The Oklahoma Sooners, that is, the basketball team that goes by the team name of Sooners, of the University of Oklahoma based in the central city of Norman, have requited themselves very well over the decades, winning 9 NCAA championship titles over the decades. They do have a large pool of students to draw from (about 30,000 students enrolled at a time), though really basketball players are recruited for the school while in high school on the basis of their proven abilities with a basketball. This is not to say that the school itself doesn't have a distinguished academic record, it graduates the most per capital National Merit Scholars, and is in the top five schools for how many Rhodes scholars it graduates. Plus it has a good record for the amount of research is published from the School.
Good for them, I wouldn't want to be stuck in Oklahoma, but at least they've got that school going for them. Actually I have known one or two smart people from OK. And the Flaming Lips came from Oklahoma. Still, without having visited, I know the place is geographically flat, like my native Illinois, which is a big minus. And it's sad to think of all the Native Americans that were forced to move there in the 19th century, including the Cherokee -- who were cheated out of their land in Georgia, their treaty with the government broken under Andrew Jackson's administration, even though they had their own cities and written language. (well, they had their own slaves too, which they brought with them -- history is a complicated thing).
