Football: What’s luck got to do with it? Ask the Sooners
Players wouldn’t want to admit it. Ditto for coaches. But the truth is undeniable — there’s luck involved in sports.
It’s not the most important ingredient to success, of course. Talented players and quality coaching and team chemistry and probably half a dozen other things are more vital than luck. Make no mistake, though, luck is part of the equation.
Just ask Oklahoma.
The Sooners are short on luck this season. Jermaine Gresham turns his knee a strange way. Sam Bradford lands on his shoulder wrong. On and on the list has gone this season.
The carnage grew by three this week. News came Monday that offensive lineman Brody Eldridge and defensive lineman Auston English will miss the rest of the season with injuries. A shoulder injury did in Eldridge while an ankle injury fell English. Then Tuesday, we learned that offensive lineman Jarvis Jones had a cracked heel and is done for the year.
Injuries are usually a complete fluke. Hit the ground a little more on his back, and maybe Bradford never busts up his shoulder. Turn his knee just a bit differently, and maybe Gresham never misses a game.
It’s a game of inches where injuries are concerned, and frankly, that all comes down to luck — or the lack of it.
Think about the Sooners’ national championship season of 2000. That team suffered no major injuries, and as we found out after the season, Josh Heupel might have been holding his arm together with duct tape. And yet he never missed a meaningful snap. Ditto for the rest of the Sooner stars. And a title was theirs.
That same season, Arkansas started the year with high hopes. Then the Razorbacks’ quarterback went down, then a running back. When all was said and done, they’d lost 20 players to injury and finished the regular season 6-5.
There’s always luck involved in college football. Just so happens that this season, the Sooners are dealing with the bad variety of it.
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Actually, the 2000 Sooners did suffer some injuries (Rocky Calmus – broken bone in leg) but they did not have anyone miss a game because of an injury. Calmus’ borken bone was not a weight-bearing bone, so he played with pain.