Cooper BartonANN ARBOR, MI (WNEM/AP) -
Welcome to the Big House, Cooper.
A 5-year-old boy who was forced to turn his University of Michigan shirt inside out at his Oklahoma kindergarten was the guest of the Wolverines at their football game Saturday against Massachusetts.
With 110,000 fans giving him a standing ovation, Cooper Barton was escorted onto the field by Michigan cheerleaders during a first-quarter timeout. With the help of his mother, he turned the T-shirt around again. But this time it was to display the Michigan emblem, not hide it.
Cooper told reporters it was an "exciting" moment.
Last month when TV5 reported on this story, the boy's mother said that her son had to turn the shirt inside out on the playground behind a tree.
"They should really worry about academics. It wasn't offensive. He's 5," Cooper Barton's mother Shannon said.
Oklahoma City Public Schools has suspended its ban on kids wearing non-Oklahoma sports apparel. The dress code was created in 2005 with the help of an anti-gang task force.
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
