By ROBERT CESSNAIRVING -- Bob Stoops has lost to Texas four of the last five years, but the Oklahoma head football coach doesn't see that as a problem.
"What you guys all forget -- you want to talk about four of the last five -- but three of the last four years we've won the Big 12 championship, in fact three in-a-row," Stoops said. "And no one else has even repeated, let alone threepeat. Right? Somehow that has been forgotten, through you guys or whoever. If you're winning the Big 12 championship, that's what matters most."
And if us guys (and gals) in the media are correct, Stoops and the Sooners will win their seventh Big 12 championship this year. Yet it's not that far-fetched that OU could do that and still lose to Texas.
The more experienced Sooners have the easier conference schedule, so they could run the table outside of their game against the Longhorns, who have two tough road trips.
Texas has to play at Nebraska, which is picked to win the North Division. The Husker nation would like nothing better to beat Texas before heading to the Big Ten. Nebraska's marketing department produced a video this summer for its alumni for the Oct. 16 game that includes the slogan: "Wear Red, Be Loud, Beat Texas." Beat Texas was later deleted, though it correctly reflected the program's mood.
And that's not the only hornets' nest awaiting UT. The Longhorns open Big 12 play at Lubbock on Sept. 18. We all know what happened the last time UT went to the South Plains -- Michael Crabtree's 28-yard touchdown catch with a second left gave Tech a 39-33 victory. That was Texas' lone loss that season and it cost the Longhorns a spot in the Big 12 title game. Instead, the Sooners beat Missouri in the Big 12 Championship and earned a spot in the 2008 BCS Championship despite a 45-35 loss to Texas earlier that season.
It would be painful for Stoops and the Sooners to take that route again on the heels of an 8-5 season, his worst since his first year in Norman, Okla. The Sooners went 7-5 in 1999 the year Stoops took over.
Mentally, OU beating Texas on Oct. 2 at the Cotton Bowl is almost a must -- not necessarily for the Sooners but for the Sooner fans.
"The state is eaten up with OU college football, and beating Texas is darn near a prerequisite," said former Sooner quarterback Dean Blevins, who works at Oklahoma City's CBS affiliate. "It's OK to lose one or two here or there [to Texas], but three of four is hard to swallow for a lot of people, especially after that five-win run [Stoops] had. It kinda spoiled people."
If losing to Texas again wasn't tough enough for the Sooner nation last season, a team capable of winning the national championship fell apart because of injuries. Then during this offseason, Sooner fans had to read and hear about Texas being the key to holding the Big 12 together. Texas with four national championships was the school that every conference wanted, while OU with seven titles quietly worked behind the scenes and waited to see how it all played out.
"I think the Oklahoma people sit back sometimes and feel like a stepchild," Blevins said. "And they don't like feeling like a stepchild to anyone."
OU was just that in the 1990s, a stepchild in the Big Eight and Big 12 as the Sooners struggled under head coaches Gary Gibbs, Howard Schnellenberger and John Blake.
Stoops brought the swagger back to the program with a 13-0 national title team in 2000 that included a 63-14 thumping of the Horns, the first of five straight victories in the series.
That's when UT head coach Mack Brown was being asked annually if he had a problem beating Oklahoma. Brown, like Stoops, didn't see it exactly that way, for UT had beaten OU his first two seasons in Austin.
"The problem with ours was a couple Oklahoma blowouts," said Brown, who also lost to the Sooners 65-13 in 2003. "That's what bothered me. You should never get beat like we were beaten, and I put that solely back on me."
Brown did something about it in a big way, grabbing a 45-12 victory in 2005 en route to 13-0 national championship season.
Now the urgency to win the Red River Shootout is on Stoops. Yet the only real pressure Stoops is feeling to beat Texas is from within, said veteran columnist Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman. It's not as if his job will be on the line Oct. 2 in Dallas.
"But for his own sanity and for the fans' sanity, he needs to beat them," Tramel said.
Blevins agreed.
"Pressure? Yeah, I think there's probably more pressure than since he's been there," he said.
"Beating Texas and you don't do anything the rest of the year? For us and I'm sure for them, it doesn't mean a whole lot," he said. "The goal is to win the Big 12 championship. Championships matter to us, and I'm sure they do to them. We've got a bunch, and three of the last four isn't all bad. That's 75 percent."
But Stoops, who wins at an 80 percent clip (117-29), has set the bar much higher. He's played in four national championship games in 10 years, winning a Big 12 record six championships, twice as many as the next best team, which is Texas.
"So what we're doing, I don't know if it's a problem or not, but it's a pretty good one if it is," he said.
To give Stoops his due, it's a problem 10 other Big 12 coaches wish they had.
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First-year Texas Tech head coach Tommy Tuberville said Tuesday that a replacement should be named now that Southern Cal has to forfeit its 2004 national championship for NCAA violations.
Auburn, under Tuberville that season, was 13-0 and finished No. 2 in the Associated Press poll after beating Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl. Oklahoma, which was No. 3, suffered a 55-19 loss to USC to finish 12-1. Utah was fourth after a 12-0 season that opened with a 41-21 victory over A&M and ended with a 35-7 victory over Pitt in the Fiesta Bowl.
Tuberville didn't say Auburn should be named champ but mentioned the Tigers along with OU and Utah were certainly worthy. He said that co-champs would be OK as well.
Stoops, however, voiced an emphatic "no" when asked if he thought another team should be named the 2004 champion.
"That was a long time ago," he said. "I'm not much for claiming anything that didn't happen on the field."
Robert Cessna's e-mail address is robert.cessna@theeagle.com.
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