Two favorite college teams? For Tucson's Jim Click, it's Oklahoma State and Arizona | Greg Hansen

Editor’s note: This is part of the Star’s ongoing “Big 12 Blitz” series, where we introduce U of A fans to the on- and off-field need-to-know details surrounding each member of the new 16-team Big 12. Today: Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

The Star's Big 12 Blitz is presented by Tucson Appliance Company.

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In the spring and summer of 1962, a 180-pound lineman from Altus, Oklahoma, applied for admission to Stanford. Jim Click was initially declined. As Option B, he hoped the nearby Oklahoma Sooners, a college football giant, would want him.

“They didn’t offer me a dime,’’ he says now.

Finally, the Oklahoma State Cowboys offered Click the equivalent of a full scholarship in the 1960s: tuition, books and $15 a month.

And even though Stanford later offered Click a scholarship, he chose to stay home and be a Cowboy. “It was a great decision for Jimmy Click,’’ he says with a chuckle.

Now, 62 years later, you can make the short walk south of OSU’s Boone Pickens Stadium, past The Garage Burger and Beer bar, past Eskimo Joe’s American Restaurant and the Spears School for Business and see a sign that says “Jim Click Alumni Hall.’’

On most weekends, you can rent the 590-seat Click Hall for $2,155 for a wedding, a business meeting or a high school reunion. But on Saturday afternoons, when Click’s Oklahoma State Cowboys are playing at Pickens Stadium, it’s a wall-to-wall football haven, pre- and post game.

Perhaps no man in the footprint of the old Pac-12 Conference is happier about Arizona’s admission to the Big 12 than Tucson auto dealer Jim Click. His two favorite teams, Arizona and Oklahoma State, are now rivals.

Click isn’t tiptoeing into the new landscape of college football.

Last November, when hated rival Oklahoma announced it would end the historic and hugely anticipated “Bedlam’’ series against OSU — the Sooners have jumped to the SEC — Click took action. Doesn’t he always?

He contacted all of his still-living teammates from Oklahoma State’s 1965 football team and invited them to Stillwater for “Bedlam, 2023’’, a showdown against the No. 10 Sooners and the unranked Cowboys.

“I sent them all plane tickets to get to the game,’’ says Click, who had done the same thing in 2012 when Oklahoma State played its first ever game against Arizona, in Tucson. He paid for their lodging at Ventana Canyon. About 40 players made it to Tucson. (Arizona shocked the 18th-ranked Cowboys 59-38).

About half that many made it to Stillwater last season. Amazingly, the Cowboys stunned the Sooners, 27-24.

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Click won’t say who he’ll cheer for when the Wildcats play the Cowboys again. After all, 29 years ago he was the chief donor who enabled Arizona to build the Jim Click Hall of Champions. It was the same year he was inducted into the Oklahoma State Hall of Fame.

Can’t a man have two favorite teams?

Click is a self-made man who moved to Tucson in 1971, took charge of the Pueblo Ford dealership and has since opened more than a dozen auto dealerships in Tucson. His get-it-done and get-it-done-right demeanor can be traced to his freshman season at Oklahoma State. He was an undersized, unknown lineman who went on to become OSU’s team captain and an All-Big Eight academic selection.

In the ‘60s, many college football coaches were derivatives of in-your-face Marine drill sergeants. The most notable such drill sergeant was Alabama coach Bear Bryant. In Click’s first year at OSU, the Cowboys hired Bryant’s lead assistant, Phil Cutchin, to rebuild what had been a lousy program, totally obscured by three-time national champion Oklahoma since 1945.

“Cutchin came in the spring of 1963 and we had about 100 players in our freshman class, plus our upperclassmen,’’ Click remembers. “It was so tough I wanted to quit. They tried to make you quit. By the end of that ‘63 season, we had 27 players remaining. We got our asses kicked by our coaches and by our opponents. But I learned how to block and I learned how to survive.

“Those of us who didn’t quit formed a bond that still exists today. I’m as proud of sticking with the team as I am of anything I’ve ever accomplished. ‘’

Cutchin and his Bryant-esque approach didn’t work at OSU. He was fired after four years, and the Cowboys continued to struggle, going 35-62-2 in the 1960s. But Click went out on top.

In the final game of Click’s college football career, the Cowboys opened 1-7, but somehow beat the Sooners 17-16 in a Bedlam for the ages.

“I grew up watching Oklahoma football and, believe me, they were all my heroes,’’ Click says. “Their coach, Bud Wilkinson, was a first-class coach and human being. And, my goodness, they had one All-American after another. Beating them that year, 1965, was as good as it gets.’’

Click still has the game ball from the ‘65 Bedlam game at his Tucson office on 22nd Street.

Four decades after that game, Click got a call from, of all people, Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops. Arizona had just fired John Mackovic and had begun a search for a replacement.

“If you want a great coach, you need my brother, Mike,’’ Bob Stoops told Click. Talk about good timing. Arizona athletic director Jim Livengood and associate AD Chris Del Conte added Click to their three-man search committee. They immediately flew to Oklahoma and talked to Mike Stoops, the Sooners’ defensive coordinator.

It was a one-man race. In late November 2004, Stoops was hired as Arizona’s football coach. Click attended the press conference at Arizona Stadium. What Stoops couldn’t have fully known was that the UA football program was at its lowest point since a 1-8-1 team of 1957.

“Many people don’t realize what Mike accomplished at Arizona,’’ says Click. “He rebuilt from the bottom. After four years he beat BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl. Arizona was ranked in the Top 10 a year or two later. I was very unhappy when Greg Byrne fired Mike in 2011, I didn’t think it was justified; the next coach (Rich Rodriguez) built some good teams with Mike’s players.’’

Now, 13 years later, Click awaits a year-to-year, home-and-home football schedule between his alma mater and his “hometown’’ school of the last 53 years. The Cowboys are scheduled to play in Tucson in the fall of ‘25. Click refers to it as another homecoming.

“Next fall, I’m going to invite all of my still-living teammates, the seniors from 1965, to Tucson for a weekend reunion,’’ he says. “We’re all 80 now. Some are still kicking. It’ll be fun. I can’t wait.’’