Recap
Oklahoma has teams in basketball, football, arena football, baseball, soccer, hockey, and wrestling in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Enid, Norman, and Lawton. The Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association (NBA) is the state's only major league sports franchise. The state had a team in the Women's National Basketball Association, the Tulsa Shock, from 2010 through 2015, but the team relocated to Dallas–Fort Worth after that season[222] and became the Dallas Wings.[223]
The NBA's New Orleans Hornets became the first major league sports franchise based in Oklahoma when the team was forced to relocate to Oklahoma City's Ford Center, now known as Chesapeake Energy Arena, for two seasons following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.[225] In July 2008, the Seattle SuperSonics relocated to Oklahoma City and began to play at the Ford Center as the Oklahoma City Thunder for the 2008–09 season, becoming the state's first permanent major league franchise.[226]
Collegiate athletics are a popular draw in the state. The state has four schools that compete at the highest level of college sports, NCAA Division I. The most prominent are the state's two members of the Big 12 Conference,[227] one of the so-called Power Five conferences of the top tier of college football, Division I FBS. The University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University average well over 50,000 fans attending their football games, and Oklahoma's football program ranked 12th in attendance among American colleges in 2010, with an average of 84,738 people attending its home games.[228] The two universities meet several times each year in rivalry matches known as the Bedlam Series, which are some of the greatest sporting draws to the state. Sports Illustrated magazine rates Oklahoma and Oklahoma State among the top colleges for athletics in the nation.[229][230]
