One nice thing about joining SEC? Sooners get to play underdog, putting a season like 2000 on the table

Among the positions taken in this space over the past months and years have been thus:

• Oklahoma did not have to bolt for the SEC. It could have remained wildly successful and wildly rich, too, remaining in the Big 12, continuing to win conference crowns and competing for national championships.

• You can’t put a price on living history and the Sooners tossed theirs in the name of more millions in their coffers they could have done just fine without and the near certain outcome of losing more frequently than they and their fans have ever been accustomed.

Nonetheless, we turn the page to what’s affectionately known, despite it very clearly still being summer, as “fall camp.” 

In so doing, we acknowledge the one terrific positive switching conferences affords.

Like every season, I look forward to hearing what the coaches have to say as practice goes along, because every once in a while the coach-speak dies and oddly specific praise erupts because they just can’t help themselves and suddenly new names are put in front of us to really watch.

About that, here’s hoping a running back steals the headlines because it’s hard to buy Gavin Sawchuk as an every-down, difference-making tailback, especially when the most questionable unit on the squad remains the offensive line no matter how much Brent Venables says he trusts his eyes.

Yet, that aside, you know what entering the SEC might offer Sooner fans, just maybe, this season and others?

Should OU be wildly successful, or even tease wild success, which could indeed happen this season given the most difficult stretch of it arrives in November — Missouri, Alabama, LSU back-to-back-to-back on Nov. 9, 23 and 30 — it would be doing it as, you guessed it … an underdog.

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