Adjacent News

There is a particular kind of silence that settles over the prairie when a man walks out of a dusty saloon, squints into the blinding midday glare, and realizes nobody inside has the stomach to clear leather. It is the kind of quiet you find on a Saturday afternoon when the schedule hangs empty above the board like a rusted weather vane stuck pointing nowhere. Down in Stillwater, the Oklahoma State Cowboys are currently bivouacked in the shade, chewing on dry grass and waiting for a horizon that refuses to yield a single target. The calendar says October, but the vibe across the corral is that of a town that locked its doors long before the sun hit its zenith.

Looking out over the hardwood from the press box is much like staring down a deserted main street where the only movement is a tumbleweed bouncing across the free-throw line. One might expect a bit of sulphur in the air, the sharp tang of burnt powder from a guard willing to pull the trigger the second he crosses half court. Instead, what we have on our hands is a collective hesitation that smells faintly of damp wool and cold coffee. Modern college basketball has too many travelers wandering the range with unloaded six-shooters, checking their iron at the county line out of some misplaced fear that they might actually have to answer for a shot sent whistling toward the iron from twenty-five feet out.

It is a miserable business, watching modern playmakers nurse a possession the way a timid drover nurses a lame mule through a creek bed. They want to work the perimeter until the clock is sucking wind, trading five-foot sideways passes back and forth like a pair of nervous cardsharps swapping a marked deck. Where is the high-noon audacity? Where is the reckless fellow who catches the inbound pass, clears leather before his boot heels settle, and lets fly with enough conviction to rattle the rafters? You cannot win a shootout in this conference by whispering polite requests to the defense across the painted dust.

A true gunslinger does not spend ten seconds measuring the windage on a simple wing jumper. He draws, he levels, and he sends the iron singing toward the target before the marshal even gets his hand on his badge. Yet, during this quiet stretch of the autumn calendar, the prevailing philosophy seems to be one of cautious retreat. Men are holding their fire, tucking their tails, and looking for an easy way out through the swinging doors of the backcourt. It is enough to make a seasoned observer reach for a flask of something harsh just to wash the taste of cowardice out of his teeth.

Until the leather starts flying with some genuine malice behind it, the press box remains nothing more than an elevated porch where we watch the dust devils spin. The horses are tied to the rail, the guns are cold in their holsters, and the whole operation sits in a holding pattern of polite restraint. One can only hope that when the next stagecoach finally rolls down the lane, somebody on this roster remembers how to pull back a hammer without asking for permission from the committee first.