FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Something, we hope, will be proven on the field Thursday night at Dolphin Stadium when Florida and Oklahoma play for the national championship.
One can hope both teams bring their best and the chips simply fall. It doesn’t happen often, a team losing on its best day, but what the Gators and Sooners have done since dropping their only game offers reason to believe one or the other might. Because if two teams bring their best, one must still lose.
So here’s hoping it’s a classic.
On the other hand, what’s already been proven in the buildup to Thursday night is you can take the child out of the foodfight and make him a sportswriter, a sports talking head or a sportscaster, but you can’t take the foodfight out of the child.
Or something like that.
It’s hard to avoid in our soundbite culture and yet Dominique Franks has never been so famous (or infamous) in Sunshine State.
Offering what seemed to be a fairly thoughtful answer, Franks responded to a direct question with a direct response when he said Florida quarterback Tim Tebow might rank No. 4 among Big 12 conference QBs.
Never mind that Franks was probably right; or, perhaps, wrong by not placing Tebow No. 5, behind Chase Daniel; or No. 6, behind Todd Reesing; or No. 7 behind Joe Ganz; or … all right, just having a little fun there. I’m sure Tebow would be among the top six quarterbacks in the Big 12.
The point is it was as if Franks had come out against the Everglades or Crockett and Tubbs or a free Cuba or he’d said Dwyane Wade belongs in the D-League.
There are all kinds of ways to break down the game, but who wants to talk about that when they can turn answers into spitballs?
Still, it was kind of fun.
Florida linebacker Brandon Spikes fired back with this line:
“You talk like that, he’s gonna make you pay for it. The last time a guy talked like that about him, he put 50 on ’em.”
Really, how great is that?
Not only does Spikes sound like Francis telling Sergeant Hulka and everybody else they better call him Psycho in “Stripes,” but if OU only does what it’s done each of its last last six games, Tebow can go right ahead and put up 50 and Florida will lose by at least eight points.
The truth is, slights like this don’t amount to much of anything. Because sometimes, as in Franks’ case, considering a league that includes Sam Bradford, Colt McCoy and Graham Harrell, it is hardly a slight at all.
Also, if Tebow has all the intangibles everybody says he has (because only that can place him in front of the Big 12’s best QBs; he doesn’t have the stats) the last thing on earth to affect him is a Sooner popping off. If Tebow has all the intangibles, he’s going to play a great game anyway.
What the Sooner Nation might want to celebrate is all the questions being asked of OU’s defense. Because while it’s reasonable to ask Sooner defenders if they can keep up with the Gators, deciding offensive numbers in the Big 12 are a greater reflection on the league’s defenses than the offenses is not.
Anybody who watched the conference this season knows OU, Texas, Texas Tech, Missouri and sometimes even Kansas, Nebraska and Kansas State can become electric while possessing the ball.
And, for all the silliness of it all, make 11 guys really, really mad and it might just mean something come gametime.
In the inescapable back and forth of the buildup, the Sooners have come out ahead.
Clay Horning
366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com
OU Sports
A little smack talk never hurt
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