Oklahoma Sooners appear ambush-proof against TCU Frogs

So much for the David-surprises-Goliath factor.

This time, Goliath isn’t buying.

When Bob Stoops, coach of mighty giant Oklahoma, was asked this week whether he had reminded his football team of the Sooners’ 2005 ambush by TCU, Stoops didn’t hesitate.

"Aw, yeah," he said at his weekly news conference. "That’s pretty obvious.

"Just for [the Sooners] to understand that, 'Look, this is how well they played and this is how they beat us. You need to understand that obviously we’ve got to perform a whole lot better to have a chance to win.’ "

Consider it, therefore, this weekend’s take-home college psychology test. Will the undefeated, No. 2-ranked Sooners heed their head coach’s warning about the potentially dangerous Horned Frogs? Or will the Sooners simply yawn their way through the proceedings, just hoping to count down another day until they play Texas?

This time, as the Goliaths have suggested this week, the visiting Frogs will be frisked for rocks.

What a horrible scheduling development this is. TCU is undefeated, unscratched and un-bullied upon. Oklahoma, meanwhile, has been leveling and scorching everything in its path.

Games like this are best saved for around New Year’s Day and for national television audiences. TCU’s promising season doesn’t need a September humbling. And tell me again what, exactly, Oklahoma stands to gain by scheduling the best non-Big-12 team within 800 miles?

"Actually, I’m excited," TCU coach Gary Patterson said Thursday. "Games like this, that’s what you coach for."

Patterson said he realizes, though, that the element of surprise is no longer in play.

"I realized that when I scheduled the game," he said, dryly. All Stoops has to do is crank up the projector with the 2005 game film — TCU 17, Oklahoma 10, in Norman, Okla., of all places — and instruct his team to "Just watch."

There were no fluke plays that afternoon, no deus ex machina that rolled in with the tumbleweeds and aided the Frogs in their upset.

"The rest of the game, they beat us pretty good," Stoops recalled.

"In fact, if you look at the game, they should’ve beaten us by more than they did."

The defeat sent Oklahoma, just eight months removed from the 2004 season’s BCS title game, along the stumbling road to an 8-4 season, Stoops’ worst at OU.

Stoops has refused to use the excuse that the ’05 Sooners took TCU lightly.

"I don’t believe that," he said. "Who are we to ... ? I mean, we had a whole bunch of guys who hadn’t done anything. I don’t know who they would have been to ...

"The thing is, TCU had a really good football team and put it to us."

Humility? Check.

Lesson learned? Check.

Pregame self-effacement? Check.

Stoops has covered all the rematch bases. He wouldn’t even let Patterson embellish the blog rumor about "friends of TCU’s program" who supposedly spied on OU practices before the ’05 game.

"That didn’t come from us," Stoops told the media this week. "I’ve made it very clear that when they beat us here they out-toughed us, they out-physicaled us, and they coached a lot better because they had their players a whole lot better prepared that we did."

Patterson’s locker-room bulletin board, in other words, is empty — or, at worst, Stoops-free.

There was one dispatch in The Oklahoman this week, wherein the Frogs’ football success of the past decade was sent to the discount rack because it didn’t come within the confines of the Big 12.

Let me suggest that Southeastern Conference football fans could say the same thing about Oklahoma.

For his part, Patterson spent part of his Thursday lathering up the opponents, just as Stoops did.

"They’re good," the TCU coach said. "Nobody gives us much of a chance, so there’s not going to be much pressure on us."

Oh, stop it, stop it. Both of you. Enough with the humble pie. One month into the season, Stoops’ Sooners have all the looks of a national title contender.

Since the breakup of the Southwest Conference, the Frogs have been to bowl games and beaten Big 12 teams, but they have never faced the No. 2 in the country.

Worst for TCU, Stoops has seen to it that the Sooners have been reminded what happened in 2005. I wouldn’t expect any surprises.