That’s just one of the reasons he is among the greatest sports journalist to call Oklahoma home.

In this, Barry’s 50th and final season as sportscaster, Sooner fans are witnessing the swan song of the man who is — and will always be — the only sports journalist to be handpicked by Bud Wilkinson as the play-by-play man for Sooner football and basketball games starting in 1961.

At 79 years young, Barry has called some of the biggest games in Oklahoma collegiate athletics history, including the historic 2000 football season in which the Sooners won their first national title in 15 years.

He spent a season covering that one school in eastern Oklahoma that doesn’t seem to know there’s no such thing as a “hurricanes” — only tornadoes — in the great state of Oklahoma (Tulsa) from 1973-1974 as well as that gaudy tangerine and white school up north (Oklahoma State) from 1973–1990.

Barry graduated from OU in 1946, where he played baseball and was journalism major, before joining the U.S. Air Force in 1951.

He began his illustrious career right here in Norman in 1956, back when sports journalists still had to hold down day jobs to keep working at their passion. In his five years prior to joining the Sooner broadcasting team, he worked as salesman and disc jockey.

His rise to the upper echelon of Oklahoma’s great sports journalists was so precipitous that by 1966, in addition to his play-by-play work, Barry was the head sports anchor for what is now KFOR-TV. Just four years later he was named the station’s sports director, a position he held for three years.

In the mid-90s he returned to KFOR-TV as the weeknight sports anchor, a position he bequeathed to his son and present KFOR-TV sports anchor, Bob Barry Jr. He retired from working in television in 2008.

Barry is the quintessential Okie sportscaster and the voice of many childhood memories for nearly three generations of Sooner faithful. He has called four Big 12 men’s basketball championships, six Big 12 football championships and one BCS national title.

He has provided perspective, joy and a local charm to the broadcasting occupation seldom seen anymore in today’s 24-hour news cycle atmosphere.

After 50 years of calling football and men’s basketball games, you assume he’ll miss it. But his feeling will pale in comparison to how much Sooner fans will miss him.