I just noticed several have turned the page from one year to two years memebership on this NEW board that evolved from the orginal site. That was quite a trip, right @OU_Tom ?
For those that need further explainship, I'm talking the STAR with a number under your handle. Duh.
Just to remember, how about taking us back and give us some of the boring details of how this clone board came into existence? I think it might be fun and the new posters might find it interesting.
And I'm still stuck on 1 year, but Happy 2nd year birthday...
@Oklahombre - don't worry. Your birthday is coming up in 8 days. We should have a couple hundred 2 year olds within a couple of weeks.
It seems longer than 2 years that we have been on this server. Maybe that is cuz there have been too many problems.
So this is the 3rd version of the SoonerTimes that I have been on. Last October we migrated off the 'old' board that @ClaireOKC built back in 2007. I have only been around since 2001. Before that there were other versions of the board that some of you are familiar with. I have heard some of you refer to the 'Weathermen' (or something like that). I personally don't know much about 'SoonerTimes' prior to 2001 but maybe @EMan@walt and others can elaborate about its history.
In any event, I love being part of SoonerTimes. There are a great group of members here.
Let’s see if my feeble memory can piece all this together. Some others that have been around as long as I have may remember some other things, or even remember them differently, so I’ll never claim this is the gospel, but here’s what I recall…
In the beginning there was the “Unofficial OU Message Board” run by the Weather Dudes, who were meteorological students at OU. This was during the Blake years, and as most of us know it was a very dark time for Oklahoma football. And because of the poor record (at least by Oklahoma standards) and the disorganized appearance of the football team, two different sides emerged among the Sooner fanbase: those that believed John Blake deserved more time to get his team in place, and those that thought he’d already been given enough rope and needed to be shown the door. With the Smellsofbourbon disaster preceding the Blake hire, there was not a lot of patience among many of the OU faithful. With each loss the gulf between the two sides grew larger and larger, and it showed on the Unofficial Message Board with constant arguments between posters that would almost without fail degenerate into excessive name calling and flaming. Eventually the continual bickering and fighting grew too much for the Weather Dudes and one day, out of the clear blue, they just shut the site down. When you logged on to the forum all you got was a message explaining why the board no longer existed. There was one glimmer of hope though. The Weather Dudes said they would give the scripts for their board to anyone that wanted them and wished to take up where they left off. In stepped Jim McGuire, aka, Jimmc.
Jim took up the offer and immediately set up a new site. A site that would eventually be known as the Ministers Board. This came about because Jim quickly realized it was an impossible task for him alone to police the site. Remember, this was the lowest point of Oklahoma football in decades, and Oklahoma’s Big 8 brethren weren’t about to let the opportunity pass. So Jimmc was not only dealing with infighting amongst OU fans, but having various fans from other schools piling on as well. That’s when he approached several of us that he felt had the same vision for a site as him to see if we’d help him out. So in came the various ‘ministers’. The first set included sybil, ClintA.Adams, CalSOONER, AustinSooner, SoutheastSooner and myself, EMan.
Those first few months were a dogfight trying to get civility to become an integral part of the board. But after NUMEROUS warnings and eventual “banings” the petty food fights began to calm down a bit. And along the way, the Ministers Board found a new server and changed its name to OklahomaLife. (Following all this so far?) It wasn’t long after that time that the Weather Dudes decided that they missed running a message board and restarted their Unofficial site. When this happened Jimmc decided there was no reason for the two boards to be separate, so he approached the WDs and suggested the sites merge back together, becoming the Mega Board. Unfortunately, this united site was short lived as Rivals was just starting to gear up and approached the WDs about signing on with them. Which they did. So the ministers were back on their own, and eventually created what is now known as SoonerTimes.
So you see, this message board actually has its roots in the very first OU message board that ever existed on the Net. Yes, we’re THAT old! I suppose I should also mention there was one more split that occurred when several longtime ST posters decided they wanted to go in a different direction and started up a site called Sooner Family (or was it Oklahoma Family? I forget which.) We lost a lot of good posters in that split but somehow ST managed to survive and has become what you see today.
Thinking about it, I’ve always wondered what happened to a lot of those early posters. I know we sadly lost Old Hippie and OzarkSooner due to their passing, but there were so many others over the years. Such as our founder, Jimmc, and the former ministers AustinSooner, SoutheastSooner and CalSOONER. Then there are others off the top of my head (I know I'm leaving out a bunch of posters!) like Wylie in Norman, Sportsletter, SoonerRick, Tenkiller, 150Man, TexasOkie, TennSooner, SoonerRedHead, SoonerSoulBrother to name a few. There are so many more as you can imagine after being around for almost 30 years. And even to some extent these days it’s become a rarity to hear from ArmySooner, sybil, and Clint. I know life moves on and friends enter and leave our lives all the time, but when you share a love of something with someone else over the course of many years, you begin to miss them when they’re no longer there. Excuse me for the nostalgic reminiscing but writing this made me think about all those people I’ve called friends that are no longer around. But I’m also grateful to those of you that post here today. You guys and gals are definitely people I call friends, even if we’ve never met. Thanks for all you do to make this site a pleasure to be a part of.
I didn’t post much then or now. I just remember that some time after I joined Wyandotte Wildcat first appeared. He was the most entertaining opposing team poster we have ever had. Once upon a time some pulled out an archive of his posts. Please don’t “bane” me
We have lost so many of the old timers who were here on this board that goes back to the 1990s. At least, that is my guess. I got hooked on soonertimes during the middle 1990 years. The original owner of soonertimes was a fellow who lived just south of the Oklahoma border. I have forgotten his last name, but I do remember his first name, Jim, whose username was jimmic. I believe that jimmic had a brother who was a Texas A&M fan. The two worked together to create two football message boards; one was soonertimes.com, and my memory was agtimes.com. Over all of these years, the monicker remained soonertimes.com, and I believe the name of the A&M is texags.com.
We still have a few of the original members who were admins. EMan, ClintA. Adams,sibil, and SoonerCal were among the original members who worked with jimmic to keep the forum going. The original soonertimes.com grew pretty fast with new members. jimmic was a person who tried to keep the soonertimes.com message board pretty clean. Some members once wanted to have a forum to discuss politics. At the beginning of the politics forum, the politics brought a not-so-friendly and, for sure, not civil. jimmic tried to get those who wanted to discuss politics to be friendly and considerate. The politics became not very friendly and downright uncivil. As time passed, the political forum caused fights, calling names, and so on. Eventually, I gave them one last warning, but they didn't want to be friendly and civil. jimmic ended the politics forum, and that group left soonertimes.com and created their message board. They lasted a couple of years, then, to my knowledge, finished their board. Soonertimes survived the political issue; eventually, some of those who left soonertimes.com returned.
I believe that it was in the 2006 time frame when jimmic went on a long trip, and while he was gone, his software crashed. Claire and I had created a scuba diving message board. To keep soonertimes.com getting back on our site until jimmic got back. jimmic had a different idea in that he just handed over soonertimes.com, and we just used the same program we got soonertimes.com back pretty quickly. So Claire and I kept it going for quite a few years. Later, we turned over the soonertimes.com to OU_Tom. I don't remember why, but at some time, we took it back, and a couple of years ago, we were doing lots of travel, and we game soonertimes.com. When we turned it over to OU_Tom the 2nd time, we did the work to get the old software, and OU_Tom got that working.
I have done this here from the time frame when I found soonertimes.com. jimmic kept it running for a long time and Claire and I did the same for many years. We wanted to ensure that soonertimes.com would be in play for a long time. We know that OU_Tom liked and wanted to do the same. We know that Tom will keep soonertimes.com going in the long run.
All I have here is just what I know from the time we had to use our scuba diving message board.
EMan, I think, is the only one of the original soonertimes.com admins, etc., that has the history of this OU sports message board. I think soonertimes.com has always been financed by jimmic, Claire and I and OU_Tom. I believe that soonertimes.com is the original/first OU sports message board. I think that the history of soonertimes.com needs to be put back together to keep it going forever. Jimmic, Claire, and I and OU_Tom and EMan have always tried to be this OU Sports message board to be friendly with the idea of posters being civil and polite and without porn and name-calling.
I hope that EMan will be able to put the early history of soonertimes.com and will do the rest of the job.
"
Brent Venables will be the next "B" of a heck OU Head Coach."
Excellent history lesson. Over the years our family of posters have shared many good, funny, informative and/or entertaining discussions. Along the way and over the years we have made many friends because we share what might be called: our common sooner experience. Thanks Eman and Walt, you covered most of it and summarily gave a very detailed account.
Every board no matter what kind goes threw this. I have been on forms since they first started. I have had so many interest anyone
Who knows me would be laughing reading this. I have been in muzzle loader fire arms for years, made fireworks, model airplanes.
Collecting WW2 guns. I could go on & on. In doing these things I have joined so many forms, talking to people all over as overseas.
But there all,the same, people come & people go. Some people just go to a different forms, for what ever reason. We have people
Here that use to post a lot, but just read now Echo, she does not post as much as she use to. Sooner Red same with her. Joe Sooner,
I,m Leaving many out, but they still follow the Sooners info, it is just what it is. This form is as good as it has ever been. Walt did the
Right thing when he did away with the politics, & posters jumping on one another if they did not agree with them. That why I adopted
I will never argue with any on this or any other board, for it serve’s no purpose. But discussion I welcome. It took me some time
to learn that! Every one has an opinion but every opinion is not the same.
Thank you Eman for reminding me of all of the old Timers that were on the board when I stumbled upon it back in 2002. I miss them all, sweet OldHippie and 150Man especially. I have been lucky enough to meet many of them in person. 150Man took me up in his plane and showed me Lake Tenkiller from above. I remember Fly and Butter Fly...so many wonderful Timers. Thanks for the memories.
Can someone expand on who created the mythical player named Todd Smith? I fell for the joke when I first started posting, but no one ever explained how that joke started. When I first read of him was during the debacle around Dalton Wood and thought he might be a caricature of him.
On to another subject...when I first joined Walt gave me a welcome P.M. Does that happen today? I read this board several months before joining. My first thoughts was this board is "clanish". Boy was I wrong. It's more like "family" once you get your feet wet. (lurkers, are you reading this?)
Thanks @EMan for the history lesson. I didn't realize the connection of this board to the Unofficial Board. I posted on that board for years under the name ArbuckleSooner. I remember a guy from Shawnee named DonHo but I think he passed away before the board shut down. There was a Husker fan on that board that trolled continuously. When that board shut down I quit posting anywhere. Now that I realize the connection to the boards I feel like I've come full circle.
Thanks
SD-OU wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 10:33 pm
The Old Hippie! May he rest in peace.
OldHippie was a Viet Nam vet, he witnessed many things that haunted him through out his life. He suffered from Agent Orange as many of our Viet Nam vets did and still do. He was a peaceful man and we all loved him. Once upon a time he sat down and wrote me what he went through and believe it or not he finally cut off his pony tail and sent it to me, I still have it.
Soonr80 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 4:01 pm
I didn’t post much then or now. I just remember that some time after I joined Wyandotte Wildcat first appeared. He was the most entertaining opposing team poster we have ever had. Once upon a time some pulled out an archive of his posts. Please don’t “bane” me
I have many memories of sparring with the Wildcat from my little apartment in Norman when I was still on AOL or something terrible. Those old boards led to friendships I still have, and a pack of misfits including Chinaman and Fly that I spent a few years roaming the countryside with.
Fly 
