cities and not be afraid to expand into those markets. Those three key cities are known as the Golden Triangle: Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Wichita. I'm not saying immediate expansion into all three. These markets are rich in soccer history--especially Tulsa and Wichita and these three cities love to hate each other. It is not uncommon to go to a hockey game in Tulsa and see a 1,000 fans from Oklahoma City in the building. I've seen as many as 600 fans from Tulsa in the Myriad on a given weekend and 400 from Wichita. I've traveled to Wichita and as many as 200 fans will be scattered throughout the Kansas Coliseum and Oklahoma City fans have been known to journey to Fort Worth and San Antonio. I remember a playoff game in San Antonio and I know there were at least 300 fans in Freeman Coliseum for a AA hockey game. If these cities can show that kind of support for AA hockey, just think what they will do for MLS. The MLS is trying to beef itself up in the big markets where they are considered a side show for now. If the MLS will go into several key markets, interest will increase nation wide. The MLS needs to look at cities in which the MLS won't be a sideshow: Rochester Oklahoma City Wichita Tulsa San Antonio Austin Portland (OR) Albuquerque Shreveport Little Rock Louisville Las Vegas Omaha Des Moines Birmingham Akron Greensboro Greenville, S.C. Grand Rapids Hartford Winston-Salem Providence Where these cities are not popular, they could favor the state name; Example, a team in Greenville could be called South Carolina or Carolina. I'm not saying expand into all of these markets, but these cities would be open to promoting the MLS. Once you get the ball rolling in these markets, the larger cities will want franchises.
Re: Re: The Cleveland of the South... That pretty much sums up Tulsa in general. They'd much rather build a second house in Texas or Colorado than work to improve this city.
About the same... and that isn't good enough. Unfortunately, there are probably more minor league hockey fans in this area than soccer fans. I hope someone proves me wrong someday. But if the soccer fans are here, where have they been hiding? Why do I never see them? The only other people I ever see in this city even wearing soccer club jerseys are 12 year olds. (or Mexican) The Roughnecks only folded about 2 years ago, and yet in the five years I lived here before that I never even knew they still existed until I got a computer. By then it was too late. Here's the question of the day: If Oklahoma fails to land an MLS team, would our state's soccer history and love of the sport transfer over to an A-League team? Does anyone have any info on how well supported the Women's USL team in OK is?
VvvvvvClick on me!vvvvvV <a href="http://oklahomaskyscrapers.50megs.com/cgi-bin/i/tulsasky07.jpg"><h3>Tulsa, Oklahoma</h3></a> is a beautiful city and the potential for growth and spawning far exceeds that of Oklahoma City. One of my friends that came up with me from Arlington was wanting to go to Tulsa because he had heard that Tulsa was a very clean city. He wanted to see what a clean city looked like and he also wanted to see Sam Kennison's grave! Well, I took him to Tulsa and we drove all up and down Riverside--watching the people jog, skate, walk... Well, he just recent moved to Tulsa!
Re: The Cleveland of the South... First of all, I don't think that Oklahoma City is trying to get an MLS franchise just to spite Tulsa. As far as all the literate people in Oklahoma being north and east of the Arkansas River then tell me where can you obtain a Ph.D--Fayetteville, Joplin, Oklahoma City, Stillwater, Norman and certainly not in Tulsa! Don't get me wrong, TU has a great faculty and staff and they should push to get a Ph.D and Ed.D programs for that prestigous university; however, I guess being so literate has its advantages!
Edmond community interest in Major League Soccer Stadium! <h3>New stadium would be good move for Edmond</h3> 2002-07-28 By Bob Colon The Oklahoman A new sports stadium in Edmond sounds good, and I'm all for it. "This just came out of the blue," an athletic department official at the University of Central Oklahoma said Friday. That's how Brad Lund, chief executive officer of Express Sports, works -- out of the blue. Sometimes it works, like last winter, when Express Sports got Davis Cup matches in the Cox Center. No one had an inkling something like that could happen. Negotiations began around Thanksgiving, and the deal was signed and delivered in December. Now Lund is trying to get a Major League Soccer franchise for the city area. The first plan was to build a 25,000-seat stadium in the Bricktown area, and now the focus has moved to the UCO campus in Edmond. Lund has met with UCO president Roger Webb, and optimism is running rampant. The idea at Bricktown and at UCO is to have the stadium available for high school football on Friday nights and small college football games on Saturdays. That sounds great at Edmond since the grass field at Wantland Stadium wears out with the three Edmond high schools and UCO playing there. Some weeks you have games on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Wantland opened in 1965 and seats 10,000. That's plenty big enough since UCO averages around 3,500 for its home games. The high schools draw better, although Wantland rarely sells out. MLS requires stadiums have grass playing fields, the same as Wantland has now. That seems like a problem since grass would take a heavy beating with four football teams plus a soccer franchise playing games in the same stadium. Parking would be a concern since UCO trimmed its athletic parking lot substantially when it built student apartments southwest of Hamilton Fieldhouse. Shuttles would alleviate that problem, however. UCO already has plans to renovate Wantland within the next few years. A new scoreboard and press box are being considered along with artificial turf. UCO dropped track and cross country at the end of the 2001 school year, hoping to save $500,000. Athletic budgets at the state colleges follow reality most times, so don't expect the Regents of Oklahoma Colleges to come forth with a big appropriation. UCO plays NCAA Division II football, and the largest stadium in that division is 20,000- seat Kimbrough Stadium at West Texas A&M in Canyon, Texas. Only 24 of 146 Division II schools have stadiums of 10,000 or larger, so UCO is well above average in seating capacity. Langston, UCO's former rival and neighbor to the northeast, plans to renovate its football stadium and more than double seating capacity from 4,500 to between 10,000 and 12,000. The project is supposed to cost around $10 million, and work will begin in the fall. "The important thing is,we've got the money," Langston president Ernest Holloway said. Building a 25,000-seat stadium is supposed to cost in the $20 million to $38 million range. Lund is the consummate promoter and might be able to pull it off. Maybe Edmond voters would OK a sales tax. Lund was talking recently about attending the state high school boys tennis tournament in the spring at the Oklahoma City Tennis Center and he was surprised the event wasn't marketed better. "I had to park in the neighborhood and run across Portland carrying my lawn chair," Lund said. "They needed shuttles." We need a lot of things in Oklahoma that would make our sports better. Coming up with the money to pay for them isn't always available. Bob Colon can be reached by e-mail at bcolon@oklahoman.com.
Re: Re: Re: The Cleveland of the South... That's completely unfair. Tulsa tried to improve the downtown area in the 70s and early 80s... NOBODY SHOPPED THERE... the Williams Center Forum, shops, etc. were by-and-large a complete flop. In the 70s there was a proposal to build a new downtown stadium for the old WFL (World Football League--anybody remember them?) for "the price of a six-pack of soda" per taxpayer. Taxpayers gave a resounding "NO!" since we already had a 41,000 seat centrally located stadium... never mind the fact that at the time rush hour traffic snarled for miles around Hwy 169, Garnett, Mingo, and Memorial with miles of matching pot-holes (and no plans for new highways)... if that downtown stadium had been built in the mid/late 70s, I believe the Roughnecks would have received the same kind of lukewarm-at-best fan support the Talons (Arena II) receive at the Downtown Convention Center these days... the center of Tulsa moved to the east and south (I figure over 1/2 population of the city now lives south of S. 11th St and east of Harvard) while city leaders kept trying to hard-sell Tulsans on the idea of a rejuvenated downtown. Tulsa officials should stop trying to "beat a dead horse" and come up with plans that pay tribute to the success of neighborhoods like the older renovated Cherry Street area or the thriving area of businesses in the Woodland Hills area... by the way, the last TPS funding increase passed by a wide margin while the moronically named "right-to-work" faced more skepticism in NE Okla. than the rest of the state that's been duped for years by the Daily Disappointment (OPUBCO)...
You can count the Oklahoma Outrage's supporters in the hundreds (unless it's gone down further)... the Tulsa Roughnecks ceased to exist after the 1984 outdoor season, drawing less than 10,000 fans per game for the first year in franchise history mainly due to the fact that the league was down to only 7 teams from a high of 24 and peristent rumors (that turned out to be true) suggesting the franchise and league were doomed to close that year... never mind the fact that the new '84 owners changed the team colors from their championship red/black to the new piss yellow/pea green??? Anyhow, shortly before the start of the '84 season, fans deluged radio station KRMG with phone calls/pledges to the tune of close to $60,000 after rumors persisted the team couldn't make its payroll and would not be around to defend its 1983 Soccer Bowl title... after the team/league folded, any team calling themselves the "Tulsa Roughnecks" were, in fact, NOT... for a few years the team played at Driller Park and still drew numbers in the thousands... years after, Charlie Mitchell's Restaurant (owned by a former player/coach) drew more paying customers than the minor league Roughnecks. It's kind of like when your favorite restaurant gets new management and replaces the steak on the menu with hamburger helper, hoping nobody will notice. When going to college at OCU, I myself went to a couple of Okla. City Slickers games (hmmm, was it OK-City "Slickers" or Oklahoma "City-Slickers"?... but I digress...) against my beloved Tulsa Roughnecks in the late 80s... all the players seemed to be locals and I could count less than 100 fans at old, decreped Taft Stadium... was sorely disappointed-- thought I was going to see professionals but ended up with community theater (another metaphor for ya')... paled in comparison to 25K screaming fans storming the field and carrying GK Jack Brand on their shoulders after a 2nd round playoff shutout of the mighty Cosmos in '79... on those summer days you could talk about soccer tactics/players on AM 740 without having to defend the sport... daily media reports on player trades, front office turmoil, GM Noel Lemon's ongoing feud with new coach Alan Hinton, etc... It's hard to say what attracted fans to NASL soccer most: a) the only "big-league" team in town (Tulsa was deserate for a major league team-- would Tulsans have supported big-league dodgeball in the same kinds of numbers?) b) the "fad" that was soccer in the late '70s/early 80s (Tulsa got detailed stories in Sports Illustrated that were a far cry from the magazine's current bare-bones coverage of MLS). c) the euro-snob factor... the team seemed to be built around a nucleus of Northern Ireland nat'l team members unafraid of astroturf rug-burn after a slide tackle... d) Euro-snob factor II-- radio ads featuring 2 women (presumably at a bar) discussing the fact that they'd rather be at Roughneck games watching "those cute guys in shorts." e) Euro-snob factor III-- You must be a redneck... if you haven't been-to/watched-on-TV/listened-on radio to a Roughneck soccer game. Because of these factors, I don't think Tulsans will support an A-league team (see "steak/hamburger helper" metaphor above). I do think that Tulsa has a better (though currently dormant) fan base than OKC, but... there is a much bigger/better potential fan base in OKC now than there was pre-1978 in Tulsa so, if a successful soccer franchise could happen there (Tulsa) and then ('78-'84) IT CAN HAPPEN HERE (OKC) AND NOW! (or maybe '04 or '06?)...
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Cleveland of the South... I was not in Tulsa in the 70s but it appears that the foolish residents of Tulsa (like most cities in that era) continued to fall for the snare of bigger houses for less money... Hence the growth down south and east. I would guess that another reason the downtown shopping didn't work was that Tulsa had (and has) never come to grips with the fact that growth needs to be encouraged on more sides of downtown than 1. The downtown is currently on it's way up in some ways but there are some huge racial boundaries that are still under the carpet that is Tulsa. Cheaper land down south attracts construction, and people keep falling for it. They build their houses out in Broken Arrow, or Jenks, and then they commute in and sit in traffic everyday, and then complain that the highway sucks. Then the city makes the highways bigger, then they complain about the construction... all so they can have an extra 500-1000 square feet on their house to hold the extra crap they own that they really never needed anyway...and they get to live a little farther away from those dangerous northern Tulsans. (Someday a tornado will rip through one of these suburbs and we'll all learn that the people who lived here long ago had good reasons for building the city where they did.) Perhaps it is a dead horse. Brookside and Cherry St. are nice, but there is only so far they can go geographically. (They also appear to be struggling in some ways lately.) Woodland Hills is the most unattractive part of Tulsa to me. It looks like any block in Houston. Just chain store after chain store and crappy chain restaurants with bad traffic. That area will never attract anyone to Tulsa, because there is no city in the region (or country) that doesn't have at least one identical area. Interestingly enough, one of the favorite pastimes here in Tulsa is complaining about how there is nothing downtown, and pointing fingers at the city leaders for not having "vision."... while they move to Jenks, BA, or Owasso. If OKC gets an MLS team, I hope the longterm plan is for a stadium in Bricktown, and not Edmond. (and yes, Right to Work was a total farce... but will the voters of this state ever notice and hold it's campaigners accountable?)
Thanks for the history... very interesting. Do you think the dormant fan base in Tulsa would commute to OKC for an "Oklahoma" team?
With a weeping an gnashing of teeth... What really infurates me about this whole business of my corner of the state getting lapped by OKC is that it happened recently and suddenly. The City elected to beef up downtown and the adjacent area over the last seven years and sustain a decent growth, while Tulsa, for all of their gifts, put their considerable energy into creating a cute little clone of Creve Ceour, Mo., complete with cookie cutter Chili's, Outback, Old Navy and Best Buy. Any orginial flavor that city had is in Brookside, West Tulsa and North Tulsa (With the first surviving well, and the other two ignored politically and soon to crumble due to right to work.), while the good radio stations we formerly had are now mostly more tentacles in the Clear Channel monster. Tulsa has the better newspaper and more trees. That's about it, and it just stayed stagnant after the oil bust. We have no one to blame but ourselves. Of course, I myself am getting ready to move in just a few weeks to Dallas (I'm one of those Oklahoma Teachers leaving college for Texas that you've heard so much about) from Tahlequah. Oh, well, if the Tulsa area can't get a chubby Indian to hang around, How will they get an MLS team to set up shop? Two questions now for the MLS team in OKC: 1. What'll we call the stadium? (I like Carl Albert Memorial Stadium) 2. What's their name going to be? (FC Oklahoma or, more appropriately, Pit Bulls or Crankheads) Oh, and the Daily Oklahoman will always suck. Nothing will change my position on that.
Re: The Cleveland of the South... Don't hold your breath. Just remeber this rule of thumb: OKC wants to be Dallas when it grows up. Tulsa wants to be Boston when it grows up.
No more than a few hundred, especially if getting a team becomes a dogfight that Tulsa "loses." It could be more than that but only through careful marketing and by getting Tulsa media involved... and good reason to be involved--either by giving Tulsa a couple of home games or at least some regular exhibition and/or open cup dates. My wish would be for joint tv broadcasts with channel 9 in OKC and KOTV6? in Tulsa... and a radio station "network" with a Tulsa and an OKC station broadcasting games along with others (Lawton?Stillwater?Weatherford?)... those things were conspicuously missing in Tulsa during those NASL days...