John Shinn
There’s no doubt there exists a contingent of Oklahoma fans who judge success on what happens in the Red River Rivalry. To that group, Saturday’s 28-10 loss to the Longhorns leaves a bitter taste that won’t go away.
OU tumbled from No. 14 to No. 23 in the latest Associated Press Top 25. Any national championship hopes are also gone.
But the Sooners, themselves, realize they haven’t even reached the midway point in a long season. Sunday, they quickly turned their attention to what remains.
“They understand they’re in it for the long haul and we have a long season,” Sooner coach Bob Stoops said. “We didn’t just work this whole time just to be in a position to play Texas. Though it’s an important game, we understand they all are when we get into league play.
“We understand what the schedule is and our guys are about that. They’re about the whole year and not one game.”
It’s good OU has something else to think about other than what happened at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.
The Sooners committed five turnovers and were flagged for 11 costly penalties. To make matters worse, the they led 10-7 at halftime and appeared to have the game in their grasp.
It was a disappointing performance.
“The turnovers, you can’t have,” Stoops said. “To me, once you possess the football you cannot fumble. You can’t win when you put the ball on the ground. We have to do a better job finishing with the football.
“I thought the discipline — penalty wise — hurt us. The things that stopped us offensively were the penalties and the turnovers. We have to be able to do that.”
If the Sooners can, there’s plenty to salvage.
Texas (5-1, 2-0 Big 12) is the odds-on favorite to win the Big 12 South now. The winner of the Red River Rivalry has done that six of the last seven years.
But the only reason it isn’t seven straight years was because Texas was able to put its 2001 loss to OU behind it and remain in the race.
The remainder of the schedule was already on the Sooners’ minds before they left Dallas.
“Starting Monday, we have to put this behind us right away,” safety Nic Harris said after the game. “We learned things from this game we can take with us the rest of the season. You can’t let this defeat cost us another game by not putting it behind us.”
Win or lose, OU has a history of doing that during Stoops’ tenure. It’s gone 7-0 in games the week following Texas since 1999. All of those wins have been by at least 10 points.
The Sooners (3-2, 0-1) will try to make it 8-0 when they face Iowa State (3-3, 0-2) at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at Owen Field.
The team goals always start with winning the Big 12 South and OU needs the Longhorns to stumble to gain a berth in the Big 12 championship game.
But the Sooners also have to take care of business.
“Our goals for the season have not changed,” defensive end C.J. Ah You said. “There is still a lot of football left to be played. The Big 12 is a good conference. Teams are going to beat up on each other.”
Perhaps it could happen.
Either way, Stoops isn’t counting on any teams doing OU any favors. His team only controls the outcome of one game a week for the next seven weeks.
“We focus on what we can do and whatever happens outside of that happens,” he said. “But we’re not sitting here cheerleading for anybody or against anybody. We’re just working on ourselves.”
John Shinn366-3536jshinn@normantranscript.com
