The tailgaters were already setting up shop across from the stadium Friday morning. They hardly appeared nervous, but why should they?
It's Idaho State for crying out loud. The Bengals have no chance. They're no Appalachian State.
But one wonders what the tailgaters, if so inclined to entertain deep college football thoughts, are really thinking.
What's up with this team?
What about the line?
Can Landry Jones throw the ball?
Who will catch it?
Because the intellectuals among them must realize one thing. For an absolutely worthless game, what happens on Owen Field tonight has never been more important.
For the skill and talent on one side of the ball and not the other, today's game is no more than a scrimmage between first- and third-teamers. Indeed it would be if only...
n The Sooners hadn't shocked the nation, their coaches and themselves with last Saturday's self-imposed self-destruction inside Cowboys Stadium.
n The stadium wasn't chock full of fans still wanting to believe in something greater than their worst fears about this team, fears they could happily plead ignorant to until BYU, even on a day it gave four turnovers away, topped OU 14-13.
n It wasn't the actual college football season, two weeks in, with no mulligans allowed and today is like the shortest par 5 the Sooners will ever play. Best to take advantage before facing the really tough holes on the course, like Miami, Texas and Oklahoma State or, considering last week, every other hole on the course.
It clearly doesn't help the nation's best collegiate quarterback will be watching from the bench, hoping Eli Manning was right about his shoulder sprain probably being a two-week hiccup. Nor that the nation's best pass-catching tight end has already seen his season washed away.
But that doesn't change the fact Sam Bradford's and Jermaine Gresham's injuries are not nearly the most bothersome things about this team.
Had they been well last week and had OU taken advantage by slipping past a good, but not that good band of Cougars, the issues would be the same and no less pressing when placed against the national championship expectations the Sooners thought they might live up to once Bradford, Gresham, Trent Williams and Gerald McCoy all decided to return for another season of college football, an expectation only bolstered when Travis Lewis, Dominique Franks, Jeremy Beal and DeMarco Murray joined their preseason All-American teammates as preseason All-Big 12 first teamers.
Perhaps tonight's game will be up against the test Supreme Court Judge Potter Stewart once put to the question of obscenity. It's hard to know what OU might do reintroduce itself in a way that puts the Sooner Nation at some level of ease, but we'll know it when we see it.
Likely it has something to do with Landry Jones not simply failing to hurt the cause, but, even asked to do very little, a modicum of leadership comes shining through. Kevin Wilson said he was the only one making a go of bucking up his teammates at the half last week and that's promising. Maybe we'll see it beyond closed doors today.
And a clean game from the offensive line for heaven's sake. You know, at least one where it seems to understand this timeless football truism: don't move until the ball moves.
And while Jones moves his passing yards forward with an accurate arm, a stable of receivers that turns those receptions into something more after the catch. A "wow" moment or two. Something to justify just a few of the kudos passed around in the preseason.
None of it seemed like much to ask for even as BYU readied to play the then- but no-longer No. 3 team in the nation. Now, somehow, against maybe the least of all the programs ever to stare OU down on its home turf, it seems like much more.
Still, OU should deliver.
No excuses.
Remember?
Clay Horning 366-3526 cfhorning@normantranscript.com
