B ob Stoops was at it again. And it took about 10 seconds.

Before Question One had been asked at Friday afternoon’s press conference in advance of tonight’s Big 12 championship game, Stoops did something he most famously did one night in Miami, holding the national championship trophy aloft.

That night, with Jack Arute holding the microphone, Stoops explained that even though so few gave Oklahoma any kind of a chance against Florida State — indeed, the Sooners were 13-point underdogs — “We” have a history of playing well in the Orange Bowl.

Stoops embraced the tradition of the program the first time he set foot on campus. But this was a little different. More than embracing it, he was making it his own.

So, six years later, outside Arrowhead Stadium, here was Stoops.

“We think through all the great and long Big 8 years, so many times Nebraska and Oklahoma at the end of the year decided the championship,” he said. “So, it’s exciting to be in this position again.”

Again?

The last time OU played Nebraska with the Big 8 championship on the line, Stoops was a wet-behind-the-ears young assistant.

But it doesn’t matter.

A long way from the terse and curt press offerings that have been his habit ever since throwing last season’s Holiday Bowl MVP and sidekick off the team, this is the Stoops the Sooner Nation finds so endearing.

When talking like this, rather than sound like an interloper, he’s smooth to the point of infallibility. Like, if he wasn’t on the Sooner sideline way back when, he must have channeled his way there anyway, invisibly whispering into Galen Hall’s ear, “option left” or “option right.”

So it’s with that little historical observation the opportunity in front of Stoops, the players he coaches and the nation that swears its allegiance to them will be explained.

Because the storybook needs an ending.

Let the Fiesta Bowl — or, yegads, the Cotton — be an epilogue.

Tonight, with the hardware on the line, is the season’s final chapter.

We used to call him Big Game Bob. And it came up earlier in the season because, gee whiz, just what was the last humdinger Stoops and the Sooners claimed?

Plenty, if they’re all big, but they aren’t.

They’re all necessary.

He’s the conference coach of the year and he has guided the Sooners back from an abyss of NCAA criminality, criminally poor officiating and a collarbone break that robbed OU of the nation’s best running back.

Really, Stoops and the Sooners have already done it.

Just getting to tonight’s championship game is a feat among feats, and yet the job must still be finished. Anything short of victory and the entire season will have a yeah, but … quality to it.

Further, whatever luster Stoops has lost by failing to whip the top 10 the way his teams used to, much of it can be regained.

Nebraska’s no top-10 team, but the Huskers are all that’s left.

The body of work simply requires one more, well, body.

And it’s a Husker.

As for the players, it’s not the national championship they might have thought they’d play for one day. And still, for all that’s happened, they’ve come even further to get to this game then they ever could have conceived the whole ball of wax might require.

They’re a special group. But they won’t feel like one without winning.

What’s on the line? Just a conference championship and the way they’ll remember the season for the rest of their lives.

And it’s letting the latter get away from them that will hurt more if the game gets away from them.

But they took care of Missouri at Columbia, Texas A&M; at Kyle Field and Texas Tech after being down two touchdowns. All they have to do is wrap it up.

As for the Sooner Nation, consider it a season of instruction.

Typically, standing in line for a conference championship may not take all OU has had to overcome. And still, all the years the Sooners made it look easy, it wasn’t.

Football’s hard.

This time around, it even looked hard.

So, one more win and they’re champs.

And just maybe, the nation that cheers them on, a national championship not even on the radar, will understand the depth of the achievement.

Clay Horning

366-3526

cfhorning@normantranscript.com