By Clay Horning
It’s probably a bigger rivalry to Oklahoma State. Because, let’s face it, when Oklahoma plays Miami next season, ghosts of the past will awaken, Sooner fans wanting to get even for all those national championships Barry Switzer never won because OU could never beat the Hurricanes. And that was just a few games in the 80s.
So how do you think dyed-in-the-wool Cowboys feel every time a game like Saturday’s rolls around?
That’s one half of the crux of the rivalry they call Bedlam.
But here’s the other. The Pokes hold the power.
Maybe that’s a nice way of calling OSU a spoiler, when most teams would rather be in a position to be spoiled. So, Sooner fans, feel free to throw that one back in the Pokes’ face come game time. Not that it changes anything. The Pokes have the power.
Only they can take the Sooners down, wipe that good taste out of the Sooner Nation’s mouth and pretty much ruin the whole season.
It wouldn’t be so if OU had lost at Missouri and A&M; and two weeks ago to Texas Tech, because it’s kind of hard to destroy a five-loss season, at least around here. It’s hard to destroy something twice.
But the Sooners forced their own luck in Columbia, did all that was required at A&M; and flat came back to put the Red Raiders away. What OU’s got going, as Bob Stoops might say, is special. In fact, he’s kind of said it already.
“I’d just say, through this whole thing, it’s been very satisfying for a lot of reasons,” he said. “But the players’ attitudes have just been fabulous, we’ve never flinched at anything.”
It wasn’t much fun kicking Rhett Bomar and J.D. Quinn off the team, or getting jobbed by the officials, both on the field and off, and more than once, at Oregon. Nor is it much fun having to move people around in the secondary, dealing with injuries or getting whipped at the Cotton Bowl a second straight season.
And still …
“It has been a very pleasing year for me to go to work every day with these guys,” Stoops said.
It is his genius, or unbelievably fantastic luck, that Stoops’ Sooners, national championship games aside, perhaps, get better every season, never failing to close strong. So strong, even the most sour beginning always ends well enough to leave the approaching offseason no less than a celebration of potential and possibility.
Gary Gibbs, with a Gator Bowl victory, did that once; Stoops seems to do it every season but the ones he’s come within 60 minutes of winning it all.
Here were are again.
OU has gone from 3-2 to 9-2.
After being stuck in the rankings for so long, the Sooners are moving up again. At No. 13, there are only two two-loss teams in front of them, Texas and LSU, and it’s hard to complain about the Longhorns. There’s even talk of OU reaching a BCS bowl without the Aggies taking the Longhorns down today. And how great a story would that be after everything that’s gone down.
With the national championship game now separated from the Rose, Fiesta, Orange and Sugar, two more spots are available and the Sooners cannot be ignored … as long as they win Saturday afternoon at Boone Pickens Stadium.
OU should win.
No question.
But Stoops should never have lost to Les Miles and it happened twice.
So here it is.
The Sooners are the comeback team of the fall and the Pokes are in position to wreck it all.
Clay Horning366-3526cfhorning@normantranscript.com
