By mere luck of the draw, Oklahoma stands a better than average chance today.
The Sooners have won 59 of 61 at Owen Field since Bob Stoops came to town. They’ve won the last four Owen Field meetings between two top 5 teams. There’s the revenge factor of having lost at Texas Tech last season. And, by golly, isn’t it about time they won a game like this?
It is one way to look at it.
Nine full seasons of the Stoops era have yielded five Big 12 championships, one national championship, two more appearances in the BCS title game and six BCS bowl appearances in all.
You can’t throw water on a list like that. An onside kick here, a questioning of the Sooners’ readiness there can be picked apart from the aggregate and mulled, and it has, yet there’s no questioning the era as a whole; there’s no “well they’ve always struggled with x, y and z.”
They haven’t.
But OU has struggled recently, on the really big stage, in really meaningful games, when all the nation is watching.
Today is certainly that.
The Heisman Trophy could be decided, yet it seems like the 863rd biggest aspect to what will begin taking place at 7 p.m.
A quick review tells us Texas Tech has three ways to reach the BCS championship game, all of which require winning the Big 12 championship game. The Red Raiders can win today; lose today but get help from Oklahoma State beating OU next Saturday; or somehow retain the highest BCS standing after losing today and finishing in a three-way South Division tie with OU and Texas.
Most think door No. 3 locked.
OU has one chance to reach the same destination. The Sooners must win today, win next Saturday, and hope to come out atop South Division wash.
OU could be playing Baylor today and still face the same assignment, but it’s not. It’s playing the No. 2 team in the nation, the last remaining unbeaten power conference team this side of Alabama, in the prime time network television slot and everybody will be watching not simply because the final outcome will decide so much (or nothing at all), but because people want to see these two teams, from sea to shining sea.
College football is a national game, but most of the time a regional draw. Tonight bypasses all of that. They’ll be talking about it Monday morning in front of water coolers from Bismarck to Boston.
That makes it more like what’s happened in Glendale, Ariz., the last two seasons than what might happen in Stillwater next week or what’s already happened at the Cotton Bowl.
It’s the kind of game OU always seemed to win, but lately has had so much trouble winning. If that’s not fair, if it’s not really that big, if nothing in November can be compared to anything in January, then fine.
But that’s the way it feels.
Win the last game, the players said they started talking about long before the season began. Well, this is just the kind of game they were talking about, everything but the last part.
Stoops can even get some of his Big Game Bobness back with a victory today and maybe a lot of it back if the Sooners can make it convincing.
Stoops understands. Why else would he risk alienating his fan base if not already figuring the cause justified the chance?
Everybody else understands, too. That’s why there’s been a blimp tethered down at Max Westheimer Field all week.
Finally, today, the game will be played. Just the kind of game this program needs to win.
Clay Horning
366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com
OU Sports
It’s time Sooners win a game like this
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