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TEDDY LEHMAN WAS twice an All-American at Oklahoma. In 2003, the stout linebacker won the Big 12 defensive player of the year award, the Dick Butkus Award and the Chuck Bednarik Award. In 2004, he was a second-round NFL draft pick, and he went on to spend parts of six seasons with the Lions, Buccaneers, Bills and Jaguars.

But the moment he’s best known for, the moment he spends each October reliving, is one he said came about because he just so happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was still coming into his own back then, in 2001, only half-heartedly rushing the quarterback and counting to three before looking up at the exact right second to have history literally fall into his hands.

That’s when his star teammate Roy Williams took flight and etched both their names in the storied history of the Oklahoma-Texas rivalry — when “The Superman Play” was born at the Red River Showdown.

And for that, Lehman said, “I think we all owe Roy a beer.”

The play, which led to a Lehman touchdown and effectively won the game for Oklahoma, cemented Williams’ legacy as one of the best defensive players in program history.

Twenty years later, ahead of the latest installment of the Red River Showdown (Saturday, noon ET, ABC), Williams’ teammates and coaches recall that moment, a seminal play in their careers — even if their involvement was only a matter of luck, as Lehman insists his was.

Lehman said he can name 100 plays in his career during which he performed better individually, but they all pale in comparison.

“All right,” he said with a laugh, “I’ll ride Roy Williams’ coattails for the rest of my life.”

WILLIAMS ALWAYS STOOD OUT.

In the summer of 2000, Lehman called home one day to let his folks know how things were going at Oklahoma.

A freshman, Lehman had grown up 150 miles east of Norman in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, where he was kind of a big deal. As a senior in high school, he led the Tigers to the state championship game, recording an eye-popping 151 tackles while rushing for 1,252 yards. As if that wasn’t enough, he also averaged a Class 4A-best 39.6 yards per punt.

But what Lehman saw during his first week on campus was something he felt he needed to tell his dad about. There was this kid from California who was dominating all the player-led practices. His name: Roy Williams.

Williams was a year ahead of Lehman, a sophomore safety who hit like a linebacker and tracked the ball like a cover corner.

“In 7-on-7, typically no one ever gets a hand on the football,” Lehman said. “There’s no pass rush. It’s an offensive drill. All summer, I think I touched one ball the entire time we were in 7-on-7.”

But it was nothing, Lehman explained, for Williams to come away with double-digit pass breakups and a pair of interceptions.

“It was a never-ending parade every single day of Roy Williams highlights,” he said, “and that’s before I ever saw him play in pads.”

That season, Williams emerged as an All-Big 12 selection, helping lead the Sooners to an undefeated record and the BCS national championship.

But the following season truly made Williams famous. In 2001, he won the Big 12 defensive player of the year award, the Jim Thorpe Award and the Bronko Nagurski Trophy.

Oklahoma offensive coordinator Mark Mangino remembers what a chore it was to go against Williams every day in practice.

Williams was so disruptive, Mangino said, and his “football aptitude was off the charts.”

“He’s thudding running backs up at the line of scrimmage. He’s blitzing the quarterback and slapping him on the butt as he goes by,” Mangino recalled. “I mean, [on] inside drill, you can’t get by him. Some days I’d get so mad I’d say, ‘Roy, I’m going to cut you.’ And he’d say, ‘Come on, Coach! Come and cut me!'”

Defensive assistants Mike Stoops and Brent Venables didn’t try to fit Williams into a box, dropping him back to play a more traditional safety role as often as they pulled him down into the box to play a sort of hybrid linebacker position.

Williams defied explanation, so they created a new term: “Roy backer.”

Sooners wide receiver Andre Woolfolk said Williams wasn’t the biggest or the fastest or the strongest, but he could always find a way to hit you. Williams was always around the ball, “whether it’s scooping a fumble, causing a fumble, getting a timely interception.”

Woolfolk said it reminded him of Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis.

“Because I’ve never thought that Ray Lewis was, like, the greatest athlete in the world. I just felt like he really knew football,” Woolfolk said. “And that’s how I look at Roy — like he really knew football. He would find a way, like, ‘Oh, man, I know that’s not my guy out there but it’s downfield and the running back is open and somehow I get there’ or ‘Oh, this guy’s in the flat and this corner is playing a little deep and I’m just gonna go steal this thing right now.’ He just knew how to use exactly the right talent at the right time and has been around football enough to know what he can and cannot do.”

To make the most out of Williams’ nose for the ball, coaches devised a special plan against Texas, which Sooners receivers coach Steve Spurrier Jr. said was “really kind of strange.” He remembers talking to Venables during the week, who told him they were going to lean heavily on their nickel package — five defensive backs and two linebackers — and “we’re gonna try to keep Roy on the field regardless of what their personnel is.”

“And [Venables] said, ‘It’s amazing how natural he is at filling that position. It’s amazing how good his stance was and how good his reads were and how he could step to the gaps,'” Spurrier recalled. “You could forget he hadn’t played linebacker.”

THE TEXAS-OKLAHOMA RIVALRY, carrying all its tension, is unlike almost any other. Take it from longtime sideline reporter Jack Arute, who has covered more than his fair share of Sooners-Longhorns games and worked the 2001 contest for ABC.

The only comparison Arute could make was outside of college football.

Arute said it was like watching heavyweights Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier do battle in the boxing ring in that “neither one of those guys was gonna blink, and they were gonna beat the living crap out of each other.” They didn’t like each other, he said, “but they did respect each other because of what they did.”

Oklahoma and Texas have that kind of relationship, Arute said, which is only magnified by the setting of the game.

“You put them 100 miles away from their respective campuses,” he said. “Then you take them to this rickety old Cotton Bowl in the midst of the Texas State Fair where there’s already a quarter of a million people and now 100,000 are coming out for game day.”

It’s into that Dallas mass that each team’s buses have to navigate.

“The first time you get an interaction with the atmosphere is when you’re coming in through the fair,” cornerback Josh Norman said. “I remember my freshman year was just like, ‘What in the world?’ You’re going through a sea of people. They’re banging on the bus, pushing the bus, like the bus is kind of rocking as you’re going through the crowd. The Texas fans are flipping you off and cussing at you. That just kind of sets the tone for what to expect once you get in the stadium.”

But rather than rattle players, Arute thought it fueled them.

“You knew that it was going to be the very best effort from both sides,” he said, “Nobody dogs it. This isn’t playing North Texas State. This isn’t even playing Nebraska. OK, this is your archrival.”

There was something about it, Woolfolk said, that made you want to throw the horns down.

“You just find a way to morph into a Texas hater,” he said.

The scene was so supercharged with emotion that Arute would walk outside of the stadium during the game and feel it.

“There would be just a normal play, maybe a stop on third down, and the noise from that bowl would come spilling over on to all of the people that were waiting for corn dogs,” he said.

THE 2001 GAME was no different. With Oklahoma ranked fifth nationally and Texas third, a lot was riding on the Oct. 6 matchup.

Williams, speaking to ESPN in 2011, said the Sooners had a chip on their shoulder, feeling overshadowed by the Longhorns and their quarterback, Chris Simms.

“They kind of downplayed us, as if we were nothing,” Williams said then. “But we weren’t much for talking. We were going to let our talk be displayed out on the field.”

And for the better part of 3½ quarters, neither side flinched.

Facing fourth-and-16 from the Texas 28-yard line with 2:12 remaining, Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops had a difficult decision to make.

The Sooners were clinging to a 7-3 lead. A successful field goal would provide breathing room, but a miss would leave Texas with favorable field position to score a go-ahead touchdown.

Stoops turned to his brother and co-defensive coordinator, Mike, for advice.

“Let’s pooch it down there,” Mike told him. “We’ll stop ’em.”

In what would have been a wildly unpopular decision today, Bob opted for the punt — only with a wrinkle. Oklahoma lined up as if it was going to attempt a field goal, but when the ball was snapped to the holder, he flipped it back to the kicker who punted.

Out of sorts, Texas’ Nathan Vasher fielded the ball on the 3-yard line.

“What was Vasher doing?” announcer Brent Musburger shouted on the broadcast. “It was headed for the end zone. Oh, my!”

“We said maybe someone would make a big mistake,” play-by-play analyst Gary Danielson responded. “Is that the big mistake?”

Instead of starting the drive on the 20-yard line with a touchback, Texas took over backed up against its own end zone on the 3-yard line.

A timeout was called and both sidelines huddled. Oklahoma’s defense watched Texas carefully.

All day Oklahoma had been one step ahead of the Longhorns, understanding their tendencies based on personnel and formation. Lehman spied Texas running back Brett Robin preparing to come on the field, which told the linebacker it was likely going to be a pass. The probability, he said, was around 90%.

“We’re going through the different calls that we may be in if they go in 12 personnel,” Lehman said. “If they’re in 11 personnel, this is what they’re going to try and do. So, we think they’re coming out in 11 personnel, and that’s what it was. And Mike Stoops, Brent Venables, Bob, they’re all standing there in the huddle and said, ‘We’re coming with a blitz.'”

The play was called “Slamdogs.” Williams would blitz and shoot the gap between the left guard and tackle.

Bob Stoops grabbed defensive end Cory Heinicke and told him not to bother putting his hand in the dirt. To speed up his drop into coverage, he instructed Heinicke to play from a standing position and fall back as soon as the ball was snapped to cut off Simms’ throwing lane to Texas’ top receiver, who happened to be named Roy Williams, as well.

Thankfully for Sooners fans, no one approached Oklahoma’s Williams with any last-minute advice before play resumed.

On a similar defensive call earlier in the game, Williams had broken one of the cardinal rules of football by leaving his feet. He had leaped to try to make a tackle, lost leverage and was easily taken out of the play by a block at his knees.

Looking back, it’s fair to wonder whether that was all a setup.

“Roy has great instincts, and you don’t want to overcoach him,” Mike Stoops said. “He did what he thought was right, to make the right decision.”

This time, Williams blitzed and easily knifed through the offensive line on a path to Simms. But when Robin dove at Williams’ knees for the cut block, the running back came up with nothing but air.

Williams was already flying overhead.

“He took a calculated chance,” Mangino said. “But if you see when he leaps, his legs are coiled. He just didn’t say, ‘Well, I think I’ll jump up in the air.’ He’s like springs going over the line of scrimmage.”

Williams later said he felt “like I was in the air forever.”

His body horizontal, his arms stretched out in front of him, Williams looked like the comic book hero Superman minus the cape.

His timing was perfect, dive-bombing into Simms right as he was starting his throwing motion.

If Simms had dropped back any further, Williams said, “There wouldn’t have been a ‘Superman Play.'”

That opened the opportunity for Lehman’s big moment.

“I didn’t know he left his feet,” Lehman said. “I think I just barely kind of saw him passing by Chris Simms’ backside, as the ball kind of flipped up in the air. … The ball popped up, and I grabbed it.”

Lehman made the interception — which could have easily been ruled a fumble — and ran into the end zone for a touchdown, icing the game. An extra point made the score 14-3 with 2:01 remaining.

“Luckily, I didn’t have time to think about it,” Lehman said. “If I would have thought about it, I probably would have dropped it.”

Ironically, Bob Stoops saw none of that. Neither did Mangino or Woolfolk.

“My eyes are dead-on Cory,” Stoops said. “I see Cory out there and I’m like, ‘Yes! He did it!’ So, Cory gets a great drop and then all of the sudden I hear everything explode. Everyone is going crazy. And I don’t know what happened. I didn’t see the blitz. I was watching the D-end. So, I’m running around and asking, ‘What the hell happened?'”

“We’re all looking around on the bench at each other,” Mangino said. “The offensive kids are waiting to go back on the field, and before they start cheering, they’re looking around at each other like, ‘Did we just really see that happen?’ It was unbelievable.”

“All I hear is a roar that’s going the other direction,” Woolfolk said. “I said, ‘Whoa! Uh-oh. Either something’s rolling up and they’re running right behind me because they broke a play out or we did something.’ Then I turn around and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God.'”

Woolfolk said he would wind up watching the play hundreds of times trying to figure it out.

“Roy knew I only have one shot to get this and I’m going to go all out,” Woolfolk said. “And when you’ve played long enough, there’s a certain emotion that takes over — the dog in you that makes you want to scratch and claw and fight. And basically, he already knew the jig was up, I’m already here and all I can do is soar over the top. Either that or I’m going to be dead in the water and filling a gap. He wanted to be better than that. He wanted to be great.”

Arute compared Williams’ effort to Kirk Gibson’s walk-off home run in the 1988 World Series.

“What was it Jack Buck said? ‘I don’t believe what I just saw,'” Arute said. “That’s pretty much what came into my mind.”

Norman said the play is on the level of the Joe Washington punt return and the Keith Jackson reverse.

“I mean, you can go back as far as my recollection of the ’70s and watching all those great things in the ’70s through the ’80s and ’90s, and to me it stands up there as one of the top five plays in Oklahoma history,” he said. “Because it’s iconic and the impact that it made on the game. That play virtually won us that game.”

CURRENT OKLAHOMA COACH Lincoln Riley, whose sixth-ranked Sooners will play No. 21 Texas on Saturday, was still in high school in West Texas when Williams soared into the chest of Simms and took over the 2001 Red River Showdown.

Riley said he knew it was a big play in the moment, but its importance has only grown with time.

“The more you watched it over the years and saw the replays and just became pretty amazed just by all it took for Roy to make that play,” he said. “I mean, the athleticism, the timing, the instincts, the willingness to take a chance in a big moment, you know, it was an unbelievable play. And then it was such a good game. It would have been a great play at any point, but in such a critical moment and in such a game that’s so important every year, it just really magnified.”

What’s been lost over the years, Bob Stoops said, is what happened next.

After the kickoff, on Texas’ first play from scrimmage, Williams did it again, clinching the win by intercepting Simms for the fourth time that day.

“I’ve been lucky between Florida and Oklahoma to coach some incredible players, and he really stands at the top of them all or right there with anybody,” Stoops said of Williams. “He’s by far and away one of the very few best defensive players I ever coached in every way — coverage skills, tackling, maybe the best at blitzing, whatever we asked him to do.”

Mangino remembers the team breaking into groups to watch film the following Monday.

He said he had no doubt what play was being shown in the defensive meeting room when he heard a chorus of laughter and cheers from down the hall.

“Roy was a humble guy, not one to brag,” Mangino said. “But he enjoyed it.”

Williams turned pro rather than come back for his senior year.

Spurrier also left at the end of the season to join his dad in the NFL with Washington. Spurrier remembers defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis asking him a lot about Williams during the lead-up to the draft.

“He was as good a defensive player as I’ve ever been around,” Spurrier said.

Washington traded down from No. 18 to 32, which was well out of reach of Williams, who was taken with the eighth pick by the Cowboys. He would wind up making the Pro Bowl five times.

“I remember however many years later, Marvin saying, ‘You know what? Looking back, we should have found a way to make sure we drafted him,'” Spurrier said.

Eleven years later, Spurrier was again with his dad, this time at South Carolina, when the most viral hit of the 21st century occurred when defensive end Jadeveon Clowney split the offensive line and launched himself into the chest of Michigan running back Vincent Smith, dislodging the football in the process.

But as great as Clowney’s play was, Spurrier said, it’s hard to compare it to Williams’ in 2001.

“Honestly,” Spurrier said, “that Oklahoma-Texas game, that meant more.”

Which is why for the past two decades, Lehman can’t go the month of October without hearing about the play from someone. It’s weird, he said, because he thinks he was lucky to be on the receiving end of Williams’ heroics. Lehman happened to be in the right place at the right time.

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Sources: Va. Tech finalizing deal to hire Franklin

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November 17, 2025

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Sources: Va. Tech finalizing deal to hire Franklin

Virginia Tech is finalizing a deal to make James Franklin the school’s next head coach, sources told ESPN on Monday. The deal is expected to be completed in the near future.

Franklin is the former coach at both Penn State and Vanderbilt, where he went 128-60 over 15 seasons. He brings a resume that includes winning more than 68% of his games, an appearance in the semi-finals of the 2024 College Football Playoff and a Big Ten championship in 2016.

He’ll replace his former defensive coordinator, Brent Pry, who was fired in September after an 0-3 start and a 16-24 record through four seasons.

Franklin’s arrival in Blacksburg will give the Hokies their most accomplished coach since Hall of Famer Frank Beamer, who retired in 2015 after 29 seasons at the school. Since that time, Tech has endured the underwhelming tenures of Justin Fuente and Pry as the school struggled to assimilate to modern college football.

After firing Pry, Tech’s Board of Visitors passed a plan to add $229 million to the athletics budget over the next four years. The move was to help make Tech a more attractive job and attract a candidate that could revive the school’s lagging football fortunes.

In Franklin, they get an established coach whose availability on the open market wasn’t even considered a possibility at the start of the 2025 season. Penn State began the season ranked No. 2 in the country.

Franklin’s teams endured three-straight losses to open the season, including a double-overtime loss to No. 6 Oregon when they were ranked No. 3 in September.

After losses to UCLA and Northwestern, Penn State fired Franklin. They were originally on the hook for $49 million for his contract, but that number is subject to off-set and should end up being significantly less pending the terms of his Virginia Tech contract.

Franklin came to Penn State in 2014 in the throes of NCAA sanctions from the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal. He pushed the program through a dark period and led them to the Rose Bowl and Big Ten title in 2016.

Franklin’s tenure was ultimately defined by general success that never manifested itself at the very highest levels of winning, as he finished 4-21 at Penn State against AP Top 10 opponents. Over his 12 seasons there, he led Penn State to six seasons of double-digit victories, including three-straight from 2022 to 2024.

Virginia Tech hasn’t won double-digit games since Fuente’s first season in 2016. From 2004 to 2011, Tech won double-digit games each season under Beamer.

Franklin brings strong ties to the I-95 corridor, including the talent-rich DMV area. Along with recruiting that area heavily at Penn State, Franklin coached two stints at Maryland as an assistant and one year at James Madison.

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A weekend with the banana suits and shirtless fans surviving Oklahoma State

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November 17, 2025

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A weekend with the banana suits and shirtless fans surviving Oklahoma State

  • Eli LedermanNov 17, 2025, 07:40 AM ET

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      Eli Lederman covers college football and recruiting for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 2024 after covering the University of Oklahoma for Sellout Crowd and the Tulsa World.

STILLWATER, Okla. — The stands inside Boone Pickens Stadium are brimming with the usual unusual characters. Naturally, the fans in Section 2 NO-SHIRTY 1 are already shirtless. The most popular bananas on campus are here, too. The Kool-Aid Man, of course, is sitting just a few rows over.

This is the scene 40 minutes before Oklahoma State‘s Week 12 visit from Kansas State. Amid the most forlorn season in the Cowboys’ modern football history, the Stillwater faithful is coping as best it can this fall, uncovering new methods to mine slivers of joy out of its football misery.

“It’s Oklahoma State, man,” student Alex Jackson, shirtless, tells ESPN. “We’re loyal and true.”

“Loyal and true” is the school’s guiding motto; three words that have closed the second-to-last stanza of Oklahoma State’s alma mater since 1957. Seldom, if ever, has that maxim been tested more — from a purely on-field standpoint, at least — than in 2025 with the 1-9 Cowboys slowly, but surely crashing toward their worst finish of the 21st century, even worse than last year’s 3-9 finish.

Oklahoma State dropped its final nine games and snapped its 18-year bowl appearance streak in 2024. After an uninspiring 1-2 start this fall, the program fired Mike Gundy, the winningest coach in school history, three games into his 21st season in charge.

It hasn’t gotten better since. After Saturday’s 14-6 loss to Kansas State, the Cowboys have been outscored 268-101 in seven games under interim coach Doug Meacham. They haven’t won a Big 12 game since the final week of the 2023 regular season, a drought of 723 days and counting.

Yet Oklahoma State fans haven’t folded. A reported crowd of 46,340 showed up for the Cowboys’ 18th straight FBS loss over the weekend, energized more by the organic movement that sprouted in the bleachers of Boone Pickens Stadium last month than anything on the field.

It started when one shirtless fan — an Oklahoma City-area banker named Trent Eaton — turned into hundreds waving T-shirts over their heads in the section of seats now known as “2 NO-SHIRTY 1” during a 39-17 loss to Houston. A week later, 100-plus students filled Section 124 wearing matching banana costumes; Pete’s Peelers became one of the few bright spots of a 32-point homecoming defeat when they formed a conga line as Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places,” one of Payne County’s most sacred anthems, blared from the stadium speakers.

The party in Section 231 raged on Saturday afternoon. The Peelers were back and received a visit from university president Jim Hess. Around them all, as the Cowboys rolled to their eighth loss in a row, were pockets of other costumed students, including a group of nearly a dozen women sporting Oklahoma State apparel and searing bright orange bobs.

“We decided we needed to create something for the girls,” said OSU student Lexsey McLemore, who picked out the wigs with a friend, Ava Smith, specifically for Saturday’s game.

Oklahoma State is far from the only major college football program “going through it” this fall. Preseason national title favorites such as Clemson, LSU and Penn State have stumbled. Across the country, there are properly irritated prestige fan bases at Auburn, Arkansas, Florida and Florida State. Gundy is one of 11 FBS coaches fired since the start of the 2025 regular season.

But in Stillwater, the home fans have responded with creativity, drawing delight and meaning from a series of moments made possible only by the woeful season unfolding in front of them.

“The morale is pretty low right now, obviously,” said Joel Sherman, a junior engineering student and one of the founding members of Pete’s Peelers. “But this season has given us the opportunity to do everything we’ve done. I think if Oklahoma State was actually in contention for the Big 12, we’re probably not doing this.”

“Not even if we were in the running to make a bowl game,” said fellow banana Tyler Blake, another costumed engineer.

THE MORNING OF Oct. 11 marked a historic sliding doors moment. If Eaton’s wife, Michelle, hadn’t answered the call, would a national movement have ever been reborn in Stillwater?

Eaton’s sister, Callista Bradford, is an Oklahoma State season-ticket holder. She also has a history of riling up fans in Stillwater. As a student, Bradford, 32, was part of the Paddle People, a student group that creates noise by smacking wooden paddles against the wall padding that surrounds the field at Boone Pickens Stadium.

Bradford initially planned to attend Oklahoma State’s Week 7 visit from Houston with her husband. When he backed out at the last minute, Bradford called Eaton with a late invite.

Eaton didn’t pick up. His wife, eventually, did, and Bradford picked Eaton up from his house 15 minutes later. The T-shirt he would later swing above his head in notoriety was waiting in the car.

“I was going to wear my orange, Whataburger, free giveaway T-shirt,” Eaton, a University of Miami grad, said. “But my brother-in-law told me that I couldn’t wear that, so [there was] an OSU shirt for me in the back seat.”

Bradford’s seats in the lower bowl of Boone Pickens Stadium are situated diagonally across from Section 231 in the stadium’s upper deck. From there, she and her brother watched Cowboys running back Rodney Fields Jr. turn a double pass into a 63-yard touchdown on the game’s opening possession, delivering the kind of jolt that has lately been all-too-rare at Oklahoma State.

But the Cowboys only mustered another three first downs before halftime. They trailed Houston 27-10 two minutes into the second half. With the program’s latest fall 2025 rout officially underway, Bradford and Eaton could see the home crowd beginning to file out of the stadium.

So Bradford pointed to an empty block of seats in Section 231, and offered up a sibling dare.

“We saw this completely empty section across from us,” Eaton recalled. “My sister goes, ‘I’ll give you 10 bucks if you go over there and take your shirt off.’ I said ‘Why not?’ The rest is history.”

It was a nervous walk to Section 231. Bradford recorded every step of her brother’s climb to the upper deck and made sure that the friends in the section around her paid attention, too.

When Eaton finally popped his shirt off and hoisted it above his head, Section 1 erupted.

“There was nothing to cheer for on the field at the time,” Bradford said. “So the people in the sections around us didn’t know why we were cheering. But slowly, everyone figured it out.”

Eaton wasn’t waving alone for very long before Luke Schneberger, an OSU student, approached him with a question: Could he join in? Soon, two became four, then six, then 10. After the stadium jumbotron flashed a shot of the expanding cluster of T-shirt-waving men, more fans raced over to join the party in Section 231, eventually overflowing into surrounding sections. In the final minutes of the game, a message flashed across the jumbotron: “New World Record (Probably) Most Shirtless Guys In A Section.”

“I thought maybe three or four people would join up and then one of us would get tired and leave and then would just die down,” Eaton said. “Waving that shirt gets really tiring.

“I think more than anything, people didn’t want to miss out on just having some fun. It was the biggest shirtless section of all time. So they were like, what the hell? Why not join it?”

The television broadcast took notice. Social media did, too. Bradford’s phone started blowing up with texts from friends and family before Eaton got back to his original seat. Days later, a Texas-based apparel brand, “Uncle Bekah’s Inappropriate Trucker Hats,” dropped a line of Oklahoma State hats, including one featuring a silhouette of Eaton waving a T-shirt. He got some free merch.

Since then, fans on campuses including North Carolina, North Texas, UCLA, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest and Wisconsin have initiated their own shirtless sections. Another popped up at 3-7 Michigan State Saturday night. Eaton was particularly moved last weekend when a friend sent a clip of Hurricanes fans getting in on the act during a Week 11 win.

There’s dispute over the exact origins of the shirtless section craze. Indiana fans might have a rightful claim dating to an outburst during the Hoosiers’ 38-3 loss to Rutgers in Nov. 2021.

But in 2025, there’s no debate over where the movement reemerged.

“We’re a country school with a little bit of a rowdy side to it.” Bradford said. “Seeing our fans stay rowdy and loyal even though the team isn’t doing what we want them to do, I’m proud of that.”

DANIEL WANN IS a professor of psychology at Murray State. A devoted fan of Kentucky basketball who earned his PhD in social psychology at the University of Kansas, he has spent the past 35 years focused on the psychology of sports fandom.

Wann’s work has covered everything from superstitions to the consequences of excessive fandom to how different game start times affect fan’s moods. But his principle psychological curiosity lies in the simple question of why sports fans care so much and how fandom, above all else, meets many of our basic human needs. To Wann, Oklahoma State is a familiar case study.

“If you live on campus or in the town at Oklahoma State, by being a Cowboys fan, that’s going to help you meet the need to belong,” Wann said. “You don’t even need the team to be successful to be able to feel camaraderie and association with other fans regardless of the outcome. Fandom can still meet that need to belong. It also helps people meet the need for distinctiveness.”

In late September, weeks before Eaton peeled his shirt off in Section 231, Oklahoma State students Cy Barker, Hayden Andrews, Jake Goodman and Joel Sherman gathered in a house off-campus and debated that very concept, in a sense at least.

“We were sitting on a couch and one of us was like, ‘What’s something we could do for homecoming that would just be goofy?'” recalled Andrews, who studies aviation management.

Barker, Andrews, Goodman and Sherman belong to the same campus ministry and attend most Cowboys home games. They stormed the field together when Oklahoma State upset No. 9 Oklahoma in the final annual playing of the Bedlam Rivalry game in Nov. 2023. Since then, they’ve watched the program win just one of its past 18 games against conference opponents.

From their deliberations, overalls were deemed too expensive. Pajama onesies could get hot. Andrews had a banana suit from high school in his closet. Soon, the decision was settled.

The group pulled Tyler Blake, another ministry friend, in on the plan. And in the weeks leading up to Oklahoma State’s Oct. 18 homecoming visit from Cincinnati, they extended invites to members of six other campus ministries to join them.

“The vision was just kind of built around having a handful of dudes in banana suits at the game,” Goodman, a senior business student, said. “We didn’t plan on anything but that. Everything that followed just happened.”

On game day, the Peelers met on campus outside the Edmon Low Library. An initial group of just a few bananas quickly grew to 30 or so. Soon, there were nearly 100 of them. They marched to the stadium before kickoff alternating between church hymns and the Florida State “War Chant.” Like the shirtless fans seven days earlier, the banana-suited crew in Section 124 became the story as Oklahoma State tumbled to a 49-17 defeat.

Meanwhile, seven sections over and a stadium level up, Section 231 was bumping once again.

Eaton wasn’t on hand. But a collection of motivated fans enthusiastically took the baton, delivering a repeat performance of shirt-waving. At one point, that group included Oklahoma State women’s basketball coach Jacie Hoyt, who climbed into the upper deck wearing a T-shirt with the word “shirtless” written across the front. She had ordered it from Amazon that week.

“It was honestly the most fun I’ve had in years,” Hoyt told ESPN. “Those guys were just so fun and funny — truly loyal and true.”

Hoyt’s visit to the “2 NO-SHIRTY 1” crowd came just before halftime. Two hours later, the section became the site for a magical meeting of the minds.

As the Peelers’ conga snaked through the stands in the early minutes of the fourth quarter, their counterparts in the upper deck took notice. Soon, the Peelers themselves were being summoned to Section 231 while Oklahoma State’s shirtless devotees chanted a clear directive: “Take them off.”

Packed into Section 231, Pete’s Peelers, literally, peeled their costumes. Together, the two groups partied out the final minutes of the Cowboys’ second-worst conference loss of the season. “We had as much fun dressing up as bananas to watch a blowout as we did rushing the field when we beat Oklahoma,” Goodman said. “The score didn’t matter. We still had fun.”

FOR A MOMENT, the focus returns to the game. Down 7-6 with just under two minutes left in the third quarter, the Cowboys are driving deep into Kansas State territory. Not since Gundy’s final game, a 19-12 loss to Tulsa on Sept. 19, has Oklahoma State been this close to a win.

Section 231 is bursting with shirtless fans of all ages and, oddly, a fully clothed Batman. The Peelers are shouting below them.

Oklahoma State quarterback Zane Flores drops back to pass from the Wildcats’ 23-yard line. But tight end Carson Su’esu’e whiffs on a block and Kansas State defensive end Ryan Davis engulfs Flores to force a fumble. It’s one of three second-half turnovers within 25 yards of the end zone.

“Well, it’s over now,” says Blake, sliding the tip of his banana costume off his head.

Minutes later the Kool-Aid Man joins the Peelers. They sway together as Garth Brooks sings about friends in low places and chasing his blues away. They’ll be OK.

Like Pete’s Peelers, Eaton was back at Oklahoma State on Saturday for the first time since his October star turn. This time, he kept his shirt on (initially) and watched from the sideline.

Doug Meacham made sure of it.

Oklahoma State’s 60-year-old interim coach is an admirer of Eaton’s. Or at the very least, he’s a genuine appreciator of the juice those fans delivered this fall. “Our guys felt it,” Meacham said after the initial shirtless showing last month. “That was something.”

So Oklahoma State brought Bradford and Eaton back for Saturday’s game with sideline passes.

Meacham met them outside the stadium an hour before kickoff and personally escorted Eaton and Bradford onto the field, where they mingled with two legends of the 2011 Cowboys: Brandon Weeden and Justin Blackmon, the latter of whom joined the program’s ring of honor at halftime.

“I thought [Eaton] was some frat kid — it’s a 30-something-year-old. Hats off to him,” Meacham said of Eaton after Saturday’s loss. “I appreciated his enthusiasm and I wanted to reward them for getting the fans into it. You looked up today and they’re still up there getting after it. It’s pretty cool.”

Eaton and Bradford enjoyed their view from the sidelines. But a return to Boone Pickens Stadium called for a hero’s welcome. After halftime, Eaton climbed back to Section 231.

Despite a scoreless second half, the 2 NO-SHIRTY 1 vibes were high and the bleachers were packed. A child in the section recognized Eaton immediately and shouted his name, prompting a swarm of high-fives, fist bumps and photo requests from the group of shirtless shirt-wavers.

When Eaton finally got his own shirt off, he pulled out his phone for a selfie with the crowd around him. Later, a caption underneath the photo on a family text chain read: “My people.”

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Kiffin on Gators rumors after win: ‘I love’ Ole Miss

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November 17, 2025

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Kiffin on Gators rumors after win: 'I love' Ole Miss

  • Andrea AdelsonNov 15, 2025, 11:59 PM ET

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    • ACC reporter.
    • Joined ESPN.com in 2010.
    • Graduate of the University of Florida.

As the final seconds ticked off Ole Miss‘ come-from-behind 34-24 win over Florida, the fans inside Vaught Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Mississippi, started chanting, “We want Lane! We want Lane!”

Coach Lane Kiffin has long been rumored to be the top candidate for the Gators’ open head coaching job, making their matchup Saturday night somewhat awkward. Kiffin fielded questions about his coaching future during the week and again after the game, given the opponent across the sideline.

“I love what we’re doing here,” Kiffin said postgame when asked about his future at Ole Miss. “Today was awesome. To even talk about it right now would be so disrespectful to our players and how well they played today. We’ve got a lot of things going here. Doing really well, and I love it here.”

The win moved No. 7 Ole Miss to 10-1 heading into an open date before it closes the season at Mississippi State. A berth in the College Football Playoff is all but certain if the Rebels beat the Bulldogs in the Egg Bowl.

Though nobody at Ole Miss said its result against Florida last year would serve as a motivating factor, it is hard to ignore the fact that the Gators’ win over the Rebels kept them out of the playoff.

For a large chunk of Saturday night, it appeared Florida might do the same thing for a second straight season. In the first half, Ole Miss did not have an answer for Florida quarterback DJ Lagway, who threw for one touchdown and ran for another to give the Gators a 24-20 lead at halftime.

Ole Miss made one mistake after another in the red zone, costing itself valuable points. Twice the Rebels turned the ball over on downs after getting inside the 5-yard line, and on two other drives they had to settle for field goals inside the 10.

But the defense held Florida scoreless in the second half, and the offense made enough plays to pull out the win. Trinidad Chambliss threw for 301 yards with a touchdown and an interception, and Kewan Lacy had a career-high 224 rushing yards and three scores.

Kiffin, in his sixth season at Ole Miss, has led the Rebels to three straight 10-win seasons — the longest streak in program history. His four 10-win seasons over the past five years are more than the team had in the previous 50 seasons combined (three).

“I told our guys this week, as you get older everybody always says the good old days,” Kiffin said. “I said, ‘Hey guys, I think we’re in the good old days right now.’ I think for our fans, for our players, it’s this utopia of what’s going on, so enjoy it. Because these runs don’t happen very often anywhere.”

It’s easy to see why a program like Florida would be interested in Kiffin. Former coach Billy Napier, whom Florida fired last month, never won 10 games in a season during his tenure. Over the past 10 seasons, Florida has two 10-win seasons, both under former coach Dan Mullen in 2018 and 2019.

During the television broadcast, the camera panned to Florida fans in the crowd wearing orange and blue shirts that read, “Please Lane Come to Gainesville.”

After the game, Kiffin was pressed further on how he handles the speculation about Florida and what message he has to Ole Miss fans who might want clarity on his situation.

“I don’t think we were distracted; 538 yards today for an offense seems pretty focused,” Kiffin said. “We’ve been dealing with what people would say are distractions for weeks now. It’s different nowadays. I think kids think differently.

“They’re getting pre-portaled every Saturday night they play well. I just talk to them and say, ‘That’s part of the process. When you guys play really well, these things happen, your coach gets talked about,’ and it ain’t the first time or first year that it’s happened around here. I don’t think it’s a problem.”

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