By Stan Silliman
My Russian friend, Clarkinov, fluent in four languages, a professor of linguistics, loves tennis just came back from his first OU-Texas Red River Rivalry. I was pretty sure the signs, T-shirts and the banter would catch his attention.
“Oh, yeah,” I tell him. “When Sooner fans and Longhorn fans meet, there’s no civility. But I don’t think they’re particularly clever.”
“But they are! Many Oklahoma fans were wearing shirts with a longhorn steer turned upside-down. Clever, right? They took their mascot – the steer – and turned him on his back. And then, when a Texas fan walked by and held up his index and little finger, the OU fan took the same gesture and pointed it to the ground. It was amazing.”
“No, Davidoff,” I say. “Not exactly amazing, both fans have their gestures. Did you happen to see any OU fans holding up only one finger?”
“It’s a play on the state name, emphasizing ‘choke’ as if they want to ‘choke’ the Sooners or maybe implying the OU team doesn’t come through in the clutch, seizes up (I grasp my neck in a chocking gesture).”I ask “Did you see any ‘Texas Sucks’ or ‘OU Sucks’ shirts?”
“Thousands of them. I understood that one. I saw a few reading ‘Tuck Fexas’ and that one took me a while. That was not nice. I even saw a few Texas fans wearing a shirt reading ‘You Can’t Spell DOUCHEBAG without OU.’ That, I don’t get. Certainly you need the letters ‘o’ and ‘u’ to spell words that have the oo sound. You can’t spell ‘soup’ without ‘ou’ either. Soup is good.”
“What else did you see?”
“I saw a few saying ‘MAKE TEXAS TOAST’ and then I saw more Sooner fans wearing Longhorn shirts except where the horns should be there were handcuffs with the words ‘BOOK ‘EM.’ I didn’t understand either of those shirts. I like Texas toast.”
“Davidoff,” I explain, “those are tough ones. I like Texas toast, too, but in this case they’re using toast to mean ‘done’. As in ‘he’s finished, he is TOAST.’ Clever… by half, right? The ‘BOOK ‘EM’ thing is a little harder to explain. Here it is. Texas fans love to say ‘Hook ‘em’ as if Bevo, their mascot has hooked his horns into somebody. Like if you’re a bull and you gore somebody, you’ve hooked ‘em. But at the same time, an unusual amount of Texas players get arrested…”
Clarkinov looks puzzled and then says “No. No, I can’t say I’ve ever…”
“Well, during the game, did you ever hear a cannon being fired… after a score?”
“I did. I do remember a cannon going off.”