Border complex

OU-Texas animosity runs much deeper than football

More in this column: • FSU's defensive woes • Punishment fits the crime • Worth noting: Vols on the run

Texas linebacker Lee Jackson's indoctrination into the Texas-Oklahoma rivalry came as soon as the team bus reached the Cotton Bowl his freshman year.

"There was a 70-year-old woman giving us the finger," he said.

Welcome to the Red River Shootout.

Plenty of other games, like this weekend's Florida State-Miami, are billed as "hated rivalries," when in fact they are merely football games. Football only begins to explain the Texas-Oklahoma antagonism -- much of which flows from one side of the river.

"Even though the states border each other, the people are really different," said Jim Dent, author of The Undefeated, a book chronicling the Sooners' record 47-game win streak, as well as The Junction Boys. "Oklahomans have been beaten down by the Dust Bowl; Texans have been ratcheted up by oil.

"I don't think there's any group of people in the world who hate another group of people like Oklahomans do Texans."

The Sooners and Longhorns have combined to win 10 national championships and five Heisman Trophies. Saturday in Dallas, they will line up as the second- and third-ranked teams in the country.

But deep down, this is less about two powerhouse football programs than it is one state's inferiority complex and another's perceived arrogance.

Texans wear their pride on their sleeves -- or, more accurately, their license plates, proclaiming to anyone who will listen: "Don't mess with Texas."

Oklahomans, on the other hand, have spent the better part of 60 years trying to overcome the forlorn image of their state painted by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath and perpetuated ever since. Just last week in an episode of Friends, Chandler dealt with the horrifying possibility of moving to Tulsa.

Low morale was the main reason in 1947 Oklahoma's president hired a promising young coach in hopes of bolstering the school's football program. It worked, as Bud Wilkinson beat Texas nine out of 10 tries from 1948-57.

Thus began a vicious, back-and-forth struggle for football superiority, with the 'Horns hiring away Wilkinson protege Darrell Royal, who promptly won eight straight against the Sooners (the first one allegedly made Royal so emotional he retreated to the back of the locker room afterward to vomit), and OU responding with Barry Switzer, whose dominance helped drive Royal to retirement. (Before their final meeting in 1976, President Gerald Ford walked the tunnel with the two coaches; an intoxicated Sooner fan was heard to shout, "Who are the two a--holes with Switzer?")

Now, in the latest round of one-upmanship, coaches Mack Brown and Bob Stoops are locked in a struggle for national preeminence, with Texas' Brown scoring the prized recruiting classes but Oklahoma's Stoops delivering a Sears Trophy in just his second season.

"As far as traditional rivalries go, it's certainly among the top five or six, with Army-Navy, Notre Dame-USC, Ohio State-Michigan and, in the last 15 years, Florida State-Florida and Florida State-Miami," said Bernie Kish, executive director of the College Football Hall of Fame. "I think the main reason for it is because football is a way of life in that part of the country."

Sooners QB Nate Hybl can certainly attest to that. He is the rare player who's been involved in two of the nation's most prominent border wars, transferring to Oklahoma after a season at Georgia, which travels annually to Jacksonville, Fla., for its showdown with the Gators.

"I think Oklahoma and Texas fans single this out more than where I grew up [in Hazlehurst, Ga.]," said Hybl. "The Georgia-Florida game was a time for the university to party together. To me, this is about horns raised and horns down, just non-stop. It's a big contrast."

Those upside-down horns are a year-round sight in Norman, on T-shirts, on windows and, in the case of at least one recent Sooners player, on tattoos.

But besides throwing the occasional "OU sucks" lyric into "Texas Fight" at games, Longhorns don't seem quite as obsessed with their neighbors to the north.

Receiver Roy Williams declared this "just another week." Defensive end Cory Redding said it's "one of the big games of the year." Running back Cedric Benson observed how "everybody talks about this game from the beginning of the football season until the end."

Therein may lie a primary reason why, despite the teams' comparable talent levels, the Sooners have squashed the 'Horns the past two seasons.

At Oklahoma, it's the big game of the year. And everybody talks about it from the beginning of the football season until the end of ... well, time.

"I don't know if there's the feeling that Texas just has to beat Oklahoma," said Wendell Barnhouse of the Fort Worth Star Telegram. "Texas fans, if they lose, there's a week or two where they're down, but it's not like they have to carry this burden around listening to Oklahoma fans giggle about it. Also, Texas has got Texas A&M. That's a little bit more like Alabama-Auburn, they're much more likely to run into A&M people in an elevator."

Any disparity in passion, however, will disappear by this weekend.

Tough the days of rowdy, often violent street parties -- where crowds had to be dispersed with riot police and fire hoses -- are now a distant memory, opposing fans will still flood the Dallas bars Friday night, jam the midway Saturday morning. The crowd, as always, will be split 50-50 crimson and orange.

And once again, the teams will run out of the same dark tunnel into the sparkling daylight.

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