Today may be the last day this season sixth-ranked Oklahoma can walk into a stadium, any stadium, play a dud of a game and win. And that alone is all the reason in the world a dud of a game, even a victorious dud, won’t be near enough.
Because the Sooners’ place in another crazy season of college football is only a little bit about what might happen today — unless, yegads, they lose; but all the data says that’s impossible — and a whole lot about what happens later in the day at Lubbock, Texas, next week when the team that calls Lubbock home visits Norman, and the week after that, when the biggest Bedlam carnival in memory arrives in Stillwater.
Remember that there are still two questions facing this team when it comes to meeting its and the Sooner Nation’s wildest dreams. The first one remains whether or not OU can get there, in position to play for a national championship, the answer of which is yes, but it’s complicated and it’s really complicated if Texas Tech doesn’t beat Oklahoma State tonight. The second one, however, asks even if the Sooners can spy a narrow road to the BCS title game, are they team enough to navigate the path.
The two questions are interesting because at different times it’s been easier to answer one or the other more emphatically.
Until the run game went nowhere at the Cotton Bowl and the defense went nowhere following Ryan Reynolds’ season-ending knee injury, also at the Cotton Bowl, the Sooners’ path and ability to take it appeared wide and true.
Coming out of a trip to Kansas State, the path, though narrow, might have appeared more clear than OU’s ability to take it, what with a defensive implosion for the ages; good thing it lasted less than a quarter.
That’s why last week’s crushing victory over Nebraska was about getting right. Getting right for what lies ahead and getting right, should opportunity knock, to be in position to walk through the door.
That’s also why I had one question for Bob Stoops earlier in the week. Did his team’s practice habits still deserve the same glowing reports he was handing out earlier in the season?
“Our guys have been really good,” he said. “They’ve been great in how they prepare. They’ve had great attitude through the week.”
Probably he would have said the same thing under any circumstance, yet still I believe him, which means if his team was ever in position to see itself as possibly the nation’s best, it should still think so and perhaps even be right.
And if last week was about getting right, this week’s about really getting right. About getting to a place where there’s no second guessing, no suspicion and no doubt in anybody’s mind this team is capable of doing truly great things. All it needs is the chance.
That time will come.
It may not come in the form of a BCS championship game, nor even a Big 12 title game. It may only come in the form of this game today and three more.
Texas Tech at home, Oklahoma State on the road and a bowl to be named later. Win the lot of them and it might be the best season since 2000.
At the very least, given the way so many Stoops’ era seasons have ended, it will at least feel like it.
Today is a bridge to get there and maybe beyond.
The Sooners need to take it. Just winning isn’t enough.
Clay Horning
366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com
OU Sports
Today is a bridge, perhaps to great things
Commentary
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Sooners make winning look easy
