Shadows of the 2000 Sooners
There’s been lots of talk lately about this Oklahoma football team resembling the Sooners of yesteryear.
The 2003 and 2004 teams are the most popular comparisons. Thing is, there’s a team looking a lot like the 2000 Sooners. And it’s not OU.
Watch my latest video commentary or continue reading below:
Alabama has many of the same ear-markings of the 2000 team that won the national championship. Some of the similarities, frankly, are so close that they’re eerie.
In 2000, the Sooners had a hot coach in his second season in Bob Stoops. Now, the Crimson Tide has Nick Saban, a hot coach in his second season.
In 2000, the Sooners relied heavily a bunch of youngsters, guys like Derrick Strait and Brandon Everage among them. Now, the Crimson Tide are doing the same. It has a bunch of first- and second-year guys leading the charge.
In 2000, the Sooners scored a big-time beatdown of their hated rival. OU throttled Texas that season, a defining win that resonates even now. Last weekend, the Crimson Tide notched a defining victory of its own, going to Georgia and smacking around the Bulldogs. At one point, the Crimson Tide rolled up a huge lead in the first half.
Told you the similarities were striking.
Nate Hybl saw them for himself last weekend. Earlier this week, I had a chance to talk to the former OU quarterback who now lives in Atlanta, and he told me he was actually at the Alabama-Georgia game. He had the same feeling then as he did in 2000 at the Texas game. Hybl said there was a moment in that game eight years ago where everyone looked around and said, “Wow, how good could we be?”
Hybl felt like Alabama types had a similar moment against Georgia, that realization that they might be even better than they thought.
Now, I’m here to tell you that Alabama has a tougher row to hoe than OU did in 2000. The SEC is deeper now than the Big 12 was then. But the Sooners did have perhaps the toughest three-game stretch college football has ever seen. Top five Texas. No. 1 Kansas State. No. 1 Nebraska.
Having to maneuver through a rough road isn’t the only thing that the 2008 Crimson Tide and the 2000 Sooners have in common.
Only time will tell, though, how far the similarities will go.
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