The Red River Rivalry belongs at the Cotton Bowl

By JENNIFER FLOYD ENGEL

jenfloyd@star-telegram.com

Pay no attention to Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops and his musings about possibly moving The Red River Rivalry from Big Tex’s shadow to the loving embrace of Norman. He has not been himself lately.

The Stooper has lost three of four to Texas in Fair Park, has been a big bag of embarrassing in big-time bowl games and has Sooners fans, if not calling for his head, at least wondering why it is lodged somewhere else.

As Jerry Jones might say, keep your powder dry, Oklahomans.

Or better yet, I’ll trade you Coach Wade for The Stooper, take him and his supposed mojo-less-ness off Sooners hands.

Yeah, I did not think so. Stoops has hit a little bump, and how rough is it really with yearly Big 12 championships? This is Oklahoma, though, which is probably why he dropped the "it’d be kind of neat to play it home-and-home once in a while" bomb on an already beleaguered Cotton Bowl.

Excellent end around 3-2 talk.

What Stoops needs to realize is this is only temporary. He will be a genius again. Oklahoma will go on a roll against Texas, possibly starting this afternoon. Be afraid, Longhorns. Be very afraid.

Mark me down for a Longhorns "W," but I’m wary of the Sooners. This is exactly the kind of game they win. And when momentum shifts, as it eventually does, Stoops will be glad nobody paid him any mind.

The Red River Rivalry belongs at the Cotton Bowl, on a crisp Saturday in October, with the State Fair whirring on in the background and corny dogs and fried butter on the pregame menu. This is tradition and, yes, tradition still matters.

I have read pleadings for a jump to JerryWorld in 2016, from my Star-Telecolleagues to Jerry himself on his weekly Fan radio show because the toilets are nicer or some such nonsense.

Hey, Jerry, why don’t you worry about a playoff win between now and then and leave the Red River Rivalry alone? And everybody else, cease and desist with trying to turn everything into a homogenized, sanitized experience.

So the place is a little torn up. It is part of the charm of the game.

I have attended one Red River Rivalry as a fan a couple of years ago, sitting Sooners-side because that’s where my ticket hookup had his hookup. It was a spectacle like none other, with a sea of crimson crashing into a sea of burnt orange and Boomer Sooner competing with Texas Fight for equal time and all of us spilling out together to answer the age-old question of "fried Twinkie or fried Oreo?"

And it would not be the same anywhere else.

Why again does anybody other than Jerry want to change the Red River Rivalry?

I understand the owner of the Cowboys’ motives. Anybody else is just being cranky.

And this game already has plenty of non-manufactured cranky potential, or have we already forgotten last season’s debacle?

Texas nips Oklahoma, in an amazing game.

Texas then loses to Tech, in another amazing game. Oklahoma then drills Tech. And, using fuzzy math, Oklahoma somehow is named Big 12 South champs and ultimately finds itself playing and losing to Florida in the fraudulent national championship game. And all Texas could do was slap an asterisk on its Big 12 Champion wall in protest.

I do not blame Texas for being mad, or Oklahoma for not caring.

All you can do is play within the confines of the system thrust upon us by the idiots in charge. The problem is the system is setting itself up to stick it to Texas again. Just watch, when the first fabricated BcS standings are released Sunday, the Longhorns will be lucky to be No. 3 behind Florida and Alabama, even with a victory against Oklahoma.

A World Wide Leader guesstimate has them coming in at No. 4, also behind one-loss Virginia Tech. Things shift and numbers change and so it is too early to panic. But one idea that seems to be gaining steam is undefeated Florida against one-loss Alabama in the national championship game. The one loss would be against, you got it, Florida in the SEC Championship Game.

Say it is crazy, but I have seen crazier.

Like Oklahoma playing for a national championship instead of Texas last year. Or Cincinnati and Boise State being ahead of TCU in the polls. Or TCU dropping two spots despite winning.

Or, most recently, calls for the Red River Rivalry to leave Fair Park for JerryWorld, or a Norman-Austin flip-flop.

How about everybody leave the game where it belongs and instead work on getting a real national championship game for Arlington in early January? And if Sooners fans have lost faith in Stoops to get them there, I’d be happy to put him to work on Sundays.

Jennifer Floyd Engel, 817-390-7760

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