Big 12 helmets for presentation at the Big 12 Media Days on July 12.
Upon entering O’Connell’s Irish Pub & Grille in Norman, Jeff Stewart is often seen handing out lager beers, chatting with local patrons and donning his signature crimson OU polo.
The 56-year-old Campus Corner gem’s interior decor hasn’t changed much since its opening, but that’s all coming to an end as Oklahoma gears up to join the Southeastern Conference and depart the Big 12 on July 1. For years, banners of every Big 12 program have hung from the ceiling, and helmets have lined the walls inside of the restaurant.
As the Sooners begin their conference move this summer, Stewart, the owner of the pub, will have to take down the helmets and banners of every Big 12 team and replace them with OU’s future SEC foes, with signature helmets from programs like Georgia, Florida, LSU, Alabama and more.
“I don't remember how I got them,” Stewart told the OU Daily, as he looked at the old Big 12 helmets from a booth. “I think I had a guy that went to each school and somehow got with the equipment guys and bought each Big 12 helmet. They were, generally, around $100 apiece.
“The SEC helmets and banners should be here in late May, but I don’t know when I’m gonna put them up.”
While Stewart will only have to make subtle changes to the restaurant, Oklahoma’s athletic department is preparing for a much more massive undertaking. The Sooners, behind the scenes, will look to replace every Big 12 logo with the three letter, circular SEC symbol in all of their athletic facilities, offices and stadiums across campus before the conference move.
In L. Dale Mitchell Park, there are two Big 12 logos on the right and left field fence, while Love’s Field — the largest on-campus softball complex in the nation that opened on March 1 — has one near home plate and another near the left field bullpen. On the roof of the new stadium, flags of every Big 12 program can be seen flying in the wind, which will be replaced with SEC programs soon enough
In the Lloyd Noble Center, the Sooners will have to get rid of two “XII” logos above each free throw line. In a recent picture posted by OU athletic director Joe Castiglione on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, the outline of the old Big 12 symbol can be seen on the 30-yard lines of Owen Field, marking the end of an era for Oklahoma’s football program.
1:50pm pic.twitter.com/la1qjWyD6T
— Joe Castiglione (@soonerad) April 8, 2024
The massive conference flags that used to sit atop the Barry Switzer Center have recently been removed. One of the only remaining logos sits on the press box of Gaylord Family — Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Those are the more obvious ones, but smaller Big 12 logos exist everywhere on campus, whether it be the Big 12 patches on uniforms or signage on press conference backdrops.
According to Greg Tipton, Oklahoma’s executive associate athletic director of internal operations, facilities and events, OU will have SEC signage ready to go by the end of June before its official conference move.
“As far as costs, we're still estimating that,” Tipton told the OU Daily. “We spent a lot of time with other colleagues within the Southeastern Conference. We even made a few trips to some spots just to see how their branding went within their facilities: football, basketball, baseball, softball, all of it. We took a deep dive into it.
“By the time July 1 rolls around all of our facilities are going to be updated.”
Big 12 jersey logo during the game against Cincinnati on March 5.
‘A hell of a task’
Seismic conference shifts have become a regular part of the NCAA ecosystem.
Like OU, Houston is among the 30 programs in college athletics that have or will move between or to FBS conferences since 2023. The Cougars have seen their fair share of affiliation alterations in the past three decades, residing in Conference USA from 1996-2013 after leaving the Southwest Conference, then spent a decade in the American Athletic Conference from 2013-23 before joining the Sooners in the Big 12 last summer.
T.J. Meagher, Houston’s senior associate athletics director for facilities, operations and capital projects, played a major part in helping UH’s behind-the-scenes rebrand campaign from the AAC to the Big 12. Unlike the Sooners and the Big 12, OU’s home conference for 28 seasons, Houston’s AAC logos were subtle and small because it knew that, eventually, it could land a bid to move to the Power 5.
“I'm sure that the Roman numeral 12 is very prevalent there,” Meagher told the OU Daily. “So, they have a hell of a task. I would suggest they even have to tour every place they have it (placed), from soft content, letterhead, uniforms, gear things. They probably do turnover fairly regularly to permanent displays, large displays to the logos on their facilities and their fields of play.”
Meagher says planning and executing the conference rebranding starts with taking inventory of every logo in and around the campus. Then, he had to help design different logos — varying in colors, shapes and sizes — before placing orders in time with vendors and the conference, so each logo and piece of signage arrived before the Cougars grand Big 12 reveal last summer.
They started with stenciling the paint for logos across Houston’s fields for soccer, baseball, softball and football fields. According to Meagher, sanding down the basketball court alongside painting the new logos and regulation lines was the most costly operation, totaling between $30-40,000.
The overall rebranding campaign cost upward of $100,000.
“I think the brand recognition of a conference has really grown,” Meagher said. “Especially when schools are making a step or what they believe is a step up. … You feel like it's raising the brand awareness of your school and your department. Then there's value there. So, I think that schools are much more inclined to heavily brand their conference now than they were 20-30 years ago.”
In Oklahoma’s case, despite the relevance of the SEC logo, the program will keep its branding campaign subtle and within the conference’s requirements like the other institutions it visited.
“We've been very methodical about this,” Tipton said. “We started up a 30,000-foot view of everything and the standards that are set within the Southeastern Conference, and now we're really down into the soil, working through our plans outlining everything that we're going to do within the facilities, and we're still in the design and development scope as of right now.”
While the Sooners are focused mainly on rebranding, they have plans to recycle their old Big 12 logos with an assortment of vendors. The program might keep some of the old signage for historical purposes, but most of it will be repurposed.
When Houston left the AAC, the Cougars donated their old logos and signage to Rice, which is located only five miles from the University of Houston campus, and UTSA, as both joined the AAC last summer.
“It's not just thrown in the trash,” Tipton said. “We were members of the conference for a long time. We still respect everything that the Big 12 is doing and has done, but it all has to probably be recycled.”
At O’Connell’s, Stewart has plans for the helmets and banners that line the walls of his pub. A few people have requested the keepsake items, but he doesn’t know what he’ll do with the unwanted ones.
Stewart, particularly, has no special plans for the orange Oklahoma State helmet and banner. He joked about making the helmet a spittoon — a receptacle made for spitting into, especially for chewing and dipping tobacco — in the bathroom when talking with the OU Daily.
The O’Connell’s owner gave away his signed Nebraska helmet to traveling Cornhuskers fans when they visited Norman in 2021. The conference upheavals have affected people like Stewart, who owns a local business well connected to Sooner lore.
“It’s all gonna be so different,” Stewart said. “ TV is what's doing it, right. … It's just about the almighty dollar. I bet there'll be other changes down the pipe.”
Football fans watch the OU vs. Ohio State game in O'Connell's Irish Pub & Grille on Campus Corner Sept. 17, 2016.
‘Everybody knows the SEC logo’
Inside Oklahoma’s athletic facilities, SEC-stitched logos have started popping up on OU’s home and away uniforms when the Sooners have hosted recruiting visits.
The uniform update is just one glimpse for what is to come in July.
Yk who do it tha best‼️‼️ #BOOMER #XXV #SEC #OUDNA 🧬 pic.twitter.com/MPXoZ6pdrt
— Elijah “ET” Thomas (@EliThomas______) January 29, 2024
“Everybody knows the SEC logo,” Tipton said. “Right now the recruits when they're here, they want to come in and take a picture in front of the OU logo or they’re going to have an opportunity to get in front of the SEC logo.
“We've gotten down into the weeds on everything as far as the uniform patches, but the logo is a logo. It's a shining beacon.”
OU football is now operating under the SEC’s intraconference rules for the spring transfer portal window, according to a report from 247Sports released on Friday.
Outgoing SEC players are disincentivized from picking the Sooners or Longhorns because they won’t be granted immediate eligibility due to the conference’s rules. If it wasn’t any more obvious, Oklahoma is operating as if it were in the SEC right now.
“We're hitting all of our facilities, still detailing our plans and estimating everything,” Tipton said. “Then we’ll present it and hit the ground running when the time comes.”
In the university, plans for a massive SEC-reveal party is in the works, according to the O’Connell’s owner. Oklahoma has informed all local businesses to prepare for a “wide-scale” event to celebrate the Sooners conference transition potentially in late June or early July.
“They're asking all of us to feature something and to be decked out in red and white and carry whatever promotion they come up with,” Stewart said. “It's to my understanding they may have a huge national artist at the stadium. I'm not sure what else they're doing, they’ve been very close-lipped about it.”
While OU seems like it's prepared, Meagher knows all too well that replacing old signage can leave a few logo stragglers.
Weeks after Houston’s transition, after replacing hundreds of old AAC logos with new Big 12 ones, a member of the Cougars facilities staff spotted a six-inch AAC logo at the bottom of Houston’s football locker room entrance, squarely under a massive UH logo.
“We were like ‘wait a minute, we missed one?’” Meagher said. “I'm not sure anybody ever saw it anyway. There was a large graphic over the top of it. You could barely see it at the bottom. It was 2 feet off the ground.”
He hopes, for OU’s sake, as it enters the conference where “it just means more,” that it avoids the same fate as it embarks on its branding campaign.
“I'll tell you what,” Meagher joked, “They won't have to worry about that because I'm sure their fans will be real quick to see if they miss anything.”
This story was edited by Louis Raser and Grayson Blalock.
