UAB is no TCU
Published: 8/21/2006 8:29 AM
Last Modified: 8/21/2006 8:29 AM
Adrian Peterson looked at me like I was crazy. Or maybe just in need of a mental kick in the pants.
"Excuse me?" he said.
I saw the hush of embarrassed confusion in his face – embarrassed for me, not for himself – and my peripheral vision quickly noticed that everyone in the room was looking at me, wondering if I'd somehow substituted rum for mouthwash that morning.
I quickly hit the mental rewind. What the heck did I just say? The question sounded sane when it came out. Hmm.
"Do you know," I had asked Oklahoma's star running back, following up on another's question about his father's prison term, "if he'll be there to watch the TCU game?"
I saw Peterson's unsure face. He looked like he wanted to slap me back into the conversation – "Stop daydreaming, Hoover! What do you want to do with your life?!?"
TCU? A four-letter word in these parts, to be sure. But wait. The Sooners this year weren't opening with TCU. This was media day 2006, and about a dozen other reporters and I had gathered in OU's Red Room to ask Peterson about seven minutes worth of questions.
And somehow, one of my follow-ups asked him if his dad would be able to attend the TCU game? Brilliant.
TCU, of course, was the scourge of 2005. This being 2006, it would be a little late for Nelson Peterson to watch his son play for the first time in seven years – against the Horned Frogs.
I closed my eyes, shook my head and smiled, as sheepishly as I could.
The Sooners were opening this season with another three-letter acronym: UAB. That's Alabama-Birmingham.
Who knows why I said TCU? Maybe more than a year of associating "season-opener" with "TCU" had left a permanent mark on my frontal lobe. Maybe I'm alphabetically challenged.
"I mean UAB," I said.
Peterson, sensing my shame, didn't pile on.
"We don't know yet," he said.
Then, an awkward silence in the room. None of the other scribes had anything prepared, and the sheer goofiness of my TCU query had apparently given everyone in the room a momentarily brain lock.
"No updates on your dad's status, then?" I asked, hoping for a little more detail.
"No," Peterson replied.
Another moment of silence, followed by a long pause.
"So," I said, "You wouldn't happen to know when OU is gonna play TCU next, do you?"
Like everyone else in the room, Peterson laughed.
One of the best ways to keep everyone else from making fun of you is to make fun of yourself.
– John E. Hoover
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
