The Sooners are headed for No. 1. How do they feel about that?
Published: 4/19/2011 11:05 PM
Last Modified: 4/19/2011 11:05 PM
Suppose there's a chance someone other than Oklahoma will be college football's "team to beat" out of the 2011 gate. It's looking pretty slight, though.
"When all is said and written come August, the Sooners should be firmly entrenched as college football's consensus No. 1 approaching their Sept. 3 kickoff against Tulsa," Mike Jones wrote in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram recently. "Solid returning nuclei on both sides of the ball from a 12-2 Fiesta Bowl-championship team add credence to that line of thought – as do a Heisman Trophy candidate at quarterback, an All-American receiver, the leader in tackles and verbosity (Travis Lewis) and the advancement in proficiency of the best freshman class in recent memory, soon to be sophomores."
Not even uncertainty at running back can stop OU's offseason momentum.
"In small but dynamic Roy Finch, OU has a spark for its vexing three-back formation," wrote Bruce Feldman, who ranked the Sooners No. 1 in the preseason poll he submitted to ESPN.com. "And with Finch playing alongside highly regarded freshman running back Brandon Williams, the Sooners have enough backfield weapons to make up for the departure of versatile DeMarco Murray."
I might argue against that, at least for the time being. But it probably won't change OU's place atop the national charts come later this summer.
How the Sooners handle that depends on who you ask.
"The preseason number one, I just don't like it. I don't like it at all," a remarkably honest Dejuan Miller said after last week's Red-White Game. "I feel like it puts a big target on our back as a program."
Here was Bob Stoops' take when asked on Tuesday's Big 12 coaches telenconference: "We don't really much care about it. At the end of the day, we're very aware there's a ton of work to be done to earn something like that at the end of the year. It doesn't really matter.
"Truthfully, around here, we're expected to win it every year. So it doesn't change anything we're doing. Our fan base, that's what we're always expecting. We just go about our business.
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
