Downtown Tulsa now has bistros in the carcasses of forgotten warehouses, and it has BOK Center, a gleaming arena that opened in 2008, further fueling the city’s national and international ambitions.

In a nod to the state’s American Indian history, the Olympic torch would be led along the solemn Trail of Tears, not far from where field hockey would be played in Tahlequah.

If the mayor was skeptical at first, he has since come to support the bid, in large part because of the conviction of Mr. Mavis, an electrical engineer and instructor at a local technology college who has been working on Tulsa 2024 for the last five years.

Mr. Mavis bought copies of Atlanta’s 1996 bid on eBay to use as a model for Tulsa’s bid. He has given a series of PowerPoint presentations to City Council members and local business owners, drumming up support slide by slide. He argues that revenue from ticket sales and television rights will offset the costs. In some ways, Tulsa has become a sports town. It has embraced the W.N.B.A.’s Shock, even though they are in last place in the Western Conference. Tulsa has hosted several major golf tournaments and the Bassmaster Classic, an elite fishing competition.

“We have all the resources,” Mr. Mavis said. “We just need the spark.”

As for signature landmarks, he pointed to the Golden Driller, a 76-foot-tall oil worker with cheese-color skin and a giant belt buckle that proudly declares, “TULSA.” The main media center would sit at its feet and Olympic medals would hang from its neck.

The site of the annual Tulsa State Fair, where the livestock competition is a main attraction, has a recreational vehicle park that could be converted into a broadcast hub. In their downtime, athletes could relax in the nearby Big Splash Water Park, with its rainbow spaghetti of slides and flumes.

The modern pentathletes would have their running and shooting event in Shawnee, about 90 miles away, and then fly back to Tulsa in propeller planes for the other events.