Clay Horning
Barring calamity — like, say, a loss — the ultimate success of Oklahoma’s football season doesn’t have to be foreshadowed today at Husky field.
On the other hand, why not?
If every game is an opportunity, this is No. 3 for the Sooners.
Yet if Week One was merely a chance to escape a trivia question (biggest upset ever?) and Week Two was an opportunity for the Sooners to prove themselves against a quality opponent, here in Week Three the opportunity is far more far reaching.
Washington may or may not be a good team.
But as late as the third quarter in its Week One and the last play of the game in Week Two, the Huskies had to like their chances to knock off a very good teams. Oregon got away late and the horrible judgment of an official helped to hasten the end of their chance against BYU.
But the Huskies are at least a capable team and that’s enough to serve the Sooners’ their opportunity today.
Scratch out a win and Bob Stoops can claim real victory because any victory away from home counts. But crush the Huskies and the spread — 201⁄2 points — and you’re really onto something.
Do the former and there’s this nagging feeling the Sooners and their nation will be carrying around until the Bedlam game. A feeling about, still, not being tough enough.
In the Sooners’ favor, they appear to get it.
“We’ve talked about some of the issues from last year, about how you’ve got to be ready to play,” Stoops said. “I can be all excited and ready to go, but I’m not in your shoes. It’s up to (the players) to put in the extra focus and extra time and commitment to be ready to play.”
It’s sentiment that’s been repeated by his quarterback.
“It’s something we’ve talked about a lot this summer,” Sam Bradford said. “This is our first opportunity to come out and kind of redeem ourselves for the way we played on the road last year.”
If they’re not exactly throwing down the gauntlet, it’s still progress. It’s a step beyond running down what happened in the game as though it could have been played anywhere. Because even in victory, at Iowa State, the Sooners were a shell of themselves on their opponent’s home field a year ago.
So the challenge remains.
Win big, kick you know what and take names, end the charade early, escort the fat lady to midfield before midgame, yada, yada, yada, and OU will have done something very real and meaningful.
The Sooners will have proven to themselves first, their coaches second, their nation third and the rest of the nation last that they are indeed in the national championship picture this season. That, perhaps, it will take another blowup at the BCS championship game to keep from their second title of the Stoops era.
It is always a tenuous thing.
Last season, before OU went on the road, Stoops lauded his team for the way it went about its business. “Robotic” he called it, for all of its positive connotations.
Maybe, in retrospect, that was a problem. Maybe, on the road, it has to be personal. Maybe too much emotion can leave you flat but none at all makes certain you’re flat.
Anyway, what the coach thought he had, he did not have.
He likes this team, too. With so much talent, who wouldn’t?
Who can even fathom a Sooner loss that wouldn’t be termed an upset?
But there’s still the doing it, when it matters, which is all the time, including where OU finds itself today.
On the road.
It is a demon to be exorcised.
Only in a very big way.
Clay Horning
366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com
