LINCOLN, Neb. -- Oklahoma and Nebraska should play every season!

That's the idea, isn't it?

Whenever this game comes around, that's the thought. Because the good old days never cease being good and old, it always sounds like a bang up plan.

Other games live on, geographic divisional boundaries be damned.

Why can't this one?

Perhaps it wouldn't be what it's been every year, but these are still two fine programs. The nostalgia their meeting creates is never anything but cool and if all it ever really accomplishes is getting reruns of the Game of the Century shown yearly on ESPN Classic isn't that still enough?

So play it every year.

It's a good argument.

Hard to get past.

Hard to fight your way out of.

Except for this.

It's the wrong argument.

It doesn't apply.

Perhaps it's worth pointing out that playing the Sooners every season can only help the Huskers. OU doesn't need the help. Prestige hasn't been a problem around here since October 2000.

Of course, nobody wants to be selfish, so go ahead and shelve the go-build-your-program-back-up-and-then-we'll-talk line of thinking.

Instead, go with this.

When everybody talks about Sooners and Huskers and days of yore, what are they really talking about?

Great teams, yes.

Great players, yes.

Great coaches, yes.

Great tradition, yes.

But what kept it all together?

Great stakes.

And, if the Orange Bowl committee was treating everybody right back in the day, great steaks, too.

Nebraska and OU might have been defined by a lot of things, yet more than anything else it was what the winner got for winning, and more than anything else, that was a trip to Miami, a date in the Orange Bowl and, if everything fell your way, a national championship could be in the cards.

OU or Nebraska went to the Orange Bowl every season from 1978 to 1989 and all but four times from 1976 to 1998.

That's what made it great.

It meant so much.

But here's the thing about that.

There's an annual game, one played every season on a neutral field, at which the Sooners and Huskers could still see to it they play every season.

It's asking a lot, of course, but doesn't bringing a great rivalry back demand a little greatness? The game is called the Big 12 Championship and they play it every year.

The Sooners, really, have done their part, reaching the game seven times in its 13-year history, all seven trips since 2000.

The Huskers went to three of the first four, but only one since. And unless they win today, they're not going back this season, either.

So, there's that.

Otherwise, at what price rivalry, that is the question.

Is it worth blowing up the Big 12's geographic divisions?

Or maybe you don't blow up the divisions, but go ahead and schedule the game anyway, which would be competitively unfair to the Huskers right now and, conceivably, unfair to the Sooners at a later date.

Or maybe we should go back in time.

Back to the old Big Eight, back to a bowl selection system that makes the BCS look like the most impartial arbiter in the history of impartial arbiters.

That would necessitate another not-very-good non conference game and, for that matter, the Sooners playing in a conference that's a lot closer to the quality of the Big East than the Big 12.

All of that to bring back a great rivalry that no longer carries the high stakes which made it so much fun in the first place.

Who needs that every season?

When the Sooners and Huskers are both really, really good, they're bound to meet anyway, the first week of December, in a stadium to be named later.

Until then, living in the past isn't so bad. Likely better than what we'll see on the field today.

Clay Horning 366-3526 cfhorning@normantranscript.com