Are Texas fans getting ahead of themselves? This sign appeared at Saturday's Rice game. Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

Here's just a hint of what it was like growing up in Sooner nation: Back when I was in high school in Tulsa, I visited my friend John Ashley one day and arrived at his home to see a new red Cadillac parked in his driveway.

We're talking RED, and shiny like a cheerleader's smile.

John's dad -- Doctor A., we called him -- was a Sooners fan with a phat "f." He owned season tickets and drove the 100 miles from Tulsa to Norman for every home game as if he was going around the corner for beer. He breathed the Sooners.

A man of few (mostly muffled) words, he nearly scared John and I to death one night when he whooped and began dancing a jig in his living room after hearing he'd won a lottery that granted him the privilege of paying even more money for the right to buy more Oklahoma tickets.

Doctor A. didn't need a new car. The old brown Caddy ran just fine. But it had one flaw. "If you're gonna be a Big Red fan," he said, exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke, "you gotta have a Big Red car."

That Big Red Caddy has long seen its last trip to Norman. And Doctor A. isn't up to driving much any more. Not that the Sooners are giving him much reason to this year. A team that reached the national championship game in each of the last two seasons endured its second defeat of the season last Saturday, losing to -- no, getting spanked by -- UCLA 41-24 in the Rose Bowl. (Did USC coach Pete Carroll email his old OU game plan across town, knowing he wouldn't need it again anytime soon?)

How's Doctor A. feeling these days? "He's moaning," John told me on Sunday night. "I kinda hoped we'd be reloading like USC, but it looks like we're rebuilding."

Not what us Sooner bred want to hear, but you gotta love how quickly things change in college football. Forget the NFL's quest for parity, Major League Baseball's big market-small market dilemma and how no one in the NBA can seem to find a way to beat the Spurs. Almost a month into the college football season, the perennially contending Sooners are 1-2 and out of the top 25 for the first time in the Bob Stoops era, Miami isn't the best team in Florida, Ohio State sooooo doesn't miss Maurice Clarett, Notre Dame has NBC execs smiling again, and it looks as if Texas just might finally beat OU when the border rivals meet in three weeks for the bazillionth Red River Shootout.

O.K., I concede that USC just might be better than the Minnesota Vikings, a fact that has not changed in three years. But otherwise, this is shaping up as one of the best college football seasons in years -- except in Sooner nation.