Sooners turn table on Texas
JULY 23, 2001

Fans' View

Robert Seale/TSN
Bob Stoops
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Today, college football fan Steve Schindler examines the rivalry between Texas, a team many pick to win it all, and Oklahoma, last season's champion.

The heated football rivalry between neighboring states Texas and Oklahoma began way back in 1900. Ever since 1929 the two have played during the Texas State Fair. The 1937 Texas/OU game was the first to be played in the Cotton Bowl. The first television broadcast of the game came in 1948 and for the last 100 years the Texas/OU rivalry has been one of the very best in college football.

Out of the 95 times the two have met on the gridiron, Texas has won more than half of the time and leads the series by some 20 games. There's no win savored more by native-born Texans, with the possible exception of a national championship, than one in which the 'Horns lay a good old-time kicking to Sooners' rears and visa-versa.

So, for almost all of college football history -- at least since the turn of the last century -- the Texas Longhorns had the Oklahoma Sooners to kick around. In all that time Texas fans knew one constant factor, they knew that OU sucked. Well, events of last season have strongly challenged that long-standing belief and Longhorns fans all over the country must come to reckoning with it. This sad sour-grapes commentary goes something like this:

Josh, Josh, Josh! Much of this season's college football hype was centered on Sooner QB Josh Heupel. The OU offense was a terribly efficient monster for most of the season and Heupel was a huge part of that. He was runner-up for last season's Heisman Trophy. But what many across the country paid little attention to was the cold terror the OU defense wrought in the hearts of college offensive coaches all season long.

With the Heupel-ed up Sooners' offense rolling for 675 points the OU defense quietly mauled opponents allowing a mere 194 counter-points. Following their dramatic 13-2 victory over the high-powered Florida State Seminoles in this year's Orange Bowl championship game the Sooners gathered at mid-field and hoisted senior QB Heupel upon their shoulders in celebration. They could have hoisted the entire Sooner defense as well.

The Oklahoma defense smothered a Florida State offense that came into the Orange Bowl ranked No. 1 in passing and No. 3 in scoring. Miami had shut down QB Chris Weinke's band of high-scoring men for a half. Oklahoma did it for an entire game with only their punting squad giving up a safety to the Seminoles in the last minutes of the game. With Calmus and Marshall stuffing the line and a confusing scheme of zone coverages confusing Wienke, the Sooners played an exquisite defensive chess match to stay one step ahead of Bobby Bowden's boys all night long.

The Seminoles maintained a similar level of defensive toughness for most of that evening, but Heupel and his offense managed enough of their trademark short-yardage success to get in position for 13 points. Just enough to carry away the national title; just enough to quiet all of the Sooner doubters that made them 10 1/2 point underdogs to Florida State. No one outside Norman Oklahoma thought this outcome was possible. Some of us Longhorns might have known after the 63-14 shelling the Sooners laid on us this season, but we would never admit it.

This current edition of Oklahoma Sooners just doesn't suck. The Stoops brothers have come in and installed highly disciplined offensive and defensive systems and one becomes hard pressed to remember the last time these guys actually lost. Whoever it was that beat them last, they didn't do it this year because the Sooners won 13 games for the first time in school history, coming out victorious over top-10 teams five times along the way.

Stoops and his staff instilled a mental toughness in his team, a disciplined way to do things and a high confidence level at which this team was expected to play. All season long Stoops looked his players, his coaches, and a nation of doubters straight in the eye and told them flat-out he expected his team to win every game. Unfortunately for the rest of us, his team began to believe right along with him.

Stoops is quickly becoming recognized as the new prototypical head coach that every program wants to rebuild around. His youth, his optimism and his disciplined methods are overshadowing the old-school "Bear Bryant" methods that have prevailed for so long.

Another bad omen for the rest of us is that this Sooners team is very young. OU has 23 freshmen and sophomores entrenched in their two-deep depth chart and that is not the normal make-up of a national college champion.

Replacing senior QB Heupel won't be easy. With most of their stable of quality receivers and running backs returning the Sooners must find a new leader that can think on his feet, make the proper reads and respond quickly with correct adjustments. Heupel excelled in this regard and Stoops hopes that one of the three big QB candidates remaining on the squad can master the nuances of the offense quickly and keep his team performing on a high level.

With Orange Bowl MVP Torrance Marshall gone it will be up to the returning Roy Williams, Michael Thompson and Derrick Strait to lead the defense. In that case, it looks like several long seasons ahead for anyone on OU's schedule.

In his two seasons Bob Stoops has imbued an eternal glow of optimism amongst his troops. Upon taking over last year he immediately began talking about how many games they would win. He expected it would take two years for his Sooners to begin vying for championships. Well, he was flat wrong. It took only two years for his team to collect its first trophy.

If Stoops repeats with a second consecutive title, he will join an exclusive club indeed. Both Wilkinson and Switzer pulled off back-to-back titles in their days at OU and both Alabama and Nebraska have scored the same coup. If he takes the top spot next season, Stoops will make Oklahoma the only school to accomplish this feat in triplicate. Longhorns fans will never hear the end of that one.

All right Longhorns fans, this is a difficult assignment and you're going to need to concentrate and muster all of your inner strength to complete it: Now, repeat after me, at least once, the Oklahoma Sooners are the National Champs and OU does not suck, for now.

You can contact Steve Schindler at sportslist@schindlerslists.com.

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