Tulsa World: Stoops today: OU-Nebraska rivalry has changed

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Stoops today: OU-Nebraska rivalry has changed

OU football head coach Bob Stoops. STEPHEN PINGRY/Tulsa World File

By GUERIN EMIG World Sports Writer
Published: 11/2/2009 10:37 AM
Last Modified: 11/2/2009 1:48 PM

NORMAN — As a boy growing up in Youngstown, Ohio, Bob Stoops always looked forward to the annual Oklahoma-Nebraska game.

“Always after Thanksgiving, you couldn’t wait to watch this game,” he has said. “The great players that were on the field, two great coaches. You knew it was going to be a great one, and there was so much on the line every time. It was always exciting.”

Now that the Big 12 Conference has intruded, however, and the Sooners and Huskers play twice every four years, the rivalry isn’t quite the same.

“There’s no question it’s changed,” Stoops said during his Big 12 teleconference Monday morning. “You think back to the old Big 8 days, for so many years it was Oklahoma and Nebraska at the top of the league, and battling at the end of the season. There’s no denying it’s changed now that you don’t play every year and you’re not in the same division.”

Stoops tries to give his players a history lesson every week of the OU-Nebraska game.

“But to young guys in today’s world, history is a year or two,” he said. “But you do your best to educate them. You like them to understand where the rivalry used to be, and the tradition of it.”

Stoops is 5-1 against Nebraska as OU coach, his only setback coming Oct. 27, 2001, in Lincoln, 20-10. The Sooners won there in 2005, 31-24, and will try to win again Saturday at 7 p.m.

OU hammered the Huskers last year in Norman, 62-28.

By GUERIN EMIG World Sports Writer

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COMMENTS

Reader comments for this story have been moved to the most updated version of the story, now under the headline "Big 12 Conference Buzz," which was published on 11/3/2009. So far, 36 comments have been made.

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