OU must avoid potholes on trek to Washington
NORMAN — A SETUP to lose. A trap game. A perfect storm for failure.
By Dave Sitter
Correction
This column incorrectly listed the conference affiliation for the Cincinnati college football team. Cincinnati is a member of the Big East, which is part of the Bowl Championship Series.
Take your pick. Any or all of the above could apply to what Oklahoma's football team could be headed for when it travels to Seattle for Saturday's game against Washington.
I suppose it is understandable why oddsmakers have established third-ranked and undefeated OU (2-0) as a 20-point favorite against a winless (0-2) Washington team, even though the 6:45 p.m. contest will be played in picturesque Husky Stadium.
But let me count the ways why everything could go haywire for the Sooners.
1) Washington coach Tyrone Willingham desperately needs a victory to quiet the critics who are fed up with his 11-27 record.
2) The Huskies will be fired up after a horrible judgment call by an official cost them dearly in last week's 28-27 loss to No. 15 Brigham Young University.
3) The pro-Washington crowd in the 72,500-seat stadium
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will be as ticked off as the Huskies over last week's injustice and will be screaming for blood when the Sooners arrive on the scene.
4) OU could start believing its press clippings. The local and national media are fawning all over the Sooners, even though their two wins came against non-BCS teams that were horrible (UT-Chattanooga) and semi-decent (Cincinnati).
5) Bob Stoops will be going for his 100th win as OU's coach. But Stoops, who is 56-2 at home, has a 27-11 record on opponents' home fields. That includes losses the past two times OU faced road games against Pac-10 Conference schools at UCLA and Oregon.
The last point is the one that should concern Sooner supporters as much as it does Stoops. In his 10th season at OU, Stoops doesn't need a very long memory to recall the last time his team walked into the kind of trap the Huskies hope to spring on the Sooners this weekend.
On Sept. 29, 2007, third-ranked and undefeated (4-0) Oklahoma was a 22 1/2-point favorite when it hit the road to open Big 12 Conference play at Colorado (2-2). The unranked and unimpressed Buffaloes hung a 27-24 loss on the Sooners at Folsom Field.
OU also lost at Texas Tech after quarterback Sam Bradford went out with a concussion. But Bradford played the whole game when the Sooners squeaked out an ugly win at Iowa State.
The Sooners pulled a Jekyll and Hyde act in neutral site games. They defeated Missouri in San Antonio to win the Big 12 title, but were soundly whipped by West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona.
It was obvious at Tuesday's weekly press conference that Stoops made winning on the road a point of emphasis during the offseason.
"It's something we've talked about a lot this summer," Bradford said. "This is our first opportunity to come out and kind of redeem ourselves for the way we played on the road last year."
Linebacker Travis Lewis said one of the primary goals the Sooners set in the preseason was to wipe away the memory of their poor road play a year ago.
"And our coaches have been preaching it," Lewis said. "For me, this (Washington) game is the game of the year, because it sets the tone for our future road games and sets the tone for our team.
"It's easy playing in front of 85,000 fans that love you, but what about the 80,000 that hate you?"
Stoops is as eager as his players to find out if this OU team will be known four months from now as road warriors or wimps.
There is the obvious fact that almost every team at any level plays better at home, Stoops said. But other than turnovers, he can't pinpoint exactly what went wrong away from Owen Field last season, and he has told his players as much.
"I can be as excited and focused as I want to be," is Stoops' message to his players this week, "but if you're not, it doesn't much matter.
"It's up to you guys to put in the extra focus, extra time and commitment to be ready to play."
OU entered last season's Colorado game averaging an amazing 61.5 points a contest. After scoring 57 and 52 points in their first two outings of 2008, the Sooners' egos are being stroked locally and nationally.
Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly said OU belonged in the NFL. ESPN's Mel Kiper wrote that he has not seen a college offense in 30 years that is as explosive, multidimensional and high-octane as the Sooners. Reporters already are asking Stoops if this is his best-ever offense.
"I'm fighting the media, and I mean in the right way, of (our players) keeping a perspective on everything," Stoops said. "You're never as good as they (media) say you are, and you're never as bad as they want to say you are."
Check back with the Sooners when they return home early Sunday. If people are saying they are bad, it means they were set up to fall into a trap game in Seattle, where they were done in by a perfect storm of factors that few could see before kickoff.
By Dave Sittler
