Bedlam begins on the airwaves

Published: November 20, 2006

Where Al Eschbach is concerned, the biggest sports week in Oklahoma is also the easiest.

The dean of local sports talk needs only to turn on the microphone and wait for the phone lines to light up during Bedlam Week. Oklahoma and Oklahoma State fans clash on the airwaves long before their teams do.

"I just sit back and laugh and egg people on," Eschbach said of his show on the Sports Animal.

Sports talk adds fuel to an already heated rivalry. Regular callers such as Scissorhands and Moog, voices who are known to Sooners and Cowboys alike, will make their opinions known.

So, too, will listeners who might never call otherwise.

Such is the lure of sports talk.

Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse, says the chance to share knowledge and opinions is a temptation many sports fans can't turn down. Talking sports, after all, is as old as sport itself.

"There weren't many ways you could express that beyond your friends," Thompson said of the days before sports talk. "Then talk radio comes along. All of a sudden ... all this stuff you know can be expressed to a much wider audience."

Host of the "T-Row in the Morning Show" on KREF in Norman, Toby Rowland said: "It's one thing to give your opinion to your buddy in the elevator. It's another to know thousands of people are listening when you're jabbering. It's empowering."

So, too, is the sense of belonging.

"Radio callers are just like radio hosts; they want to be a part of the action," Rowland said. "We're too old and too fat to still be on the court. But sports radio is a way for callers to still feel like you're a small part of it."

Sports talk also provides an outlet for fans' emotions. Win, and you celebrate. Lose, and you commiserate.

"It's like a grief support network," said Kevin Gallaway, an OSU fan who often calls Triple Play Sports in Stillwater and is best known by his radio handle, Moog. "It's our way of dealing with what happened the week before, whether it be a loss or a win or whatever.

"Being a fan is the hardest part of athletics. All we can do as fans is sit and stew about it."

Yet emotions never run higher than during Bedlam Week. OU and OSU fans share such a mutual disgust that the rhetoric runs high.

Eschbach used to even do Hate Week, inviting fans to call and bash the other school.

"But after 9-11," he said, "we ended it and decided to go in a different direction."

Not that there needs to be any formal invitation for the Bedlam rivals to hate on one another.

Thompson, the professor, said, "A game isn't just something you go to on the weekend."

Then, let the game begin.