Livestrong: OU's Jan Ross, Sherri Coale share thoughts on Livestrong bracelets

“It wasn't really about him; it was about surviving cancer,” Ross said. “But I don't know how you can see ‘Livestrong' and that brand without seeing him.

“It's sad and it's a shame, but they just go together. They always have.”

A few years ago, the Oklahoma women's basketball assistant wore the campaign's signature yellow wristband while her cousin fought leukemia. The bracelet broke about two years before her breast cancer diagnosis last April.

Ross had surgery in May, toiled throughout summer chemotherapy treatments and is now back at work, her cancer in full remission.

“It'll be interesting to see if it continues,” Ross said of the Livestrong Foundation. “You'd think they'd need somebody else to come in and take it over. ... Him and that brand were so related.”

Ross added that she was very disappointed watching Oprah Winfrey's interview with Armstrong last week, when the seven-time Tour de France winner admitted using performance enhancing drugs, despite a decade-plus of denials and brazen condemnations of — and lawsuits against — those who told the truth.