Boone Pickens is feeling pretty good these days.
His $165 million investment into Oklahoma State athletics is paying the kind of dividends he had hoped for. Pickens was in Oklahoma City Yesterday to attend the Jim Thorpe Association's Leadership Luncheon and he was in a storytelling mood.
He talked about how he became friends with Mike Holder, then the OSU golf coach. He was impressed with his financial acumen and was convinced he was the man to head up Oklahoma State Athletics.
"You'd be perfect for the job, Pickens told Holder. Now, I've got to convince (OSU President) Dave Schmidly you're perfect for the job, too.'
"Schmidly, he wasn't sure. He said he needed to do a world-wide search for an athletic director. I said, ‘You'd better think about doing a world-wide search for $300 million.'
"It went down pretty easy."
Pickens wasn't done, and passed along a story about getting an email from Barry Switzer after the Texas game.
Pickens said Swtizer sent him an email after OU ran over Texas 55-17. Pickens says Switzer suggested that Oklahoma State shouldn't "beat them as bad as the Sooners did because we want to keep Mack Brown as coach — we want somebody that both of us can beat."
Switzer was sitting in the audience and laughed along with Pickens.