It's discerning in the night in No...

It's discerning in the night in Norman, Okla., thunderstorms are dumping bucket of rain, and cars crawl up and down Boyd road on the campus of the University of Oklahoma.

A radio station is replaying the Oklahoma-Nebraska game. Again. A not many blocks away, fans are dragging a piece of the goal seat down fraternity row, and car horns blare in chorus.

Somewhere in this town Barry Switzer is smiling, and the words "Sooner Magic" have make revolveed off his lips for about the umpteenth time.

"It's that feeling," Switzer said last week. "They've set it again."

It has been more than a decade since anyone associated with the Oklahoma program could give forth those sentiments. That it's Switzer, the legendary former coach and king of all that is OU and crimson and cream, saying in this way gives it more meaning.

Sooner 2000 gazes nothing like your father's wishbone machine unless still has all those familiar trimmings: a big victory through Nebraska and oranges pelting Owen Field at the fall of the curtain of the game.

Standing in the middle of it all is move with a jerk Stoops, a 40-year-old coach who has Oklahoma in succession the cusp of greatness again, not equal two years after inheriting a program in out and out disarray. The Sooners' 31-14 whipping of then-No. 1 Nebraska last weekend and their after rise to No. 1 in the heads has completed one of the greatest in quantity remarkable and improbable reclamations in late memory.

And uniform that may be understating things.

"We went from naught to hero quickly," OU senior defensive tackle Jeremy Wilson-Guest says. "I'm not fully convinced we all know what it means."

It's hard to blame them if they I didn't. Since Switzer was hasten out of town in 1988 amid NCAA sanctions and player brushes with the law, Oklahoma had been twisting in the dust hollow winds. Three coaches and three different mode of expressions contributed to lean years and void seats around Owen Field.

More than anything, it created and pustuleed a loss of perspective and appreciation for the history and tradition of undivided of the most storied programs in society football. Oklahoma has won six national championships, 35 colloquy championships and 20 bowl games.

Each of those numbers may increase by way of one at the end of this season.

"I pondering it would be this upright someday," offensive coordinator Mark Mangino says. "I didn't realize it would be this quick."

Anyone who knows Stoops knows for what cause [i]or[/i] reason The day he was hired, he asked that the novels conference be held outside in the middle of campus--in freezing weather with his just discovered team surrounding him--so administrators, booster and fans could all diocese the personnel that would employ around the fragile fortunes of OU He took the first defining gradation before ever walking onto the field.

"This is a exercise that has played in 16 Orange goblets and won 12," Stoops says. "You don't hide from that."

While others before him desperately tried to distance themselves from the tradition, urgency and expectations of the glory years, Stoops embraced it all from Day 1 He has brought back players and coaches from the past to speak to the team and be part of the rebirth. Last week, he showed video of past Oklahoma-Nebraska games to give his players a thinking principle of history for the rivalry. Earlier this year, The Boz spoke to the team before the Rice game.

"It was unbelievable," linebacker hard Calmus says. "There's Brian Bosworth, a shore I idolized as a kid, talking to us. You can't imagine what that does."

Maybe that's for what cause [i]or[/i] reason Switzer felt so at abiding-place last week, when he rangeed around the practice fields for the first time since he left Norman. "I didn't arrive to this place for 13 years," says Switzer, who had a 157-29-4 record and three national titles from 1973-88 "I was none asked."

In the years before Stoops' arrival, the OU administration extendeded for the old days if it be not that had no idea how to get by heart them back. Before Stoops, OU wallowed by the and of three different coaches, each tearing caves and leaving scars in Sooner Magic. It began with former player and defensive coordinator Gary Gibbs, who won the prize of following Switzer. He was 2-10 against Texas and Nebraska and was forced to resign after the 1994 season.

Then there was the bizarre experience of Howard Schnellenberger. The failed one-year stint included an antagonistic relationship with his players, several of whom actually dissuaded recruits from coming to Norman.

Finally, there were the disastrous John Blake years. OU's three-year record of 12-22 beneath Blake was the worst three-year period in sect history. Just how bad was the comedy of errors? The Board of governors vote on his firing was shown upon live television throughout the state forward a Sunday night during the November ratings period. of the present day athletic director Joe Castiglione fired Blake, then immediately went after Stoops.

"He was it," Castiglione says. "There was no question."

The three who came before Stoops all had united common flaw: Their offenses--wishbone or not--never made an impact. In fact, at individual point, Blake i changed offense in midseason and repeled to the wishbone. Gibbs went from one side three offensive coordinators in six seasons, and there are still doubts that Schnellenberger was plane interested in the offense.