The Norman Transcript

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September 14, 2008

That's how you do it

Clay Horning

Well, it’s going to be one of those seasons.

It’s going to be one of those seasons in which any loss, should one occur, will appear tragic and out of place and just, somehow, wrong.

It’s going to be one of those seasons in which the big question is no longer whether or not Bob Stoops and his team can win every game, but whether or not they can keep from slipping up even once.

It’s going to be one of those seasons, like the second, third, fourth and fifth of the Stoops era, when the object is only keep it going, because no help will be required to stare at another national championship.

Oklahoma played for the national title trophy in 2000, 2003 and 2004. In 2001 the Sooners were 7-0 when Jason White blew out his first knee at Nebraska and might still have been in the national championship mix until inexplicably losing Bedlam to a bad bunch of Pokes. The next year they were 8-0 before losing at Texas A&M; and a better bunch of Pokes did it again.

This season, OU will get there; or not.

That is, it will play for it all, or experience crushing disappointment.

There will be no in between.

The unintended consequence of what happened Saturday night in Seattle, of the Sooners throwing their road woes into Puget Sound, of taking everybody’s best-case scenario into Husky Stadium and exceeding the script, it’s that it’s one of those seasons.

Like James Garner’s one-liner delivered during the pregame madness that is the Owen Field experience, in 2008, this is Oklahoma football.

OU crushed Washington 55-14 and the game was no closer nor further away than that. Sam Bradford was incredible. Ryan Broyles continued to be a revelation and Jermaine Gresham has to be the most dangerous tight end in the nation. (I’d write that he is if I’d seen everybody else, but I haven’t. I just can’t imagine one more dangerous).

The big question was how the Sooners might fare on the road. Now the big question is whether or not their road, the long and winding one that is every season, will even include a bump.

Saturday afternoon was a pretty good primer on the perils of the road.

No. 2 Georgia went into Columbia, S.C., to meet Steve Spurrier’s unranked Gamecocks. They were game, indeed, and still the Bulldogs were supposed to win by more than seven points and they sure weren’t supposed to need an end zone interception to salt it away.

The nation’s best out-of-nowhere story, 14th-ranked East Carolina, already with victories over Virginia Tech and West Virginia in tow, met Tulane in the Big Easy and only won 28-24 after trailing most of the game.

No. 16 Oregon had to go overtime to beat unranked Purdue at West Lafayette, Ind., and No. 23 Cal met unranked Maryland at College Park only to be trounced.

You bet the road’s a tough place to play.

Just not for OU; Saturday, at least.

Perhaps we missed the story last week.

The topic was right, all about the Sooners’ struggles away from home. But the thesis, that the troubles must have been rooted in some character flaw, like a lack of focus or toughess, might have been misguided.

Maybe OU just wasn’t good enough.

Only now, it is.

Maybe you just have to walk before you can run, even if you look like the best team in the nation as long as all you have to do is keep walking.

But a year later, these Sooners might run all the way to Miami.

Clay Horning

366-3526

cfhorning@normantranscript.com

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