By Clay Horning
Transcript Sports Editor
It has become a rite of summer around here. It, of course, is the quarterback controversy.
Never mind that there’s never been anything very controversial about it. Doesn’t matter. In the dictionary of college football, simply not having named your starting quarterback coming out of spring drills qualifies as a legitimate Q.C.
With that in mind, there’s been one at Oklahoma every season but one since Josh Heupel and all his one-liners ran out of eligibility. Last year.
Hard to believe, but some pretty smart people actually liked Brent Rawls to run the Sooner show during the preseason of what became Jason White’s Heisman season. Well, at least until an offseason depth cart materialized out of nowhere, yet also out of the Switzer Center.
Well, here we go again and this year may actually be different.
It’s just possible the coaches are not leaning one way or another this time around. And by not leaning one way or another, we mean any direction other than Tommy Grady.
The year Nate Hybl won the job from White, everybody kind of figured it going in. Just like everybody assumed Hybl’s chances to be slim and none the next season. The next year, White’s durability after two knee surgeries was so questionable a few Sooner pundits decided Rawls must be the guy. But that was straightened out before two-a-days even began.
This year, who knows?
Just know this.
It could be Paul Thompson and it could be Rhett Bomar. And, frankly, anybody who thinks Thompson doesn’t enter summer drills, which begin Thursday, at least slightly in the lead, has to be fooling themselves. We were all at the spring game.
Further, anybody who thinks Chuck Long or Bob Stoops will keep the competition going until Bomar can take the job from Thompson, even if that means having no clear No. 1 with UCLA waiting at the Rose Bowl Sept. 17, is an even bigger fool.
The lesson resides just a few hundred miles south.
Paul Thompson’s hardly the returning offensive player of the year in the conference, and still Long and Stoops aren’t nearly half-dumb enough to repeat the errors of Mack Brown, who benched the best quarterback on his team, Major Applewhite, in an unending attempt to allow Chris Simms to take the job away.
There’s no way Stoops would ever allow Bomar to become his Simms or Thompson to become his Applewhite. And if he ever did, he’d be in for the same rough treatment from media and fans. More, he would deserve it.
Oh, yes, Bomar may win the job. But to be the starter, that’s what he must do. Win it.
And another thing.
• One more thing about the last thing. Despite the objections of a few recruiting nerds, there are worse fates for Bomar than being a two-year starter at the University of Oklahoma.
• I’m rooting for J.R. Hurley today at Jimmie Austin. Even as I humbly accept the fact that Jim Traber is the best golfer among the state’s sports media.
• Hey, but once I finally get over the yips …
• You know who the loser is at Madison Square Garden? Well, let’s just say I’m doubting Thomas, but not questioning what Brown can do for the Knicks.
• I have this feeling Joe Castiglione’s 23rd choice to run the Sooner baseball team will do a fine job.
Clay Horning366-3526cfhorning@normantranscript.com
Local Sports
July 31, 2005
Ready for another quarterback controversy
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