NORMAN, Okla. — Whether he’s on the friendly confines of Owen Field, a neutral madhouse like the Cotton Bowl or on the road at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley might be the safest man in America on any given fall Saturday.
That’s because when it’s gameday, Riley’s bodyguard is Brian Orr.
Orr, 45, is the Oklahoma Highway Patrolman assigned to protect the Sooners football coach. He’s 6-2, 240 pounds of muscle on muscle, a brawny and brave sentinel with an eagle eye and razor wit, a former small college linebacker who patrols rural byways and Sooner sidelines with equal square-jawed seriousness.
When Riley shakes hands with Matt Campbell or Tom Herman or Bill Snyder — or if Riley should ever come across an unruly fan — Orr cuts an imposing figure over the coach’s shoulder.
“He’s funny,” Riley says of Orr, “but you can see when he kind of clicks into that mode, too: When it’s business time, he’s all business.”
Orr isn't alone in his duties; he's actually just the most prominent member of the security detail assigned to Riley. Although less visible than Orr, the man in charge of coordinating Riley’s safety — and for the previous 11 years, the safety of Bob Stoops — is University of Oklahoma Police Department Master Sgt. Steve Chandler. Orr jokes that Chandler is the brains of the outfit, while he’s the brawn.
In 2005, Orr was asked by his then-captain if he wanted to join the Sooner security squad. His assignment that year was to safeguard the opposing team to and from the airport, and to accompany them on gameday.
But in 2006, Stoops’ own detail had an opening, and he chose Orr to be at his side.
Orr first declined the offer because, growing up in Okemah, Okla., (population 3,239), he was an Oklahoma State fan. He wanted no conflicts of interest. But Stoops met with Orr twice and eventually talked him into it. Orr guarded Stoops during every college football Saturday for 11 years.
And now, he protects Riley.
“There’s a lot of troopers that are OU fans. A lot of Troopers would like to have that job. I was blessed to get this job,” Orr said. “… Pretty neat deal. Pretty blessed to be able to do this assignment.”
Work day
It’s 6:30 a.m. on the Friday before Oklahoma’s home game against Iowa State, and the sun hasn’t come up yet on Orr’s eight-acre ranch, just south of Interstate 40 near Shawnee. One of his four cows sounds quite concerned about her breakfast as Orr returns from taking his girls to school.
Today, Orr is giving a media ride-along, and after a quick briefing on what to do in an emergency — this button releases the AR-15 (semi-automatic rifle) in the back seat, here’s how to chamber a round, here’s the safety, don’t hit your head on the in-car camera — Orr is ready to begin his patrol.
“Let’s go chase bad guys,” he says.
Orr is kidding, but only a little. His primary job with the OHP is checking out commercial motor vehicles (CMV), a technical term for 18-wheelers. Bad guys don’t tootle around in big rigs.
Unless they do.
“Being a Trooper is very, very exciting work just because you don’t know what’s going to happen every day,” Orr said. “You hear that terminology a lot — ‘routine stop’ — there’s no such thing as a routine stop out here. You never know what you’re going to walk up on on a vehicle, on a semi, on a crash. So you’ve always got to be prepared. So that’s one of the many things I like about this job, the uncertainty of it.”
Orr has a degree in criminal justice from the University of Central Oklahoma, where he played linebacker after an All-State high school career at Okemah High School. He broke into law enforcement with the Okemah Police Department, spending five years in Moore, a growing suburb between Oklahoma City and Norman.
Then he applied for the OHP Academy, a grueling, 20-week boot camp weeding out all but the best of the best. How tough is it? Initial training with the U.S. Marines lasts 13 weeks. Other branches range from 6-10 weeks.
Orr graduated top cadet with high marks in defensive driving, physical fitness, academics, defensive tactics and marksmanship. That was in 2002, the 54th OHP Academy. One of his “littermates” in the “Hard Core 54” was John Vincent, who now protects Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy.
Orr worked in the Public Information Office and patrolled the interstates, was promoted to lieutenant in 2013 and recently took his captain’s test. But his real calling, Orr said, is driving Oklahoma’s smaller roads. And every day, someone recognizes him.
Those postgame shots of the coaches’ handshake at midfield? For 12 years now, Orr has been in the background. So he’ll often spend a few minutes talking Sooner football with a trucker he has pulled over.
“That’s good publicity for the Patrol,” Orr said. “If it makes the Patrol look good, that’s what we want.”
Gameday
It’s 8 a.m. and the Sooners, who kick off against the Cyclones in three hours, are eating breakfast at the team hotel. Outside, Orr and his caravan-mates in the police escort — Chandler and OHP Lt. Mike Roe — are eyeing over the Bentley Coupe of football operations director Matt McMillen. Players begin to trickle out onto the two buses, and the police escort quickly saddles up in three separate vehicles.
On Oklahoma State Highway 9, just south of Norman, traffic has begun to congeal. Four stoplights separate the team hotel and Jenkins Avenue, but the Sooners stop at none. With both lanes jammed, the escort navigates the 4 1/2-mile route with surgical precision. Lights are on, sirens are wailing, and when the traffic can’t move, Orr and the others scoot through turn lanes or over the shoulder.
Some drivers move, some don’t. But the caravan never stops. As a dispatch call comes in about a man under a car and not moving, the security team becomes laser focused, leapfrogging one another to block off the next intersection, allowing the buses to roll on unencumbered.
It’s a right turn onto Jenkins, and the stadium looms just two miles ahead. Once on campus, the caravan slows to a safe speed as Sooner Nation takes a break from tailgating to line the street, wave and snap photos. The caravan swerves around concrete barriers and peels off at the corner of Jenkins and Lindsey as the buses turn left in front of Memorial Stadium.
Orr talks with noted Oklahoma fan and WWE legend Jim Ross before a game (John E. Hoover)
Orr escorts a guest into the stadium, past security, through the team’s palatial new facility, out of the player tunnel and onto the field. There, as he waits for his cue to rendezvous with Riley, Orr meets an old friend, WWE Hall of Fame announcer Jim Ross, Good Ol’ J.R., the famous cowboy hat-wearing Sooner fan who roams the sideline on gamedays.
“If I’d met Lt. Orr 20 years ago, I’d be recruiting him heavily for WWE,” said Ross, who discovered John Cena, The Rock and countless other pro wrestling superstars. “Brian’s becoming the most famous native of Okemah since Woody Guthrie, but he has bigger arms.
“Seriously, Lt. Orr is a great representative of our state, and coach Riley should feel very safe and secure.”
Orr and Ross shoot the breeze for a spell until Orr looks up at the countdown clock. It’s time. He ducks into the tunnel and up the ramp, headed for the coaches locker room to find Riley.
“He’s normally right there,” Riley says. “Sometimes I leave without him and he gets mad at me. But he doesn’t let me go far.”
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On the road
A tractor trailer has blown through an I-40 construction zone near Shawnee, at 17 mph over the speed limit. Orr peers through his hand-held Lidar device, pinpointing the vehicle and its precise speed. He turns on his emergency lights, merges safely into traffic, quickly pulls behind the truck and waits.
And waits.
Orr switches lights, activates the sirens, blows a horn, weaves in and out of the mirrors’ views, but for three miles, the driver doesn’t react. Surely this miscreant is perpetrating some felonious act, probably armed with automatic weapons and eager to shoot.
“Nah,” Orr says. “He just ain’t paying attention.”
But Orr plays it cool. After the driver eventually pulls onto the shoulder, Orr steps to the passenger side and approaches with caution, his right hand on his Glock 17 Gen4 sidearm as he knocks on the door.
Orr steps up to the cab and reminds the driver to check his mirrors more often, then performs a Level 2 inspection — driver record and vehicle/trailer exterior. The driver is from Amarillo, Texas, on his way to Peabody, Mass., carrying a load of cow hides. Orr checks the driver’s documents and examines the company’s history (its safety rating of 85 is in the red, so “we probably need to look at this company,” he says).
Orr doesn’t write up a traffic citation for speeding, but does enter several federal violations into his computer and prints them out to give to the driver. Those will hurt both the company’s safety rating and the driver’s CDL-A license.
It all looks routine, but Orr disagrees.
“There’s no such thing,” he says, “as a routine traffic stop.”
Orr spends the rest of the morning patrolling Pottawatomie, Lincoln, Oklahoma and Cleveland counties for OHP Troop S. He’s thankful for whatever routine he can get: A backhoe on a drop-deck trailer has four securement points instead of six; a load of I-beams with no warning flag attached protrudes from the trailer beyond the 4-foot allowance; a trailer carries six large culvert pipes secured with nothing but bailing wire.
Orr doesn’t write a traffic citation all day, but does spell out very clearly what he wants each driver to do. They all seem to get the message.
“Everybody that gets stopped out here doesn’t always get a ticket,” Orr says. “Our job is public safety. If I can get my point across without a piece of paper, then I’ve done my job.”
On the sideline
Riley trots onto the field for pregame warmups, and Orr is one step behind.
No one anticipates any trouble. But just like those “routine” traffic stops, you never know.
There was the time in Lubbock in 2007, when the third-ranked Sooners lost to Texas Tech in a frenzied 34-27 finish. The Texas Rangers — the law enforcement agency, not the baseball team — extend the courtesy of providing two Rangers to help protect the visiting team. When fans flooded the field, one particularly drunk Red Raider supporter thought he’d take a potshot at Stoops.
He clubbed a guy in a white cowboy hat instead.
“As we’re walking off, I kind of feel something behind Bob, and this little ol’ Texas Ranger, he’s got this guy chicken-winged up the ramp,” Orr said. “During his interview, he said his intent was to get to Bob. I guess he was so drunk, he hit the Ranger. Bad move. But, if he would have hit Bob, it would have been over.”
Then in 2011, after a 44-10 loss to Oklahoma State in Stillwater, Cowboy fans mobbed the field. It got so dangerous one fan was seriously injured when a goalpost was torn down. After the handshake crush between Stoops and Gundy, Orr rushed Stoops through the melee. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone in the stands launch a bottle at Stoops. It was a good throw.
“I was able to kind of knock it out of the air before it got to him,” Orr said. “That was your typical going-to-an-away-game type of deal.”
When warmups conclude, Orr sidles up to Riley again and shadows him into the locker room. Later, 11 minutes before kickoff, they emerge again, together, through a pathway of fans, under blaring music and smoke and fireworks.
Orr takes up his post on the Sooner sideline, standing vigil for nearly four hours. Nothing untoward happens before, during or after the Iowa State game — other than the Sooners’ 38-31 loss to a 31-point underdog. When it’s over, Riley and Orr jog to midfield, find Campbell for a quick handshake, then head back to the tunnel as the coach contemplates his first career loss.
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The cop
Orr says he probably averages 500-600 miles a week in his 2017 Chevy Silverado Crew Cab pickup. It’s loaded with safety equipment and the latest electronic law enforcement gadgets. Most of those miles actually are on the routine side. But Orr also said he probably draws his sidearm an average of three times a month. Thankfully, he has never fired it.
There was the one time he and a fellow Moore PD rookie answered a domestic disturbance call and the resident pushed a shotgun out the window and fired at them.
“We were out in the street. We got behind the curb,” Orr said. “I don’t know if you know this or not, the human body can get below a curb. I know this.”
The only other time he has been “scared,” Orr said, was when he got a call about a CMV on fire on Interstate 35 just south of Norman. He put a little too much on the accelerator coming off an entrance ramp, lost control, spun around, bounced through the center median and found himself staring down an oncoming tractor trailer rig.
“He locks that thing up, ‘eeerrrch!’ gets around me, hits the shoulder,” Orr said. “My car was dead. It hit the median and shut down and I’m sitting sideways in the northbound lane. Man, luckily that dude could drive a truck.”
The next day, he drove his damaged cruiser to Dallas to shadow Stoops for the annual Oklahoma-Texas showdown.
“It is very challenging,” said Krista Orr, the lieutenant’s wife. “Every day — especially in the world we live in right now — every day he puts on that uniform and walks out that door, I just, me and the daughters, we say the same thing: ‘Just come back to us.’ Every day.”
Krista Orr knows all too well the dangers her husband may face on any given day. She rode along with him a few times early in their marriage, but it wasn’t for her. Sometimes he tells her some pretty harrowing stories.
“He puts his life on the line every day,” she said, “and it is a struggle.”
Both Krista and Brian were married previously. He came with two daughters, and she came with one. They are the reason why, when he steps out of his patrol truck every day, he steps into his combination workshop/home gym. A self-described gym rat, Orr spends 30 minutes a day on cardio and another 30 minutes on the weights, isolating a different body part each day.
It’s an ideal stress reliever, yes, but it’s also a necessary bridge between his home life and his work life.
“I want to come home to my family each and every night,” Orr said. “I want to come home to my children and my wife, and keeping in shape is how I do that.
“So if I’m in the bar ditch fighting with some guy that’s strung out on meth, I know I’m going to win that battle.”
Above all, that intensive Academy training and those 15 years’ experience on the Patrol have forged a high-level peacemaker.
“People think we’re robots. We’re not robots. I’m just like you are,” Orr said. “You talk about our training, yeah, we have to have training for people that are mentally ill and people that are on dope and people that are just combative. We have to learn how to defuse those situations. And it’s not all the time that you can. And bad things do happen.”
Orr says he’s sure criminals and truckers know where he lives, but he’s not worried. He has a wrought iron fence around his property and, as a “gun nut, I’ve got a gun under every pillow and in every corner. My 11-year-old and my 14-year-old, they can grab that AR-15 right now and manipulate it and go to work. My wife doesn’t leave the house without her pistol in her purse.”
Nobody admires Orr and the job he does more than his wife.
“Whether it’s OU football or another riot or someone at the Governor’s mansion throwing a fit, he’s the first one to say, ‘I’ll put the uniform on and I’ll be there to protect you and it will all be OK,’” she said.
“But there’s times I look at it and I can’t wait till his last day, so that I know he’s home and I know he’s here with us from here on out. He would probably be upset with me saying that, because he doesn’t look at it in that sense. You know? To him, this is the job he took on.”
Orr escorts Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley off the field before Oklahoma's game against Iowa State (John E. Hoover)
The bodyguard
The Sooners have been all over the place lately, literally and figuratively, from that crushing home loss to Iowa State to a final-play, neutral-site victory over Texas to a thrilling win on the road at Kansas State.
Saturday’s game in Manhattan was Orr’s 153rd in a row on the Oklahoma watchtower. In a deal worked out between the Oklahoma Highway Patrol and the University of Oklahoma (Oklahoma State has the same deal), the Troopers’ overtime salary is paid not by the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety, but by the school’s athletic department — no taxpayer dollars.
And as high-profile state employees, Riley and Gundy are afforded honorary dignitary status, essentially a step below the governor and lieutenant governor.
After getting the Sooners to Dallas in a record-hour and 48 minutes on Oct. 13, Orr endured 95 degree temperatures and 50 percent humidity the next day in his Class A dress uniform — but did get a sudden cool-down after the game.
“Lincoln got his first dose of Gatorade dumped on him,” Orr said. “I caught about half of it. That was cool though. Big smile on his face when that happened.”
And for the game in Manhattan, delayed 30 minutes by lightning, Orr’s OHP rain gear was at his side — bright yellow for traffic stops, reversed to black for football games.
“I don’t want to stand out like a big ol’ banana,” he said.
Of course, there were no on-field incidents. There almost never are when Orr is standing guard, though there was the one time in 2013 when a drunk Sooner fan ran onto Owen Field and Orr raced out there and laid him out with the kind of teeth-rattling form tackle today’s OU defense could use more of.
“He’s a great guy — as long as you catch him in the right mood,” Riley said. “When he goes into protection mode, that’s when he’s different.”