Berry Tramel: Bring back OU-Nebraska, every year
By BERRY TRAMEL, Staff Writer, btramel@opubco.com
Comments 
93
Published: November 5, 2009
It's Oklahoma-Nebraska week, so you know what that means.
Saccharine overload.
Welcome to college football's lovefest. The series that's more mushy than a Valentine card. More syrupy than a cherry Dr Pepper.
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The rivalry in which fans join hands at halftime and sing We Are the World. In which old gladiators convene the night before kickoff and celebrate the wondrous game they lost.
So OK, I give up. I'm on board. Time to play Oklahoma-Nebraska every season.
Time to trash the Big 12's balanced schedule and make the Sooners-Huskers an annual rite.
College football was built on rivalries like this. College football needs games like this.
We've got enough Florida-Tennessees and Boise State-Oregons. Enough OU-Texases. Enough Bedlams.
We need more games that celebrate all that is great about sport. We need to preserve and treasure traditions, not cast them to the street in the name of equitable scheduling.
The Southeastern Conference realized that back when it expanded to 12 teams and two divisions in 1992. The SEC adopted a scheduling format to protect the Alabama-Tennessee rivalry. The Crimson Tide and Volunteers play every year despite being in opposite divisions. All other SEC team were given an annual crossover opponent, too, but clearly, the format was fueled by Bama-Tennessee.
The Big 12 should do the same. We've tried it for almost 15 years, pretending OU-NU is just another game.
I supported the balanced schedule when the Big 12 formed. Argued that OU-Nebraska was a great rivalry only because it usually was a championship showdown. OU would forge other rivalries.
I was wrong. Turns out, OU-Nebraska endures whether the Big Reds are big dogs or not.
In the 1990s, the Huskers were awesome and the Sooners stunk. Much of this decade, OU soared while NU stumbled.
Yet the bells-on-the-hills feelings remain for these ancient powers, whose eyeblack has shot their arrows into each other's hearts.
Tom Osborne, once Nebraska's coaching legend and now its athletic director, has invited OU's major award winners to join their Nebraska counterparts at a dinner Friday night in Lincoln, then be recognized at halftime Saturday night.
Last October, Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione staged a reunion of the 1971 Game of the Century, which the Sooners lost, that rarest of celebrations, honoring not victory, but competition.
Such honor and respect is in short supply in the modern athletic world, which is why OU-Nebraska clamors to return to an annual schedule.
Yes, it could create a scheduling imbalance, particularly if the Huskers ever return to their historic status as the Central Time Zone's flagship football program north of Norman.
That's a small price to pay to restore a grand tradition that never should have been halted.
Oklahoma and Nebraska played every season from 1928 until 1998. Seventy straight autumns, from Calvin Coolidge's administration to Bill Clinton's.
And an uncommon thing happened. The best parts of sport thrived. Sportsmanship. Dignity. Competition. And the best football games you've ever seen.
Let not such honor take two-year hiatuses, just to satisfy some scheduling model.
Bring back Oklahoma-Nebraska every year.
Berry Tramel: 405-760-8080; Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1.
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the leader and all others follow. Donnie Duncan was trying to stay employed somewhere, so
he didn't care about the rivalry, OU had no competitive football program under Gibb's, no
AD(Duncan), and I think David (the weasel) Swank was still the acting president. Conference
is a want-a-be joke, with weak teams, except Texas. Drop all those non-conference games
and play everybody in the conference, be the leader, not the follower. But it takes an AD
with a pair to get that done and OU Ain't Got One.
The Big 12 schedule works fine the way it is now
Some of my ideas:
1. Colorado has been flirting with the PAC-10 since the Big XII's inception. Let them go get whipped on by USC & Cal. Replace them with someone else.
1a. After the Buffs leave, do anything & everything to convince Arkansas to leave the SEC & join the Big XII. The Razorbacks have great football tradition & are a great program but Hog fans need to face it: compared to other SEC teams, they're second-tier. The Hogs will never get past LSU, Alabama, & Florida to win a SEC Championship. Arkansas is the Texas Tech/OSU/Texas A&M of the SEC.
Arkansas in the Big XII would bring back some great rivalries: OU-Arkansas (1978 Orange Bowl anyone?), & Texas-Arkansas (a SWC classic returns). Put Arkansas in the North division now & the Hogs would be playing for a Big XII Championship for years to come!
With the creation of the Big 12, it is obvious OU's destiny got a big boost. Oklahoma is inevitably linked to Texas and,of course, OSU. Okies love to compete and beat the Texans. It is in our DNA. If we didn't have a Texas, we would have to create one.
I really don't see the OU-Nebraska rivalry as dead, rather, it has been realigned to the realities of college football in today's world. If OU is going to remain a premier college football program, it's destiny is linked with Texas. Playing Texas schools will always keep us on our toes and challenge us.
I have no regrets as to how the Big 12 was created and aligned. Yes, the annual OU-Nebraska game was lost, but a little known fact was that the longest continuously played rivalry between Division I schools, OU-Kansas is lost. I know each university lost a little something with the creation of the Big 12.
What really "chaps me" is the way the current BCS system is arranged. Playing a cupcake nonconference schedule, then, winning your conference is the only way to make it to the BCS National Championship Game. What hypocrisy!
You say you were alive in 1971- well then you must have hidden under a rock in the 90's when OU lost big.
This isn't about who needs who it is about respect for college football.
But I guess college football to you is like NFL football- just a business not a sport.
I understand fully how Devaney/Fairbanks and Switzer/Osborne made the game full of mutual respect but that's about as far back as it goes. It was a flash of 30 years and then it was over. On the scale of things, it really hasn't been a long drawn out affair as the Texas game has been. As is still the case, nobody can top the Red River War as OU's first and foremost true rivalry game. It has stood the test of time and has yet to be topped. In fact, it's probably the best in the country bar none. I'm just being realistic and not going gaga over the days of yesteryear when two top notched teams met during what was actually a short spell of time. Yeah, it was fun, but lets face it, Nebraska is not the Bugeaters of old. They've got recruiting problems that have gone on for a long time now because of their situation and local.
I still stand by my assessment that we don't need them and they need us. We already have a true rival and that bunch is directly south of us. Fact is, year in year out, basically since the beginning of both schools athletic ventures on the gridiron, the Horns are, always have been, and always will be, our #1 rival. Even during the Huskers hayday, Switzer still refers to his wins in Dallas as being the best.
NU didn't need OU back in the 90's when NU was winning 3 national championship but NU honored the rivalry.
You don't seem to understand college football.
My guess is your a college kid or at least high school and are a bit naive
I also think that we should do away with the north-south division split because the south division is obviously the perennial powerhouse, and it is hardly ever the top 2 teams in the conference who play for the Big 12 title....
The great thing about the way the schedule is now, is that if the rivalry were to return to its great past, it can happen every single year...in the championship game!...But, even how it is this will be the fifth meeting in the last six years and seven out of the last ten. It has really only gone away because NU has struggled since Stoops has been at OU.
Also, your all about getting football coaches fired. You seem to want them to play a top 10 opponent every week, and then you rake them over the coals if they don't win every game.
It would not be fair to OU or Nebraska to play a more difficult schedule than the rest of the conference. If everyone did something like this, then fine. But everyone doesn't.