Do SEC media, fans have a 'lack of awareness' of OU football history? Plus, Toby Rowland's new children's book

Thank you to EVERYONE who has subscribed. Every subscription helps, even the free ones. If you want to support my work with a paid subscription, I’d appreciate it (because producing videos and stories isn’t cheap) but understand that all subs are valued. And please, share this email with a friend and encourage them to subscribe, too.

Toby Rowland is the voice of the Sooners, doing play-by-play for football, men's basketball, and baseball. He anchors all sorts of OU coaches shows. He also hosts a daily sports talk radio show. 

Needless to say, he's a busy guy. 

But apparently, he's not too busy to write his second children's book, “Put the Ponies in the Barn: Boomer and Sooner Pull Their Schooner to the SEC.”

We'll talk about that and much more with Toby on The Jenni Carlson Show. 

Episode highlights

1:00: What was SEC football media days like?

1:40: Why did Toby decide to write a new children’s book, his second?

4:45: Why children’s books? Why not something about OU sports history that Toby has witnessed?

6:50: How did the process of writing this book work?

12:30: How does the artwork play into the story?

13:50: How does Toby balance the work of writing a book with his play-by-play job?

16:00: How does Toby feel like the move to the SEC is sitting with OU fans right now?

19:20: What SEC football stadium is Toby most excited about calling a game?

22:55: What’s up with the Sooners being picked eighth in the SEC preseason football poll?

25:00: Where can people buy the new book?

Producer: Jacquelyn Musgrove

Creative Director: Michael Lane

Subscribe on Youtube

Transcript

Jenni: Well, Toby, are you recovered from SEC football media days just yet?

Toby: You know, it was quite an experience. Met a whole lot of people. Saw a whole lot of coaches. And yeah, it was fun, it was great. I think it really hammered home that this is happening. Not that we didn't know, but it's really the first official event where we've been surrounded by SEC people, SEC media, coaches and the commissioner and everything, so it's real and it's not gonna be long to football.

Jenni: And for you, it starts your year. You go nonstop. You go football, you go basketball, you go baseball. So it's about ready to start, my friend. So it prompts a question: why make time to write this dandy …

Toby: You got your copy!

Jenni: Nice little project placement. So why did you decide to do the new book? I mean, this is obviously a sequel to your first children's book, ‘Unhitch the Wagon.’ This is ‘Put the Ponies in the Barn.’ Obviously two of your big catchphrases, but why the second book? Why'd you feel now is the right time to do it?

Toby: I guess because the first book worked, and you know, I go back to when we wrote ‘Unhitch the Wagon’ and I didn't know if there was a market for that. I thought maybe there was because I haven't seen a whole lot of OU kids books out there. 

And it was overwhelmingly received. So that was very flattering. And the publisher came along at one point and said, ‘Hey, this has gone well. If anything else ever, you know, hits your brain, let's think about doing another one.’ And not long after that, Joe Castiglione said, ‘We’re going to the SEC,’ and that hit my brain. So I thought it was natural. We used several of OU's Big 12 opponents in the first book with the ponies, and so it was a pretty easy transition to then have them meet all of the new SEC opponents in this book. 

I have been very, I don't think surprised is the word, but how it was received by Sooner Nation is very flattering. I did not anticipate all of the school readings. You know, I get to go to schools and libraries and read to kids. I can’t tell you how many Sooner fans I have met that I otherwise would not have had the opportunity to. Sometimes it's a book signing. Sometimes it's a Saturday in the fall, and they just find me on campus and I'll sign the book for them. And so it's been a real entree, an even bigger one that I already had, to meet Sooner Nation. And it's so cool when I get a message either on Twitter or Instagram or whatever the case may beof someone reading the book to their kid or their grandkid or their niece or their nephew. And they'll send a picture and say, ‘Hey, this is our Friday night routine before OU plays on Saturday. We always have to read “Unhitch the Wagon” before we go to bed,’ which just makes my heart so happy. So the possibility to do a sequel involving the SEC and to try to capture all of the excitement that we feel as a fan base about going to this new conference seem like a no-brainer.

So at that point, it's just a matter of writing the poem. So we made it happen. We found the illustrator that did the first book, who was outstanding, agreed to do another book with us. And here we go. We've got ‘Put the Ponies in the Barn.’

Jenni: I want to talk about that process a little more in a second, but first, backtrack me a little bit. Children's books in general. You said you didn't see a lot of OU children's books out there, and that may have sort of prompted you to do this, but is there anything else at play there? Obviously, you've spent a long time in this market. You've seen a lot. You've covered a lot. You could write books about all sorts of things. You could write an OU-Texas book. You could write, I don't know, a Buddy Hield Final Four book. Whatever you want. Is there something about children's books that resonates with you?

Toby: I mean, I've got three kids and 13 nieces and nephews and now one grandbaby and another one on the way. And so while I like books of all types — I enjoy reading fiction, nonfiction, whatever the case may be — I think that kids books have a near and dear place in my heart. My parents read to me growing up the Dr. Seuss books, and we had an incredible library of books for our children when they were growing up from Dr. Seuss all the way to all kinds of authors. So it's just fun, you know? I mean, maybe someday there will be … 

I like to write. I'm not as good at it as you are, but I do enjoy writing. And so maybe there will be something on down the line that is not in this genre that will tickle my fancy, but it's just fun. And I think that if you know me, it fits in my personality. I'm not real, I don't know, I'm not real heavy. I like to have a good time. And I think that kids books kind of fits with my public persona a little bit. That's why I did it. I just think it's kind of a hand-in-glove situation. 

I’ve got a lot of kids in my life, nieces, nephews, kids, grandkids, and I love children's books and I love the illustrations and everything about them. So I'm glad we've been able to kind of add to some libraries out there.

Jenni: Let's talk about process. You said you write the poem, you get the illustrator, done. I don't think it works quite like that. I'm just gonna guess it’s not that easy. But for people that hear your scene setters, I mean, the book is very reminiscent of the scene setters, but it's longer obviously. So how does the process work? How did the process for this one work?

Toby: So I got the idea from the West Virginia play-by-play guy, Tony Caridi. We went to dinner in Morgantown several years back now, and he had just written a book, a children's book. And that kind of planted the seed in my head. ‘That would be a fun idea someday if I could ever think of a concept.’ OU was eliminated by Virginia in the NCAA basketball tournament in Columbia, South Carolina, several years ago. And our NCAA charter back was very late. We were flying back home in the middle of the night, and I can't sleep on planes. I just can't do it. And I have found, I don't know if you find this or not, I found that I am more creative when I'm slightly tired. I don't know why that is. Maybe I'm not quite in my right mind. I try to write my scene setters for football games when the rest of the family goes to bed and it's late at night. And something about being a little bit tired leads me to be more creative. 

Anyway, on that flight, on the way home, I wrote a one-stanza poem, which led to another stanza, which led to another stanza. And by the time we landed, I think I had 12 to 15 stanzas, paragraphs. And I thought, ‘OK, this is something. I got a story here. I don't know if it's a whole book yet or not, but it's something and I like it.’ So I sent it to Joe Castiglione and I said, ‘I think we could write a children's book, and maybe this is kind of the concept,’ and he loved it. And he put me in contact with licensing because obviously we're wanting to use the OU marks and we're wanting to use Boomer and Sooner and everything. OU’s got to have skin in the game, too, to make that work. So licensing signed off on it, and they helped us find a publisher. It was not the first publisher we went to, but I think it was the second. It’s a small kind of a boutique publishing house in Kansas City called Ascend Books. And they were great. They loved the concept. They jumped right in and said, ‘Yeah, let's do it. We want to do it.’

Then they said, ‘Let's finish it. You need this many more paragraphs to kind of finish the story.S’ o I did. And then they have their editors jump in and say, ‘Would you rather use this word than this word? What do you mean by this?’ And that's always a little bit of a humbling process because after you pour your heart and soul into it, and then somebody comes in and kind of rips it up a little bit, it was like, you know, it hurts. Some of it's like inside knowledge as to, ‘Why would you say put the ponies in the barn?’ I was like, ‘Well, that's just what I say. So we're not going to mess with that sentence.’ 

But after you get the actual poem the way you want it, then they sent me, I think it was about eight illustrators. They sent me some examples of eight illustrators. And I picked the one I liked the best. I said, ‘I think this fits with kind of the look that I'm going for in the book.’ So they reached out to that illustrator to see if he'd be interested. He was, and he did great. Rob Peters, he would draw the cover and then send it to me and say, ‘Am I on track?’ And I'd say, ‘Yeah, that looks great.’ Or ‘Tweak this a little bit.’ And then he'd do the first two pages and send it to me and say, ‘How's this look?’ And after he got five, six pages in, he knew what I wanted. I trusted him. I mean, he kept sending them to me, but it was always on point.

And that was an exciting, when the illustrations start to come together is when it really gets exciting. Then once you have that, you've got to actually have the book published and marketing goes into trying to get it into bookstores all over the state and trying to get it into Amazon and Barnes and Noble and everything. So that part, I wasn't ready for. I didn't think about it, but when the first book was released, they said, ‘All right, we've got, you know, 14 interviews and 17 podcasts and 12 book signings and all this.’ I was like, ‘Whoa, I didn't know I was gonna be this involved.’ But it was fun. 

So that's kind of the process, and then copy and paste for book two, except ‘Put the Ponies in the Barn’ has been done for a while. The poem was done. Kind of waited on the illustrations till we had an exact date of when it was going to come out. Really happy when they moved OU joining the SEC up from 2025 to 2024, because that helped us by a year. But yeah, the process was very similar. It's been a little easier because we already have all the stores and everything that had the first book and want the second book. Haven't had to seek out retailers and all that kind of stuff. More have jumped on board.

It's the early days. We just released the book July 2nd, but the early reaction's been great. It was a No. 1 new release on Amazon, so I'm excited.

Jenni: That's awesome. And for people that haven't seen it yet, it’s built around the move to the SEC. So Boomer and Sooner get introduced to all the new characters in the SEC, which it was fun to see. And I clearly can tell you can't say like, I don't know, Razorbacks or whatever. But it was fun to see you figure out ways to do that.

Toby: Yeah, you’ve got to dance around the mascots a little bit. I think the artwork really sells it, and maybe it's a way for some youngsters to learn about the teams that are now going to be in our conference. That's probably the hardest process is dancing around all of the other licensing departments in the league because while I can get OU to sign off, we're not going to get 16 schools to sign off on. We’re not going to share with 16 schools around the SEC. You kind of got to dance a little bit, but I think you get a pretty clear picture of who the Gators are and who the elephant represents and all the different Tigers and Wildcats and everything. So, yeah, I think it's a lot of fun.

Jenni: You said you do a lot of this writing when it's late. But the rest of this stuff, I mean, if your publisher's calling in the middle of an OU baseball game or something, how does this work out? You're a busy guy, Toby.

Toby: Yeah, I mean, this is a little bit different. A scene setter, you’ve got to churn one out every week and they're not great works of art, but there is kind of a deadline that that needs to be turned in by to be able to get the music and the video and everything added. This was a little more of an open timeline as to, I think you kind of got to wait for the creative process to hit you upside the head sometimes, and you never know when that's going to happen. If you force it, my experience has been, if I force it, it's not going to be very good. If I'm on a walk or on an airplane or driving down the interstate and I see a billboard and it spurs up thought in my head that says, ‘Here's a concept.’ I can make it rhyme. I'm not worried about making it rhyme, but like, what's the story going to be then? It's always better than me sitting down and forcing a topic. So fortunately, when you're dealing with, ‘Hey, we're not joining the SEC until July of 2024,’ I had time to kind of relax. 

Now when it gets to the publisher part of it, pretty much at that point … there are some quicker decisions that need to be made, but the story's written. The publisher is going to hit me back saying, ‘Wouldn't you rather say this word than that word?’ Or ‘I don't think this preposition is what you were looking for here.’ Whatever the case may be. So those are some quicker decisions that don't require for it to be midnight and me be sitting on the back porch with a Diet Dr. Pepper.

Jenni: Hey, before we let you go, I want to talk a bit about the SEC move as it relates to real life, not just your children's book, although it's wonderful. But like you said before, it does feel like it's now real, seeing not just the celebrations on campus, but to see the Sooners in the building with Greg Sankey and the other teams. It feels like it's happening. What's your sense of what it feels like around the Sooners? What's sort of the sense as it sits right now? 

Toby: You know, that's a great question. And I think that my job as play-by-play voice, kind of the essence of it is to not just say what yard line the ball is on and what the score of the game is, but to also try to capture the essence and the mood of a stadium or a fan base or the importance of the game. I try to be the kind of the first person to write the gameday story for what's happening. And so I always try to tap into what is Sooner Nation feeling right now? What's the importance of this day? So forth and so on. 

This is a new one. This has been years in the making. The anticipation has been years in the making. And we're coming out of our skin as a fan base. We're so excited about the new world that is ahead. It feels real. It feels more real than it did before SEC media days. But I think until like maybe even Tennessee comes to town for that SEC opener or maybe even the first road trip to Auburn or maybe even the first season in the SEC where you're jockeying for position with these teams and jockeying on social media with opposing fan bases and all the zaniness that goes into making the SEC what it is, which is far and away the most popular, successful collegiate conference in America, I don't know exactly when we're going to feel like we're in the middle of it.

I think to West Virginia and TCU when they joined the Big 12. How many years was it before we really felt like they were a part of the Big 12? Maybe even until now, West Virginia was always kind of that far away team over where it really wasn't in the conference. Is it going to be that way for us? I don't know. I think this is something that, it's going to be a journey. I know that's cliche, but it's going to be a journey as a fanbase to go from the big boys in the middle of the Big 12 Conference to the newcomers on the outskirts of the SEC. 

And so how much success are they gonna have? What's the travel gonna be like? All of that is new, storylines that we gotta wait to see how they unfold. But right now, as I said, right now, we are coming out of our skin excited to be joining this conference.

Jenni: That begs a question for me: Is there a place in the SEC that you're most looking forward to calling a football game? You don't get to go everywhere right away, obviously, but is there a place maybe more immediate, this season, next season, where you're really excited?

Toby: Looking forward to all of them. I think for this year's schedule, I'm most looking forward to LSU. I don't know if it's going to be a night game or not. I think we know it's going to be an afternoon game or a night game, but it is one of the iconic settings in all of college football. So I can't wait to experience it. It's the final week of the season. Who knows what's going to be on the line that day or night. So that's probably No. 1 on my most-looking-forward-to list.

I can't wait to go to Ole Miss. I think a lot of what makes Ole Miss special is the tailgating scene, The Grove, which I don't know how much of that I'm going to get to experience, but it's a new place, so I can't wait to see it. 

I'm excited about Auburn with a caveat. Jordan-Hare Stadium is legendary. The eagle that flies around before the game? Awesome. Can't wait to see that. We've been to the stadium; when we went with basketball a couple of years ago, we took a tour of the facilities while we were there. And the visiting radio booth at Jordan-Hare Stadium is the worst in all of college football. It's in the endzone behind the goalposts. And you can't tell what yard line anything's on and everybody in the SEC that calls games has already reached out and said, ‘You know, you're going to have a terrible time at Auburn.’ So from a work perspective, I'm not looking forward to trying to call a game at Auburn, but I can't wait to see everything that goes into an Auburn football game. The traditions and the eagle and all that kind of stuff will be great, and it's the first road game in the SEC. S

Missouri, you know, been there, done that. So I'm sure that this year with them expected to be good, it'll be a great atmosphere. Although last time I was there, I was on the sidelines and they were really good and they rushed the field after they beat us. So we'll see. 

Fortunately we've been to Rocky Top. That was great. Can't wait to go back. And there's a few other venues like the Swamp is going to be awesome when we get to go there. But they're all going to be great in all sports. You know, I can't wait in baseball to get to go to some of these crazy venues that they have in the SEC. Rupp Arena in basketball. So it's going to be fun.

Jenni: Last thing on football. SEC preseason poll comes out. Not exactly super kind to the Sooners. Eighth is where they're picked to finish. 

Toby: How dare they?

Jenni: I know the preseason polls don't mean anything, but what do you do with that? I'm sure you've heard from Sooner fans that are wondering, ‘Eighth in the preseason poll? What are we supposed to do with that?’ What are Sooner fans supposed to do?

Toby: Well, I think you use it as fuel and motivation, and I'm sure that's what Brent Venables is doing. And it's not entirely unexpected if you had seen some of the prognostications out there. I think six to eight is about where most people picked OU. I will say this: I do think, and I'm not just talking about fans here because I think I witnessed it at SEC media days as well, among the media as great as the SEC is, and I think they have the most knowledgeable fan bases in America and obviously the biggest media following in America, they are shockingly ignorant on the history of Oklahoma football. I mean, I'm stunned by their lack of awareness of what Oklahoma football is. In some cases, kind of just a disrespect for the history of the University of Oklahoma and where it stands in the history of college football. 

Nothing you can do about that except go win, right? Nothing you can do about that except say, ‘Hey, you'll learn’ and go win championships and be formidable in this league. And I think they will be. 

I think the preseason poll may be slightly indicative of that, although there's a lot of good teams in this league. I mean, you get past Georgia and Alabama, and you're kind of splitting hairs when you go down the list. However, the view of Texas going into the league and the view of Oklahoma going into the league, it does feel like there's a perception that Texas is the prize and by the way, you get Oklahoma, too, in the sidecar. And for people who have followed Big 12 football in Oklahoma and Texas for any length of time know that the opposite of that is what has actually been true. So I'm sure that irritates some people. It irritates me a little bit, but there's nothing you can do about it until you go prove them wrong. So here we are.

Jenni: Probably the fact that Texas has very recent success, a playoff team a year ago, probably colors a little bit between the lines on some people's thinking on that. 

Toby: And lost to OU last year. 

Jenni: That's exactly right. But you're right. It's all going to play out on the field. It's going to be so much fun to watch. 

Obviously, part of your fall is the new book. So tell people where they can buy it, where they can find you, all that sort of good stuff. 

Toby: You can still get ‘Unhitch the Wagons,’ by the way, too, and now ‘Put the Ponies in the Barn’ on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and retailers all across the state. Too many to name, but you can find them on social media. But pretty much anywhere on Campus Corner. You can find it and a lot of places in Oklahoma City and Tulsa as well. 

You’ve got to have one for your kids, your grandkids, your nieces, your nephews, for yourself, for your Sooner collection, whatever the case may be. They're great shower gifts, Jenni. They're great birthday gifts. They're great Christmas gifts. So all the cool people are buying ‘Put the Ponies in the Barn.’