"I can't wait for Saturday," Lofton said. "Sometimes when I lay in my bed, I'm like, 'Man, I wish tomorrow was game day.' But it's next week."

Oklahoma's middle linebacker, a junior from Kingfisher, doesn't have a ton of results to show for his first two seasons. His first year was spent filling in on special teams and at various linebacker spots. His second, he was primarily a backup, but worked his way into five starts the second half of last season and collected 37 tackles.

Now, he's the starter. He's had to fend off the talents of a junior college All-American (Mike Reed), but, with the Sooners' 2007 kickoff coming at 6 p.m. Saturday against North Texas, Lofton has done it.

Said linebackers coach and defensive coordinator Brent Venables, "To be the kind of guy that you can say, 'He's good out there; I don't have to worry about him,' he's finally come to that age as a player."

Lofton came to OU as a Parade All-American in 2004. He made 505 tackles in his high school career and, as a fullback, scored 12 touchdowns and led Kingfisher to a state championship in 2003. He signed with the Sooners after much deliberation between OU and Oklahoma State.

Once at OU, Lofton backed up Zach Latimer for two seasons in the middle and also played some on the strong side and some on the weak side. Latimer was considered solid in 2005 and '06, but it actually took him three years to get into the starting lineup.

"Everybody's just a little bit different," Venables said. "We've had guys that transitioned overnight, and then other guys, it's taken a little bit."

It's not that Lofton never got it. It's that while he was getting it, guys like Latimer and Rufus Alexander and Clint Ingram had a stranglehold on the three linebacker spots. Lofton did, however, learn the nuances of all three spots from behind three pretty good players.

"A lot of people think it's physical, but playing middle linebacker here at Oklahoma has a lot to do with mentally," Lofton said. "You've got to get into the playbook, you've got to know all the calls, all the checks, if somebody lines up wrong, you've got to line them up; if the secondary rolls up wrong, you've got to adjust them."

Said Venables, "He knows what the guy next to him is doing on every single play. He knows what the safety's doing, he knows what the corner's doing, he knows what the 3-technique is doing. And when you do, you play disciplined football and you don't try to do what the defense is not designed to do."

Fending off Reed hasn't been easy. Reed is 6-foot-2, 250 pounds (Lofton is 6-foot, 235) and hits like a sledgehammer.

"(Venables has) got to keep recruiting guys just in case something happens to me," said Lofton, who took over as the starting middle linebacker last spring after recovering from minor knee surgery. "I looked at it as a challenge. Everybody kept saying, 'Mike Reed this and Mike Reed that,' but I just took it like, 'OK, he's going to have to outwork me, because I'm going to give it everything I've got. And if he beats me out, he beats me out.' "

Venables said Reed has struggled to be consistent. Too bad for him that happens to be one of Lofton's strengths -- of which, Venables said, there are many.

"He's big, he's instinctive, he's a knock-back tackler, he's explosive, he's a good blitzer, and he's got super character," he said. "Kids follow him. Kids respect him. He plays very fast out on the field. And when 40's at the tackle, he's knocking people in the other direction."

"This," said Lofton, "is what I came to Oklahoma for. It's like right here in front of me. I mean, it's like, 'What am I going to do with it?' So I've got to step up to the challenge."

John E. Hoover 581-8384
john.hoover@tulsaworld.com