Kevin B. Blackistone of AOL Fanhouse writes that Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops badly needs a BCS victory before he begins “experiencing some belittlement in the Sooner state.”

The fact is that all these other influential voices on Oklahoma football will point out, should Stoops’ Sooners not beat Florida, that the national title Stoops brought back to Norman is nearly antique, having been captured in the first season of the new millennium. They’ll remind everyone that Stoops’ Sooners lost four of their last five season-ending bowl games coming into this Orange Bowl. They’ll point out that they lost three of their last four games against their hated rivals in Austin, Texas, and watched Mack Brown’s herd gallop away with one national championship during that stretch and attempt to lay claim to another one the other night by shocking Ohio State at the gun.
And the last time the Stoops’ Sooners played for the all the glory, they’ll say, it didn’t go very well at all. It was right here at the Orange Bowl, too, back on Jan. 4, 2005. The opponent was USC and when it was all over the Sooners were on the short end of an embarrassing 55-19 shellacking.

Urban Meyer can see it all too clearly from his side of the field, in part because he and Stoops are so much alike. Both are from Ohio. Both are fortysomethings. Both won their first national championships as head coaches in their second seasons running their current ships.

And neither said Wednesday that they could see themselves surviving in their vocation into their 70s like some of college football coaching’s idols. Why not?

“You’re a missed field goal away from being a bum with everybody else,” Meyer said. “That’s just part of the [coaching] deal.”

That is why Stoops needs to beat Florida. He’s unfairly close to having some people call him that bum.

Stoops has no one to blame but himself for why writers and other media members feel he needs to badly beat Florida in order to prove (some) of his worth. Too many times over the past couple years his Sooners have played flat and often looked like they had nothing to play for. Now a title is on the line and Stoops has a track record of blowing these types of games. It’ll be interesting to see if Bobby Boy can get over the hump.