Sooners or Later, Rivalry Is Back

Somewhere between past and present, between bites of a Thanksgiving turkey leg, between Bud Wilkinson and Bob Stoops, one of college football’s greatest rivalries got lost in a scheduling quirk.

Kids listening to Limp Bizkit today may not know that No. 1 Nebraska vs. No. 3 Oklahoma, which means something again Saturday, used to always mean something.

But after Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer bowed out in 1988 after years of playing Black Bart against Nebraska white-hat Tom Osborne, the series went untended like weeds in a vacant lot.

The balance of power shifted so dramatically there was only a modicum of outrage when, because of Big 12 Conference expansion in the mid-1990s, Nebraska and Oklahoma were exiled to different divisions and missed each other on the schedule in 1998 and 1999.

Imagine Ohio State and Michigan going on a two-year hiatus, or USC and UCLA putting their grudge match on hold until 2002.

Yet, Oklahoma had swooned so far off the football map by the late 1990s that side-stepping Nebraska seemed almost an act of mercy.

Once, no school tortured Nebraska more than Oklahoma. Five times the Sooners handed the Cornhuskers their only regular-season loss.

Once, no coach tortured Osborne more than Switzer.

The landscape changed after Switzer, who led the Sooners to their last national title in 1985, coached his final regular-season game against Nebraska in 1988.

Osborne pounced into the vacuum, retooling his power option attack and upgrading his defense.

Osborne was 6-13 versus Oklahoma before reeling off seven consecutive victories to finish his career at 13-13, winning three national titles in that 1990s stretch before retiring after the ’97 season.

Nebraska has won nine of the last 10 meetings.

While Osborne was cementing his legacy, snatching back national titles those dastardly Switzer teams denied him, Oklahoma made a series of post-Switzer hires that got progressively worse: Gary Gibbs, Howard Schnellenberger and John Blake.

At low ebb, Oklahoma posted a 23-33-1 record from 1994 through ’98.

Suddenly, though, in an incredible 18-game swing, Oklahoma is all the way back, playing host to Nebraska this weekend in Norman with a possible national title in the balance.

You could say two men flipped Oklahoma football on its lid.

The first was Stoops, hired in 1998 to stop the Sooner red bleeding. As Steve Spurrier’s defensive coordinator at Florida, Stoops learned at the foot of the master.

“He gets the most out of his players and coaches, in a great way” Stoops says of Spurrier. “He just has a knack for that.”

Stoops brought to Norman some of Spurrier’s exuded confidence.

How long did it take Stoops to make believers of Blake’s leftovers?

“When he first walked in the door,” Oklahoma safety J.T. Thatcher says. “I saw what kind of man he was: straightforward, head on straight, and he knows what he’s talking about. A guy like that you’ll do anything for. I’ll run through a brick wall for this man because he’s got me where I am today.”

Thatcher was a freshman running back the last time Oklahoma faced Nebraska, in 1997. Nebraska won, 69-7, the most lopsided victory in the series.

Everyone expected Stoops to arrive in Norman and exact his will on defense.

Instead, Stoops reinvented the Oklahoma offense, transforming it from option mode to the kind of passing attack that could make Spurrier proud.

Enter Big Man On Campus No. 2, quarterback Josh Heupel, an unheralded junior college transfer from Aberdeen, S.D.

Last year, as a junior, Heupel began his overhaul on the Oklahoma record book in leading his team to a 7-5 record.

This year, he has led his team to a 6-0 start, passed for nearly 1,900 yards and emerged as a Heisman Trophy candidate.

In Oklahoma’s victory over Kansas State two weeks ago, he completed 29 of 37 passes for 374 yards. Switzer’s teams wouldn’t throw that many passes in a month.

Heupel’s obsession with success has infiltrated the huddle.

“I’ve got to chase him off the field every now and then, just to get him in the locker room, make him go to dinner and get on with his evening,” Stoops says.

Heupel arrived with his priorities in place. He said South Dakota was Nebraska territory, and he grew up rooting against the Cornhuskers just to be different.

“I was probably not a Nebraska fan just because they were all around me,” he says.

He remembers soaking up Oklahoma nostalgia during his recruiting visit.

“You see the number of national championships, the conference championships, the bowl champions,” he says. “You see all those numbers, the wall of fame . . . you understand they’re not going to accept anything less than that.”

So Nebraska versus Oklahoma is back in play.

Nebraska hasn’t changed a bit. The Cornhuskers have been running the same offense for what seems half a century.

It’s Oklahoma that has undergone the make-over, trading the running game for 30 yards and a cloud of dust.

Oklahoma isn’t just hype anymore--it’s Heupel.

“Your program gets the respect it deserves when you win football games,” he said.

So far this year, Oklahoma has won them all.

NORTHWEST PASSAGE

Eureka!

Yes, the best football in the Pacific 10 Conference is being played north of Eureka, Calif.

Oregon, Washington and Oregon State sit atop the conference standings this week and are sopping up national attention as well.

Oregon is ranked No. 7 in the Associated Press poll, followed by No. 9 Washington and No. 18 Oregon State.

Sniff, Sniff, we smell a trend.

First, they wooed us with their coffee.

Now, they’re speaking football as a second language.

The Pacific Northwest is where it’s at and Southern California had better get used to it.

Right?

“I think it’s way, way overstated to say the power has shifted,” Washington Coach Rick Neuheisel said this week. “This particular season, the Northwest schools are having a good year. To say that UCLA and USC are down and are behind the Oregon schools as well as the Washington situation, I think, is making way too much out of a one-year phenomenon.”

Maybe, maybe not.

There are forces at work here. First, Oregon, Washington and Oregon State may have the Pac-10’s three best coaches in Mike Bellotti, Neuheisel and Dennis Erickson.

What’s more, the timber schools have raided California talent like never before.

Washington has 27 players from Southern California on its roster.

At Oregon State, players from California outnumber players from Oregon, 56 to 32. The ratio is 52 to 30 at Oregon.

Even Neuheisel concedes the Northwest schools have upped the ante.

“The population of the state of California is such that there are enough players for everybody,” Neuheisel said. “And because of scholarship numbers, USC and UCLA can’t keep them all. They can’t.

“It becomes an evaluation game. And given our limitations on evaluations, we’re going to get our share of players. There’s no question.”

CLOSE CALL

Nov. 14 marks the 30th anniversary of the plane crash that wiped out the Marshall football team.

Last Saturday night, for a few frightening minutes, members of the Arizona State football entourage thought they were doomed when the Sun Devils’ team plane, returning home after an overtime victory at Washington State, was twice struck by lightning on approach to Phoenix.

“I’ll tell you, I have never experienced that feeling before and was just hoping that I would see my kids one more time,” Arizona State sports information director Mark Brand reported. “For a 10- to 15-minute stretch, everyone on that flight thought this would be the way it ends.”

Brand said he thought an engine had blown after two loud explosions rocked the wing and knocked out the cabin lights. It was only later that the team learned the plane had been struck by lightning.

Once on the ground, Brand said the pilot discovered the lightning had caused a hole in the plane’s tail.

“It checked everybody’s hole card,” Coach Bruce Snyder said. “I think we all started looking at ourselves a bit differently. And that overtime win wasn’t nearly as significant as it was earlier.”

The good news: Arizona State has two consecutive home games and doesn’t travel again until a weekend trip to Stanford on Nov. 11.

Snyder: “I’m glad we’re not getting on a plane this weekend.”

HURRY-UP OFFENSE

More on Oklahoma-Nebraska. In 1971, the schools played the so-called “Game of the Century,” with the No. 1 Cornhuskers beating the No. 2 Sooners, 35-31. Jerry Tagge, Nebraska quarterback that day, is thrilled to have the game mean something again. “This is more important than the presidential race,” Tagge told the Chicago Tribune. “If that game was played on Nov. 7, nobody in Nebraska would vote.” You can bet Osborne is happy the game isn’t Nov. 7. That’s the day he’s expected to be elected to Congress.