Mike Boynton Calls Remember the Ten the Most Important Game of the Season

STILLWATER – Oklahoma State head coach Mike Boynton walked in to the theater room in Gallagher-Iba Arena as he does on Thursday afternoons during the season to meet with the media. You know with the Cowboys at 8-11 and winless at 0-6 in the Big 12 that all kinds of things are swimming in Boynton’s head. Basically, his job is on the line along with the future of his staff. Yes, there is a multi-million dollar buyout attached, but people like Boynton don’t do this to fail. These are people that are goal setters, high achievers. Boynton addressed his team’s improvement in execution and general play. He jumped into a question on late game possessions and how to improve.

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Boynton is doing everything he and his staff can think of to improve the Cowboys.

“In the last two games, we’re talking roughly 40 possessions and I went back and watched every one of them,” Boynton said. “If you just look at the stat sheet the other day (TCU) you’d have thought we won the game. We got outrebounded but it wasn’t terrible. We hardly turned the ball over. When you watch it, it was more what we weren’t doing on the defensive end.” 

From there Boynton went on to address corrections and changes, things he and his staff believe they can do to turn the tables on a season going the wrong direction. Then Boynton explained that Saturday’s home game with a struggling West Virginia team would be ideal to get that first conference win. Saturday is the game dedicated to Remember the Ten. 

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The Cowboys took care of Arkansas in the Jan. 30, 2021 contest.

“It’s always in my mind the most important day on the calendar in our season. I really don’t care what anybody thinks about that,” Boynton emphasized. “We played in the Big 12 Conference Championship Game that year (2021) and the Remember the Ten Game was the most important game of that season because it honors a commitment to real human life. Winning the game was important, but when I think about seeing those families here all the time and their continued support of the program …  in a way where they could be pretty bitter about this place. Those people continue to support the program. I’m always stunned how grateful and thankful they are that they get to come back here and be honored.”

Boynton is talking about the families of the 10 men that perished in that Beechcraft King Air that fell out of the sky on the Flatirons of Colorado Saturday, jan. 27, 2001 heading home from the road game at Colorado. 

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The monument inside Gallagher-Iba Arena.

The names and faces are part of the monument in the GIA southwest lobby, players Nate Fleming and Daniel Lawson, play-by-play announcer Bill Teegins and broadcast engineer Kendall Durfey, sports information employee Will Hancock, director of basketball operations Pat Noyes, trainer Brian Luinstra, student manager Jared Weiberg and pilots Denver Mills and Bjorn Fahlstrom. 

Not all of the families attend every season, but some do. Oklahoma State athletics director Chad Weiberg and his family mourn the loss of Jared, Chad’s brother. We almost always see Oklahoma State soccer assistant coach and senior women’s administrator Karen Hancock as she thinks of her late husband Will. She is often accompanied by her father and mother-in-law Bill and Nicki Hancock. Bill, of course the retiring executive director of the College Football Playoff. 

Oklahoma State has sworn to never forget and we haven’t. Not only does Boynton not forget, but he educates. as many of his players were not even born when the disaster happened. Boynton and the staff, which includes Scott Sutton as his dad and brother were on the staff at the time. Boynton said before and after the practice (today) the team would spend at the kneeling Cowboy monument to the Ten. 

“We’ll talk to our guys about it today and we’ll make sure that we play with a little bit more of an edge understanding that this is bigger than a game with West Virginia on Saturday,” Boynton said.”

Jarius Hicklen is a newcomer to the Cowboys team as a transfer, but he is originally from Dallas, Texas and played at Oklahoma Baptist. 

“I’m familiar with it, a tragic event, just hearing about and learning about it you come back to that, this is just a game that we’re playing,” Hicklen said. “There are things much bigger and playing in this game is a humbling experience. I’ve learned a lot, I’ve read about it. I’m pretty familiar with it.”

Boynton explained that his team travels differently now, safeguards were put in at Oklahoma State and across the college athletics landscape because of that tragedy. Mike Boynton wasn’t here then, but he has affectionately taken up being a caretaker to that phrase, “We’ll always remember.”

Remember the Ten Games with Mike Boynton as OSU head coach