Columnist Dean Juipe: Get wallet to see if OU is for real

Dean Juipe

Friday, Oct. 27, 2000 | 12:04 p.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Lord, it seemed monotonous at the time.

For a kid growing up in Michigan, being subjected to weekly doses of Oklahoma and Nebraska football games on TV was sufficiently punishing. They were the big teams of the era, and, rightly enough, dominated the airwaves, yet it got tiring seeing the Sooners and/or Cornhuskers stomping their inferior farmland opponents.

And when they played each other, which was a yearly event back then, the hoopla started early and stayed past closing time.

But, say this for those old teams, the games were good, if somewhat technically dumbfounding, given Oklahoma's reliance on that wishbone offense it once ran to stupefying perfection. Yet if you wanted to see the best football of the era, you watched Oklahoma and Nebraska mercilessly pound away at the likes of Kansas and Missouri on something of a repetitive basis.

The college football world changed, of course, and as time passed and newly implemented scholarship limits kept the big powers from stockpiling and hoarding talent as they once did, diversity found its way into the sport. Oklahoma, for one, slipped from its Bud Wilkinson days of 31- and 47-game winning streaks and lapsed into a competitive decline it only recently has reversed.

Which makes Saturday's game in Norman between No. 1 Nebraska and No. 2 Oklahoma -- according to the Bowl Championship Series ratings -- an eagerly anticipated affair. Add in a desire to see if Sooners quarterback Josh Heupel is the real deal and deserves at least this Heisman vote, and Nebraska at Oklahoma has a chance to be the Game of the Year.

It has bowl and national championship implications that just won't quit. There isn't a fan of college football who wouldn't want to see how the game plays out.

But, barring a reversal of thinking or a burst of common sense, the game won't be seen in Las Vegas as the local ABC affiliate opts for alternate programming. That slap in the face comes at a time when the general (mis)conception is that every halfway decent game in the country is televised weekly.

This one, 7-0 Nebraska at 6-0 Oklahoma, is on pay-per-view only here. At least at $10 it has a value the $50 Andrew Golota vs. Mike Tyson fight last week could never approximate.

Oklahoma has become the wild card in the college football season, opening at the lower end of the top 25 and requiring serious attention after scoring 63 points at Texas and then snapping Kansas State's 25-game home winning streak two weeks ago. With the well-traveled Heupel at the helm of the Sooners' "Air Raid" offense and accruing impressive passing stats, Oklahoma's once-bland past seems ever distant.

This could be the best team in the country.

Of course Nebraska is Nebraska. It has yearly designs on the national championship, this year in spite of a narrow overtime win at Notre Dame, and has taken Oklahoma to the woodshed the last seven times they played.

There's a chance Saturday's game could be a classic, or "one for the ages" as those who talk into a microphone for a living are prone to say. Unfortunately the irony is all too apparent: If this were 1960 we wouldn't have any choice but to watch it on free TV.