For the eight of you out there who didn't realize it, 2007 marks the 100th anniversary of the state of Oklahoma. To mark this, various publications around the state have been featuring all sorts of Top 100 lists that have provoked virtually no controversy and have not been talked about at the water cooler. In fact, we've heard so little discussion about these lists that we wonder if anyone is actually reading them. We sure don't.
It does seem, though, that the focus has been on the more positive elements of Oklahoma. While we celebrate those things just like the rest of the world, it seems wrong to ignore the more humiliating aspects of the state of Oklahoma. Naturally, we're here to fill that void, in this ten-part series that will run every Monday. Today, numbers 91 through 100 of Oklahoma's Biggest Embarrassments..
100. Dean Blevins
We'd hate to imply Dean Blevins was the inspiration for this site, but lets just say that when we were bantering around ideas for the site's name, the early favorite was PleaseSomeoneFireDeano.com. He's a terrible writer who doesn't know much about national sports and frankly, appears to be pretty lazy at his job. It seems every time we hear him on the Sports Animal he's on the golf course. Also, he's the type of journalist who refers to teams and athletes as "sexy." As in, "Sure, he's not what you think of as the sexy pick, but..." That's really annoying.
99. Mat Hoffman
We actually don't find Mat Hoffman all that offensive, but the man is a BMX biker, and it's simply unacceptable that one of our state's most famous athletes just rides around and goes over jumps on his bicycle. It's not a sport, despite what ESPN is trying to make us believe. Also, we're told that women find him attractive, and that poses a threat to us. So we must bring him down.
98. Countess Vaughn
Prediction: You don't know who this person is. Yeah, we didn't either. The only reason she appears here is because we came across her on a list of people from Oklahoma on Wikipedia. She's from Idabel, and appeared on one television show we've never heard of called The Parkers and another we've never seen, Moesha, which we only know of because it starred Kobe Bryant's prom date. We're guessing they were really bad.
97. Bo Gritz
After serving a decorated military career, this obviously sane Enid native has spent the last thirty years: taking bizarre private trips to Vietnam in a search for missing POWs, accusing Richard Armitage and various Reagan officials of drug trafficking, running for president, writing books offering crackpot conspiracy theories, joining the Mormon church, getting kicked out of the Mormon church, offering course on survivalist skills (SPIKE: Specially Prepared Individuals for Key Events) and protesting the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. He sounds like a real fun guy to hang out with. He's rank higher on this list, but we're afraid he'll kick the living crap out of us.
96. Buster Rhymes
Buster was a great football player; earning All-American status as a wide receiver at OU during the wishbone era was not easy, after all. Off the field, he had a few anger management problems, which included an incident in which he responded to getting hit with a snowball by grabbing an automatic weapon and firing it into the air.
Still, we wish OU football would return to the less embarrassing days when the program was known not for Toby Keith being a fan, but for football players firing Uzi's out of the Bud Wilkinson House.
95. Reba McEntire
We've never heard any of her songs, so we don't know if she belongs on this list for that. But she does qualify for two other reasons. The first is the campaign she did years ago for KWTV "Newsline 9," which proclaimed to be the "Spirit of Oklahoma." While Gary England can claim anything he wants with a great degree of validity, we find it difficult to believe that the Spirit of Oklahoma is anything like channel 9. The second reason McEntire qualifies for this list is her mercifully now-canceled eponymous television show "Reba," which somehow managed to last six seasons, an enormous feat for a show that no one actually knew existed.
94. Doug Gottlieb
We kinda sorta don't mind Doug Gottlieb as a sports radio host, which is the highest compliment we give. But when it comes to his college basketball career, we cannot be so kind. Amazingly, it is not his arrest when he was at Notre Dame nor wearing his shorts backwards in Lawrence that stick out as the defining things about Gottlieb's career. What we think of is the basketball player completely incapable of doing anything resembling shooting a basketball competently, and the bizarre sight of defenses completely ignoring one of the five players on the court. To this day, we've seen nothing like that again.
93. Bobbie Burbridge Lane
Those commercials for the Burbridge foundation are possibly the most annoying thing on local radio, which is saying something. When listening to Burbridge Lane lecture us about pornography or religion being taken out of public schools or whatever the pet issue of the day is, we're convinced that Burbridge Lane wants to return the United States to the 1950's, which probably sucked really bad.
92. Yahweh ben Yahweh
Slightly more embarrassing than Bobbie Burbridge Lane is Kingfisher native Yahweh ben Yahweh, who served more than a decade in prison after the murders of more than a dozen people. After spending time in the military and studying psychology, Yahweh ben Yahweh did what any good entrepreneur looking to make a quick buck should do: he invented his own religion and named himself leader. His group started to make headlines when body parts of various white people in the city of Miami started showing up. Yahweh ben Yahweh did not like white people, and demanded his followers kill them and bring ears and toes and feet as proof. Real likable fellow, this guy.
91. Les Miles
Les Miles will Let'er Rip! Les Miles will play any sucker any this country! Les Miles is liable to say anything at any moment.
He scares us.
