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.
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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.