OU football: A solution for Bob Stoops

Bob Stoops said Monday night he would not break up the Sooners’ routine on road trips. Said he would not consider taking to Waco, Texas, on Saturday instead of Friday.

Stoops should reconsider. It’s a heck of an idea. The Sooners are getting hit with a plethora of night road games: 6 p.m. (Eastern time) at Cincinnati, 7 p.m. at Missouri, 6 p.m. at Texas A&M, 7 p.m. at Baylor.

That makes for a lot of sitting around. That makes for a lot of down time. That makes for a lot of watching other teams try to win on the road. Football teams cursed with a night road game eat a couple of times, conduct meetings, maybe even have a walk-through practice, sometimes even in a parking lot.

Compare that to teams that play a day game. Wake up. Eat breakfast. Meet to go over gameplans and the such, head to the stadium. It’s a really crisp day. Not so with night games.

Most coaches are loathe to come in the day of the game. They figure it signals a lack of respect for the opponent. I think that’s bogus. You’ve got to do what’s best for your own guys.

Stoops said the only time he’s been a part of going in the day of the game, the 1993 Kansas State Wildcats went to Minneapolis the day of the game and beat Minnesota 30-25. That was in some ways a landmark game for the Wildcats. That helped trigger a 9-2-1 season for Bill Snyder, who in his fourth year had previously only won two road games — at Iowa State and Oklahoma State, both in 1991.

One of Stoops’ mentors, Hayden Fry, had Iowa fly in the day of the game against Tulsa in 1996. Didn’t turn out so well. The Golden Hurricane stunned the Hawkeyes 27-20 at Skelly Stadium.

So there’s case history going both ways.

But this we know. The Sooners haven’t played well on the road. Most players hate road trips — not road games — because they do a lot of sitting around. I’ve sat around enough hotel rooms, waiting to go to a ballpark, that I know how stir crazy you can get.

Why not mix it up? Why not go in the day of the game to Waco? Set up the next week, when the Sooners would be nuts to go to Stillwater the day of the game.

I know, the Sooners’ have a game-day routine, home and away. They stay in a Norman hotel for home games and have meetings and the like, and last time I checked, the Sooners are a halfway decent home team.

But desperate times call for desperate measures. The Sooners still have a chance to make this a memorable season. But they’ve got to win back-to-back road games to set it up.