(Courtesy/SoonerSports.com)
After a school year filled with a vast array of titles spreading across multiple sports, OU may have become Champ U.
In the last two months alone, Oklahoma has won four NCAA team titles.
Softball was the most recent just this past week when OU stunned top-seed Florida with a sweep. The upset marked back-to-back national titles for the Sooners, and the third in the past five years.
Following Oklahoma's 5-4 victory over Florida in Game 2 to win the Women's College World Series, lively new OU football coach Lincoln Riley tweeted, "YES!!!!!! Boomer Sooner!!!! This IS #ChampU."
The softball team capped off the 2016-17 academic year with the school's fourth national championship - the most ever for the athletic department.
Joining softball was men's and women's gymnastics, as well as men's golf.
Winning consecutive titles is a rare feat in collegiate sports, given the fact there are over 350 Division I schools in the country. That didn't stop men's and women's gymnastics from repeating as national champions, just as softball did.
In fact, the men's gymnastics team claimed its third straight national crown and 11th overall. It was the third in the past four years on the women's side.
The men's golf team won their second program title and the first national championship since 1989, knocking off defending champ Oregon in the finals.
And although it doesn't count as a team national title, don't forget about men's tennis, where Andrew Harris and Spencer Papa won the national title in men's doubles. The pair became the first Sooners in program history to win an individual national championship.
The Sooners have won seven NCAA team titles in the last two years which happens to be the most in the country. Yes, in the entire country.
In the last five years, bump the number of titles up to 10.
In Norman, success is the norm.
Sooner athletics has shown why they are not a force, but THE force to be reckoned with. The sheer quantity of titles and accolades collected over the past couple of years has made that quite clear.
It's not simple for Division-I universities to be elite in every facet of their athletic program. Many stand out in one sport in particular, or at most, mark their footprint in two or three different sports.
For Oregon, it's track and field, along with football. Do you ever wonder why the fastest kids in the country commit to a school just inland from the Pacific Ocean in Eugene? It's because speed is associated with Oregon's brand and sits just down the road from Nike headquarters.
They call it TrackTown, USA for a reason. Speed is in their nature just as championships are in the Sooners' bloodstream.
At Arizona, Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and North Carolina, it's basketball. Don't think it's a coincidence each of their respective football programs have had very little success in recent seasons.
At UConn, it's women's basketball. Dynasties are typically referred to only in professional sports, but what the Huskies have built in Storrs rivals that of any professional dynasty.
At Nebraska, my alma-mater, nearly every resource is pooled in for football and volleyball. That's what the Huskers care about and choose to specialize in.
At Alabama, it's clearly football. Resounding 'Roll Tide' chants are heard across the country nearly every national championship game in January.
At the University of Oklahoma? Each sport is just as important as the next - whether women's or men's. The national titles exemplify that.
Yes, football holds all the cards, but the other sports are holding their own.
While football hasn't won a national championship since 2000, the Sooners' success in some of the biggest bowl games annually hasn't gone unnoticed. OU scored another signature bowl victory by dismantling a talented Auburn team in the Sugar Bowl, while proving that the powerful SEC isn't everything it's hyped up to be.
OU has won back-to-back Big 12 titles and made the College Football Playoff in 2015.
If you include the 2015-16 school year, you find even more accolades raked in by the Sooners along with men's and women's gymnastics.
Led by eventual Naismith Trophy winner Buddy Hield, the men's basketball team capped off an incredible season with a Final Four trip to Houston as a No. 2 seed in the 2016 NCAA Tournament. For most programs - not including bluebloods such as Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina and Kansas - trips to the illustrious Final Four are typically few and far between.
The Sooners were blitzed by eventual national champions Villanova in the semis, but it didn't shrink OU's incredible achievement.
Flashing back to the Sooner softball team, OU became just the fourth team ever to repeat as national champions - joining Arizona, Florida and UCLA by winning consecutive NCAA titles. It was OU's fourth national title in program history, as the Sooners became the first No. 10 seed to win the Women's College World Series.
That doesn't mean each journey to a national championship has been smooth sailing. Like softball, many OU championship teams have had to navigate winding roads to reach their ultimate destination. Softball just happened to be the most recent example of that.
"I think if you looked at us in February, March and even parts of April, you would never imagine us sitting here right now with trophies in front of us," OU softball coach Patty Gasso said with joyful tears flowing from her eyes following the national championship victory over Florida last Tuesday. "Words cannot express this. I still cannot believe that this happened, with where we started and where we finished. There are so many stories. The journey was unbelievable."
Typically, unbelievable journeys manifest themselves in ways that leave you speechless. Such was the case for many of the OU players, who you would think by now would expect nothing less than national titles at 'Champ U.'
"I mean, it's a blessing," OU softball team captain Kelsey Arnold said. "It's an indescribable feeling to win another national championship."
If collegiate national championships are what Olympic medals are to countries, it's safe to say that Oklahoma is the United States.
The Sooners are winning that medal count by a landslide.