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September 2, 2008

Sooners all business

By John Shinn

Each day music booms all around Oklahoma’s practice field. Behind the bushes and iron fence, a soundtrack goes along with the Sooners’ daily workout. There’s reasons for the constant tunes.

Coaches like it because it forces players to focus on communication and simulate the crowd noise that accompanies games. Players like it for a different reason.

“They’ve made practice more fun this year,” defensive end Alan Davis said. “Most guys come out to practice and it takes them a while to get into it. The music allows you to get a little groove and get up a little bit when you’re having a good time while you’re stretching. The music really helps loosen things up.”

It’s not like the Sooners are running a vacation camp every weekday afternoon. Practices are as intense as ever. But coaches have praised the business-like approach the players have taken to it.

“They’re willing to listen and they want to be coached,” OU coach Bob Stoops said. “I don’t know, they’ve just had a really great attitude about them and they have a great camaraderie about them. I’ve seen more guys stepping up and being leaders with the older guys we have; not just seniors but juniors as well.

“They’ve just shown that willingness to be coached and are eager to learn.”

If there was one thing OU lacked last season it was that constant focus on the task at hand. Too many times the focus wasn’t there. Just about anything that went wrong in any game could be traced back to a lack of it.

One game is hardly enough to establish a trend, but OU is off to a better start in that regard. It averaged six penalties for 57.5 yards and 1.42 turnovers a game last season. OU’s starters played the bulk of the first half against Tennessee-Chattanooga and only had one penalty and no turnovers.

OU could have played as sloppy as it wanted to last Saturday and it probably wouldn’t have mattered. The talent was so one-sided, the Sooners could have gone out there and messed around for four hours and still won by five touchdowns.

But that won’t be the case at 2:30 p.m. Saturday when Cincinnati arrives at Owen Field. The cupcake part of the Sooners’ schedule is over.

Just about every game they play has the potential to turn into a loss if attention to detail is absent.

The players have gotten the message.

“I think that we come out every day with a purpose and that’s one of the biggest things,” center Jon Cooper said. “We don’t have the attitude of ‘Oh man, it’s another day.’ We have a purpose for every day.”

Of course, the season is still in its infancy. There’s 11 more to go in the regular season alone. A lot can change over a three-month span. OU looked invincible in the non-conference last season, then promptly went out and lost its first conference game.

Steps have been taken to avoid those land mines this season. The focus is where it starts.

“The coaches are going to do everything they can do to get us to play as well as we can,” Davis said. “I think they saw that if we were focused more, we wouldn’t have those kind of games this year. If we can keep it up, we can finish all the way through the bowl game this season.”

John Shinn

366-3536

jshinn@normantranscript.com

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