OU head coach Bob Stoops has always said: If you want to be the one of the top football programs in the land, you have to play the best programs.
The Tennessee Volunteers, the Sooners’ opponent this weekend, may not be in the top tier of the best college teams in the nation currently, but they have an historic football pedigree and, ranked No. 23 this week in the Associated Press Top 25, they are clearly a much improved team over where they have been in recent seasons.
Something else the Volunteers have is one of the largest stadiums in college football and a proud and extremely passionate fan base that fills Neyland Stadium to the brim – all 105,000 seats and then some of it.
“We go to stadiums every week, and generally when we show up it’s always full. We’ve been on this stage before.” –Bob Stoops, on playing before a huge crowd at Tennessee
This Saturday, Oklahoma not only will have to contend with a formidable opponent on the field, but also the biggest crowd an OU football team has ever played before. And Sooner fans in attendance will be well in the minority.
Asked at his weekly press conference on Monday about the Tennessee crowd size and how the Sooners would be prepared to cope with it, the OU head coach of 17 seasons was a little dismissive.
“I have a hard time understanding these questions about going to a stadium,” Stoops said and reported by OU beat writer Ryan Aber in the Oklahoma City Oklahoman. “We go to stadiums every week, and generally when we show up, it isn’t half empty. It’s always full so, no, we don’t do anything different…We’ve been on this stage before.”
The OU head coach is right. The Sooners have played big games in big, capacity-filled stadiums before. And they’ve won under those conditions, as well. They won at Florida State (2011) and at Notre Dame (2013), and they have played and won against Texas before Cotton Bowl crowds pushing the mid-90,000s.
That’s all well and good, but we are talking about 105,000 expected Saturday night at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville. And that was in different years, under different circumstances and with different players.
The real question is how this year’s team – on which there are a number of young players, and some in key positions, who have never been in this position before – will prepare and react to the hostile conditions that they will encounter at Tennessee this weekend.
We’re speaking of guys like redshirt freshman running back Joe Mixon, wide receivers Dede Westbrook and Jarvis Baxter, all three of whom were major contributors in last weekend’s win over Akron. And true-freshman placekicker/punter Austin Seibert. Also first-year offensive linemen Orlando Brown and Dru Samia.
“Every year we’ve got some guys that are younger – so, no, I don’t think it’s any different,” Stoops said. “We’ve been in these games a lot through the years, and I think this guys will be ready for it.”
The last three seasons, the Sooners have done very well in games away from home. OU is 13-2 in true road games since the beginning of the 2012 season, including wins at Kansas State, Oklahoma State and West Virginia in conference play. The two losses came at Baylor and at TCU.