But, Sampson also showed his other side, a very sensitive side of a man who was embarrassed by the 12,159 fans that showed up at Lloyd Noble Center to cheer for his team.

It happened as the game clock ticked down inside one minute to play.

The chants started.

“N-I-T! ... N-I-T!” came first,

Then, another, more familiar chant echoed off Lloyd Noble’s walls.

“O ... S .... U ...

“SUCKS!!!”

Sampson stared up at the crowd with a helpless look on his face and cried out “Why?”

Why?

Sampson’s question was not in vain. His heart has been pretty heavy since Jan. 27. He remembers Feb. 14 in Gallagher-Iba Arena, when 13,611 Cowboy fans greeted the Sooners with cheers rather than boos.

Prior to Saturday’s game, the Oklahoma athletic department sent e-mails to students asking them to reciprocate the class.

Now, OU supporters were reminding Sampson that basketball arenas are not places for those folks with class. Lloyd Noble had all the warmth of a porn shoot at Wal-Mart.

Even acknowledging the truth that some rivalries were meant to be bitter even in a season such as this one didn’t seem to comfort Sampson in Saturday’s final minute.

Maybe the chant just put Sampson over the top. Maybe he saw the dozen or so signs around the arena that ripped the Cowboys, the least tasteful of which simply read, “Flaming Aggies Suck.”

Again, those were things Sampson didn’t see directed at his team on Feb. 14.

Or, maybe Sampson saw what a friend of mine told me ran on the video screen in Lloyd Noble about 90 minutes before tipoff.

This story was told to me by a friend, who is an OU student, before the game on Saturday. He had no reason to lie or enhance this story to me. Those fans to his left and right concurred with his story.

With that setup, the powers that be at the arena like to run little cartoon clips on the video screen depicting the Sooner mascot doing horrible things to the opponent’s mascot.

Sooner fans apparently need them so they can get off.

Among them Saturday were the OU mascot, Top Dawg, driving a monster truck over Pistol Pete and other similar tacky-but-harmless cartoons.

But, one of the clips, my Sooner friend said, involved an airplane.

Amazing.

My friend told me that Sooner fans gasped and the video was immediately turned off. It ran soon after the fans were allowed in the arena, so most fans were spared.

Maybe Sampson heard about that. But, whatever it was that got to Sampson boiled over in that final minute. He looked let down. He looked hurt.

He looked like his heart was being ripped out by his own fans.