NORMAN — You may have heard the hand-wringing on the radio. How this is no way to schedule a national championship. It might have struck you as misplaced.
Since when did a team one year removed from a five-loss season have to worry about whether or not its schedule might prevent or aid a quest for a national championship?
Since when did an offense led by a sophomore quarterback, protected by a retooled offensive line that just lost the No. 4 pick in the draft, have anybody thinking it might land itself in Glendale, Ariz., site of the 2011 BCS National Championship Game?
Since the usual suspects of college football prognostication began considering Oklahoma, that’s when.
Because while Athlon, Lindy’s and The Sporting News all chose defending national champion Alabama to repeat, Phil Steele — the guy has a magazine; he’s not just some random guy; and his picks have been better than his competitors’ over the years — chose Oklahoma No. 1.
None of the four chose the Sooners outside the top 10.
Though some of the writers for these preseason mags may know their way around college football, the preseason top 25 is more art than science, more throw it on the wall and see what sticks than mind-numbing research (except, perhaps, in the case of Steele, who sounds like professor going through this stuff).
So, never before has something generated so much conversation yet meant so little. It happens every season.
Can OU win it all?
Absolutey.
All the Sooners must do to is win every game. Which brings us back to the schedule.
Utah State is a college football tomato can even if Bob Stoops tells us the week of the game “they’re sound in what they do.”
Everybody else on the schedule, save perhaps Iowa State, Texas A&M and Baylor are real teams.
Outside the conference, that means Florida State, Air Force and Cincinnati.
One of them (Florida State) won a bowl game last year, another one (Cincinnati) played in a BCS game last year and Air Force won seven games, going 5-3 in the Mountain West Conference.
As it turns out, the Sooners, in some eyes, have lucked out.
It is the first year for Florida State without Bobby Bowden as coach and that could make a difference for the better for the Seminoles, like maybe they might stop somebody, but nobody has them higher than No. 13, Lindy’s doesn’t rank them and Steele sees them No. 20.
Cincinnati lost coach Brian Kelly to Notre Dame before losing the Sugar Bowl to Florida 51-24 and nobody seems to like the Bearcats this season with Lindy’s posting them No. 22 and nobody else ranking them.
Nobody’s ranking Air Force either.
But if the Sooners lucked out by not facing a murderer’s row, they have nonetheless scheduled correctly because college football ain’t dodge ball.
The idea isn’t to bob and weave your way to a national championship, but to earn it and nobody enjoys a pretender’s row, the kind of schedule Bill Snyder made famous at Kansas State.
It’s like Herman Edwards so famously said, you play to win the game. He did not say you schedule to win the game. You schedule to play the game, but you’ve still got to win it.
Just maybe, OU will enter the Cotton Bowl Oct. 2 off a quartet of cakewalk victories and just maybe none of us will be sure what they’ve really proven.
But they will have tried.
Because there’s no scheduling your way to the promised land. You can only win your way there.
