Stakes High Again for Red River Rivalry at LinesMaker.com

Stakes High Again for Red River Rivalry

NORMAN, Okla. —The Red River Rivalry is back at its best.

For only the sec­ond time in the last seven years, Okla­homa and Texas arrive at their annual show­down in Dal­las with unblem­ished records. The Soon­ers (4–0) have slipped two spots from their pre­sea­son No. 1 rank­ing despite win­ning all four of their games, while the Long­horns have climbed all the way to No. 11 with four straight wins.

That sets up a high-stakes show­down between the Big 12 pow­er­houses Sat­ur­day at the heart of the State Fair of Texas.

“Unde­feated. Texas-OU. You can’t get any more big­ger than that,” Soon­ers line­backer Travis Lewis said. “They’re try­ing to take off our heads, we’re try­ing to take off theirs and it should be an excit­ing game to watch.”

The Soon­ers and Long­horns have taken turns suf­fer­ing early losses in recent years, remov­ing just a lit­tle bit of the spice from a century-old rivalry that’s always one of col­lege football’s fiercest. The annual Cot­ton Bowl show­down as at its hey­day between 2001 and 2004, when the teams were both unde­feated and ranked in the top 5 three of those four years.

It hap­pened again in 2008, when top-ranked Okla­homa lost to No. 5 Texas— but that’s the only time in the past six sea­sons both teams made it to early Octo­ber with­out losing.

“That’s always a big game,” Soon­ers defen­sive coor­di­na­tor Brent Ven­ables said. “We’ve had many years where it has been we’ve both been unde­feated and it’s always a big game. And years when maybe we’re down or maybe they’ve been down, it’s still every bit as big and you want to win every bit as much.”

Each team comes in off of a dom­i­nat­ing per­for­mance fueled by take­aways. Okla­homa turned four turnovers, includ­ing three second-quarter inter­cep­tions by Tony Jef­fer­son, into 28 points and throt­tled Ball State 62–6. Texas forced three first-quarter turnovers on its way to a 34–0 half­time lead, then cruised to a 37–14 win at pre­vi­ously unde­feated Iowa State.

While Okla­homa, which won last year’s game 28–20, was the pre­sea­son No. 1, the Long­horns started the sea­son unranked for the first time since Mack Brown’s first sea­son as coach in 1998. Another win, and Texas would likely find itself ranked higher than the Sooners.

“It’s really big to be 4–0. I’m not sure a lot of peo­ple would’ve thought five weeks ago we would’ve been 4–0 right now,” Brown said. “Guys are play­ing with a lot of confidence.

“We know a lot more about us now than we did when we started the season.”

The Long­horns have already avenged two of their losses from last sea­son and are halfway through a stretch of four straight games against teams that beat them in 2010.

“We need to get over this one pretty quick,” safety Blake Gideon said. “It’s another notch on our belt, it’s a win.

“We came up here as a busi­ness trip, we got the job accom­plished, so now we’re play­ing a pretty good team next week.”

At first glance, the Soon­ers fixed some of the flaws from a 38–28 vic­tory against Mis­souri two weeks ago in which they trailed at home for the first time in 21 games. Ven­ables had been dis­ap­pointed with how his defense lined up incor­rectly and pro­vided lever­age points for the Tigers’ offense to gain more than 500 yards of offense.

“We know they’re a dif­fer­ent team from last year, and I know they’re going to give us their all on Sat­ur­day,” Jef­fer­son said. “They got bet­ter, but we got bet­ter also. It’ll be a great game.”

“I always think Texas is good,” Soon­ers coach Bob Stoops added. “It’s always hard to gauge where we’re at, where they’re at. You go into the game, and you’ve got to play it. You get each other’s best shot, so it’s always a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent than maybe how you might play against some­body else.

“They’re hav­ing an excel­lent year here so far, and for­tu­nately we’ve played pretty decent, too.”

Ball State man­aged just over 200 yards on Sat­ur­day night.

“I think our play­ers rec­og­nized we didn’t play to the level we’re capa­ble of, and that it doesn’t take much to be off your game,” Ven­ables said.

Ven­ables said he was pleased with the chem­istry, focus and resolve that returned to his team through a stress­ful week of practice.

“It couldn’t come at a bet­ter time. Going down to play Texas will be a great chal­lenge for us and one that we’re really excited about. I know Texas will be look­ing for­ward to the stage. It’s a fab­u­lous stage to play a col­lege foot­ball game.”

The unique setup splits the Cot­ton Bowl half and half between Okla­homa and Texas fans, with a divid­ing line up the stands at mid­field. Even walk­ing down the tun­nel to the field has over­whelmed some players.

“I know the intensity’s going to be a lot higher,” said Okla­homa run­ning back Dominique Wha­ley, who will get his first Red River Rivalry expe­ri­ence this year. “It’s a big rivalry game. It gets under everybody’s skin, and they’re all get­ting ready and focused.

“But we all need to just treat it like it’s another game and execute.”

That’s the mes­sage being preached by quar­ter­back Landry Jones, who’ll play in the rivalry for the third time.

“It’s Texas week, it’s a rivalry game and it’s always just the hype around this game is a lot big­ger than a lot of other games, so there’s a lot of emo­tion going into it,” Jones said. “I think sub­con­sciously you put a lit­tle more into this week than any others.”

Sports Writer Luke Mered­ith con­tributed to this report from Ames, Iowa.

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