Bob McCarty Writes

Borrowing from Yogi Berra, I must say something about the Big 12 Conference Championship set to take place Saturday between the #2 Oklahoma Sooners and #20 Missouri Tigers:  “This is like deja vu all over again.”

There are, of course, some obvious differences such as the fact that the 2008 title game is taking place at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City instead of the Alamodome in San Antonio and the fact that the two teams’ respective BCS rankings have flipped.  Otherwise, almost everything else is the same.

Both teams bring quality quarterbacks into the mix:

• Missouri’s Chase Daniels enters the game as the nation’s seventh-highest QB rating and little chance of winning the coveted Heisman Trophy after completing the 2008 regular season with a higher completion percentage than his Sooners counterpart but one-third fewer touchdowns and more than twice as many interceptions.  Plus, his team ended the season with three losses, including last week’s heartbreaking loss to the unranked Kansas Jayhawks.

• Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford enters the game with the nation’s second-highest quarterback rating and a strong shot at the Heisman Trophy after completing a regular season that saw him set school records for career touchdowns and passing yards.  Plus, he’s lead his squad from Norman to four consecutive performances during which they racked up more than 60 points.

Both teams keep highly-paid coaches on the sideline:

• Missouri’s Gary Pinkel comes to the conference title game as one of the school’s most-successful coaches ever with a winning percentage approaching 60 percent.  Only days ago, he secured a contract extension that upped his pay to $2.3 million per season with the possibility of $200,000 more per season if he stays until 2015.

• Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops wins more than 80 percent of his games and is the coaching world’s version of a “Six-Million-Dollar Man” in that, when you factor in performance and longevity bonuses, he receives that much money annually.  Oklahoma’s largest newspaper even offers a Bob Stoops Salary Calculator to make coaches like Pinkel feel bad about how their take-home pay compares to the man who became one of the youngest coaches ever to win a national championship (2000).

Unlike the quarterbacks and coaches, differences between the squads become quite evident when you compare each team’s performance against common opponents:

• Both teams easily defeated Kansas State and Nebraska;

• Both teams lost to Texas — Missouri by 25 points, Oklahoma by 10;

• While Missouri squeaked by the Baylor, 31-28, Oklahoma pummeled the boys from Waco, 49-17; and

• Oklahoma soundly defeated both Oklahoma State and Kansas while Missouri lost to both by margins of 5 and 3 points, respectively.

I could back up the points above with a rehash of information I shared about the Sooners football program last year, but I won’t.  If you really want to read some of it, click here.  Meanwhile, I’m prepping for the BCS Championship in Miami Jan. 8.

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UPDATE 12/07/08: Oklahoma Sooners Rout Missouri Tigers, 62-21

SEE ALSO: The Joke’s on Voters if Oklahoma Sooners Quarterback Sam Bradford Doesn’t Win Heisman

UPDATE #2 12/07/08:  BCS Title Game Set, #1 Oklahoma vs. #2 Florida