Clay Horning: Where Sooners headed will never be the same or as good
Aug. 6—There are two hard truths about Oklahoma's impending exit from the Big 12 and the conference's likely eventual dissolution.
One, the Sooner experience inside the Southeastern Conference will never be as good, as much fun, or as riveting as the Big 12 at its best.
It won't be.
It can't be.
Two, it's been a very long time since the Big 12 was anything near its best, which has much to do with OU and Texas splitting.
There are two lines of regret for those wistful for the Sooners' old conference ties.
One, it's not the Big 12 that's so hard to let go of, but the Big Eight before it.
The Big Eight gave us the Game of the Century, a trio of national championships for the team from Norman, Barry Switzer and the wishbone, the Selmon brothers and Little Joe Washington and Scott Case recovering an onside kick at the 1983 Bedlam game in which, down two, every Sooner on the field knew the plan was to kick it deep with 2:50 remaining, everyone but Tim Lashar, who happened to be the kicker.
The Big Eight was great basketball, too. Billy Tubbs at the Sooner helm alongside great programs at Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri and, back then, every once in a while, the Pokes weren't terrible either.
That history followed the Sooners into the Big 12. It wasn't a new conference, but venerable and great, just updated and improved, everything the Big Eight ever was, only more.
Texas remained on the schedule and now the game meant more. The newly branded two-division league necessitated a championship game and though OU wouldn't sniff it, or even a winning record for three impossible seasons under the late John Blake, two years into Bob Stoops' tenure they were in it and winning it and many more after that.
The other is baked into the old Big 12 South, which had to be the hardest thing to win in college football in the 2000s.
Remember the "Jump Around" game, Texas Tech at Owen Field, Nov. 22, 2008, a few days after Stoops challenged Sooner fans not to sit on their hands and make some noise?
The Saturday that game was played, Texas Tech entered unbeaten and No. 2 in what were then called the BCS Standings; Texas, which had only lost to Tech in the final seconds on the great Michael Crabtree's finest collegiate moment, entered No. 3; Oklahoma, no slouch, had only lost to Texas and entered No. 5; Oklahoma State, which had the day off, had fallen only to Tech and Texas and was No. 12, one spot in front of North division frontrunner Missouri.
Six teams in the division, three in the top five, four in the top 12 into the fourth week of the November. That was a division.
Nothing in the SEC once the Sooners arrive will match it.
Maybe you'll get that many teams ranked that high in the College Football Playoff Rankings, but it won't feel the same, because OU has no real competitive history with Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida or LSU. Though the Sooners once took on the Gators and once took on the Tigers for national championships, one huge game does not a history make, and playing Florida at the Cotton Bowl last season doesn't do it either.
OU has a long history with Missouri and a shorter history with Texas A&M is what it has.
Such laments, perhaps irrelevant, are still real.
Like, when it happens, when OU and Texas get there, who will be the lifetime SEC rushing leader?
Herschel Walker, who galloped 5,259 yards over just three seasons at Georgia, or Cedric Benson, who finished with 5,540 over four at Texas?
Even if they give it to Benson, which they won't, there will be little connection.
In so many ways, you are where you come from. The Sooners will be in the SEC, but not of it.
Give them 25 years and ... nah, not then either.
Clay Horning
405 366-3526
Follow me @clayhorning
