North already trying to save face
Published: 7/27/2009 4:56 PM
Last Modified: 7/27/2009 4:56 PM
IRVING, Texas -- OU-Texas topped the Bleacher Report Web site's list of the 50 best college football games of 2009. No surprise there. Slotting Bedlam at No. 11 seemed right as well. No problem with OU-Miami at 33 or OU-BYU at 43 either.
But how about these two: OU-Kansas at No. 20 ("scary game for the Sooners"), and OU-Nebraska at 38 ("could be a preview of the Big 12 championship").
All right. Both road games. Lincoln has never been a picnic. And the Sooners head to Lawrence a week after their epic against Texas. Trap game. I get it.
Still, it makes just as much sense to call on some numbers that Matt Hinton of Yahoo!Sports recently crunched for his column entitled "When Will the North Rise Again?"...
Big 12 South record vs. North since 2004: 67-28.
Nebraska launched Big 12 media days here at the Westin-DFW earlier today, and it took just a few minutes into the players' interview sessions for this inevitable question to be asked:
Does it bother you that the South is so dominant?
Ndamukong Suh, the Huskers' star D-tackle, said he thought it was great that OU, Texas, Tech and OSU did so well outside the conference, for the sake of the league's overall profile. A really thoughtful answer.
At the same time, Suh realized something needed to be done to change that grotesquely-lopsided North-South ledger since '04.
"Compete," he said. "We've gotta go down there and beat those guys (South teams)."
He could start by winning "up there" against the Sooners Nov. 7.
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
