Big XII Championship Special

Today is the Big XII championship between the Oklahoma Sooners and the Kansas State Wildcats. The Sooners won the previous matchup 41-31, but KSU is mean, winning games, and mad that we beat them the first time. Three times now in the history of the Big XII has a team come in ranked number one with only a win needed to move that team into the BCS national championship game. The two previous times, that top ranked team has lost. It does beg the question of why to have the game, if it is knocking the conference's best team out of the national title picture consistently, but our coach Bob Stoops is sounding a good line about how the game is a good idea and one he wants to play. Good man. Two reasons why that's important; first, it was the athletic directors' prerogative to play the game, not the coaches -- and the team knows that. If they see a slip in the confidence of their coach it could cause them to doubt. Second, Stoops knows which side his bread is buttered on -- fans love this stuff, and he could already beat Frank Keating in a gubernatorial election, so why not suck up to the fans more?

What does worry me about this game is the fact that the last two teams have really shut down our high powered offense with a series of gimmicky defenses, most of which involve dropping lots of defenders into covering our receivers. Remember that the new offense we run relies on having 5 receivers out running pass routes, so lots of defenders means nowhere to throw. I would expect OU to use some tricky running plays and draws to take advantage of a lack of men in the middle if they try to do that, and I'm hoping that KSU sticks to its normal defensive set, which is a man to man coverage, and our QB Josh Heupel eats those types of defenses for breakfast. We've usually played the best when doubters are in the house. That doesn't mean that this will be easy. Even some of our columnists are predicting we'll lose. However, the defense is playing well, and I'm confident our boys can acquit themselves well -- final score prediction: OU 35, KSU 24. Go Sooners!

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