STILLWATER, Okla. -- The airplanes used to get the Oklahoma
State men's basketball team to and from many of its games are
privately owned and are donated to the program.
Tom Dirato, director of radio and television at Oklahoma State,
said it has long been a practice for friends of coach Eddie Sutton
or backers of the program to donate the use of their planes to the
team.
Dirato said he didn't know who owned the plane.
The small planes are a boon, he said, because they provide more
flexibility than commercial travel and result in less class time
being missed by the players. And, since they're donated, they are
far less expensive than midsize charter planes.
"That is a mode of transportation that a lot of teams use," he
said Sunday. "We never had a bad plane."
Dirato, who has worked 22 years for Oklahoma State, was aboard
one of two small jets that arrived safely back in Stillwater on
Saturday night from Colorado. A third aircraft, a Beechcraft King
Air prop plane, crashed near Denver, killing all 10 people aboard.
Dirato flew to Colorado on the prop plane, but returned to
Stillwater on one of the jets. He said coach Eddie Sutton set that
up after seeing that Dirato was been bothered by a bad back. The
flights on the jets are 20-30 minutes shorter than those on the
prop plane.
Dirato and second-year assistant coach Kyle Keller were given
spots on one of the jets, which resulted in reserve players Dan
Lawson and Nate Fleming being bumped to the plane that crashed.
"I would trade 56 years of my life for someone 20 years,"
Dirato said.
He said he didn't know why Keller had also been switched to one
of the jets. "I'm just making a long-distance observation that
they wanted to get all the coaches on that plane," he said. "A
lot of times after a game they'll get together and discuss the game
or the next game. That's the only thing I can gather."
The small planes are used mostly during the conference season
and for nonconference games in the region. For long trips, such as
this year's game at San Diego State, the team flies commercial.
Dirato said the players' seating on the aircraft is based on
seniority, with seniors and upper classmen joining Sutton and his
coaches on one plane, and the rest of the players getting on the
second plane. Trainers, the radio crew and others usually fly on
the third plane.
One of the pilots of the plane that crashed, Denver Mills, had
flown the team on dozens of trips through the years.
"Denver, he's so meticulous a pilot," Dirato said. "He never,
ever put us in jeopardy, ever."
On this trip, Dirato said, Mills insisted on putting the plane
in a hangar overnight, even though at the time there were clear
skies and no significant threat of snow. The plane was warming up
in the hangar when the passengers boarded after Saturday's game, he
said.
One of those killed was Bill Teegins, the Cowboys' radio
play-by-play announcer. Dirato had served as Teegins' color
commentator on the broadcasts for the past 10 years, and he said
the two talked many times about the possibility a crash could
occur.
The conversations, often light-hearted, weren't the result of
any concerns about the planes, Dirato said, but instead touched on
the odds against doing so much flying without incident.
"It's just an eventuality you knew you were going to face," he
said. "Both of us knew this could happen."
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ALSO SEE
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OSU to review travel policy in wake of fatal plane crash
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Last-minute change saves broadcaster from doomed plane
Reaction from around the Big 12
AUDIO VIDEO
 ESPN's Steve Cyphers takes a close look at the Oklahoma State plane crash tragedy.
RealVideo: 56.6 | ISDN | T1
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