It’s Homecoming week! You always know you’re in the deep throes of fall when the mums on campus are absolutely SPECTACULAR and the South Oval is decorated with Homecoming stuff!

Homecoming week is jam-packed from start to finish, and it feels like everyone on campus is involved in some way or another! From making boards to decorating the South Oval, from some of the most intricate chalk drawings you’ll ever see to the banners hanging from the Union parking garage, the whole campus gets ready for the football game on Saturday! Thursday was the banner competition, so I included a couple of pictures of the competition! The banners usually hang from the Union garage, but it was raining Thursday so the competition was judged inside the Union.

There’s so much to Homecoming that most students don’t see. Homecoming takes a huge team of people to coordinate all of the activities, judge the events, and make sure everything runs smoothly. From meetings beforehand to discuss events with group Homecoming Directors, from finding sponsors to provide food on the South Oval (yum!) to coordinating events the day of, this group of students works tirelessly for over 6 months to plan Homecoming. And this year, I have to say they’ve done a fantastic job!

One of the really cool things about this year is that the Homecoming Exec worked with the Athletic Department and Nike to produce a Nike Homecoming Shirt. They say “There’s only one Oklahoma” and they have a picture of a football player raising his helmet on the back. It’s really cool that this happened here this year – Nike only picks a few schools a year to make this kind of shirt for! And everyone’s wearing theirs to the game this year, so the student section’s going to be completely decked out in crimson!

For me, events like Homecoming remind me of why coming to OU was probably the best decision I’ve ever made (definitely up in the top 5 best decisions). I thought I wanted to go to a small liberal arts school (think 2500 students) with no football. But then, I looked again at OU and realized I could get a liberal arts education here, and, let’s be honest, football is tons of fun. It’s so cool to get to watch the University community coalesce around a common bond and have everyone spend the week before the game celebrating our team! The energy on campus during football season is hard to describe. It’s like the air is charged with excitement to see how the team’s going to do. I would definitely recommend coming for a visit during the fall so you can see for yourself!