NORMAN — Torrance Marshall took a look around Owen Field last Friday and couldn’t believe what he saw. The former Sooner linebacker was in town for a reunion of the 2000 national championship team. A lot has changed since that group last stepped on the field.
“There’s a lot more seats,” Marshall said. “The campus is different. Just Norman, period, has changed.”
It has, and the biggest reason is what Marshall and his Sooner teammates did a decade ago.
On Jan. 3, 2001, OU knocked off Florida State 13-2 at the Orange Bowl to claim the program’s seventh national championship.
Winning is something that’s expected at OU. The program just celebrated its 800th win last week. Since World War II, no program has won more games. But that 2000 team will always carry the distinction as the one that accomplished what few thought possible.
OU’s 1950 national championship came the year after an undefeated season. The national titles in 1955 and 1956 came right in the middle of the program’s historic 47-game winning streak.
When the Sooners claimed their fourth in 1974, it was after going 10-0-1 the previous season. OU certainly didn’t sneak up on anybody when it repeated in 1975.
The 1985 title came during a year in which the Sooners began the season atop the preseason polls.
That wasn’t the case with the 2000.
OU was coming off a 7-5 campaign in Bob Stoops’ first season as head coach. That winning season in 1999 was a shot of adrenaline because it marked the first time OU finished above .500 since 1993 and included a bowl trip for the first time since 1994.
There were higher expectations for Stoops’ second season, but nothing close to the final result. The Sooners started the season ranked No. 19 and didn’t really gain any national steam until October.
“It was always ‘When are they going to fold’ or this or that,” linebacker Rocky Calmus said. “It was fine with us. That whole season, we were playing the underdog role and we liked it.”
During a four-week span, OU knocked off No. 11 Texas, 63-14, No. 2 Kansas State, 41-31, and No. 1 Nebraska, 31-14, to get to the top spot. Even a second victory in the Big 12 championship over the Wildcats wasn’t enough to keep the undefeated Sooners from being a double-digit underdog to the Seminoles in the national championship game.
“No one ever respected us all season,” cornerback Derrick Strait said. “We get to the national championship game undefeated and no one was really giving us a chance. We accepted the challenge to do what we’d been doing all season. It wasn’t anything new to us.”
Things haven’t been the same for OU since.
Over the last decade, the Sooners have started every season ranked no lower than 10th. Their loyal and rabid fan base always expects the current version to replicate what happened in 2000.
But things are so much different.
Stoops, of course, is still around, but he has to approach players differently.
“For the first two years, I was trying to convince guys they could do something like that,” he said. “After that, you get a bunch of recruits who think just because they put the jersey on that it’s going to happen. Now you have to convince them they haven’t done anything. You have to earn that.”
The 10th-ranked Sooners face No. 17 Florida State at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Owen Field. It will be the two programs’ first meeting since that night in Miami nearly 10 years ago. In the interim, OU has won six Big 12 championships and played in seven BCS bowl games, including three national championship games.
Florida State is the team trying to regain the prestige that has eroded.
So many changes within the Sooner program go right back to the 2000 season.
The stadium OU plays in, the locker room the players dress in, even the fields the Sooners practice upon have undergone massive overhauls and are barely recognizable. That 2000 team’s success helped jump-start a building boom for athletic facilities that continues today.
For players like Marshall, who were seeing it for the first time, it was a lot to digest. Some told OU athletic director Joe Castiglione they wished it had been like that when they played.
“I told them all this is here because you were here,” Castiglione said. “I told every one of them that.”
John Shinn 366-3536 jshinn@normantranscript.com
