Steve Silverman

The Red River Rivalry lost a good chunk of its national luster last weekend when Oklahoma and Texas each took one on the chin.

Bob Stoops and Mack Brown both probably felt sorry for themselves for all of 30 seconds once their games with Colorado and Kansas State were over — and they probably wouldn’t admit even that.

There is no time to worry about yesterday in college football. Just ask Lloyd Carr about that. If he had to think about the Michigan's loss to Appalachian State every day he wouldn’t have bothered to get out of bed.

The same holds true for Stoops and Brown — especially this week.

Oklahoma vs. Texas. Red River Rivalry. Stoops vs. Brown. Cotton Bowl. Dallas. History. Tradition.

College football rivalries tend to get romanticized because the rivals are really mirror images of each other. As much as schools like Ohio State and Michigan say they hate each other, they are also like family. It’s OK for a Wolverine to beat up a Buckeye, but when those Ohio Staters go out of conference, most Michigan fans are rooting for them.

Not so with Oklahoma and Texas. They are big-time rivals in the Big 12 South and if one isn’t playing in a BCS bowl, the other usually is.

But that’s now. Oklahoma and Texas were not always Big 12 rivals. As a matter of fact, the two schools sharing the same conference is relatively recent. Texas played in the Southwest Conference through the 1995 season. It disbanded in the spring of 1996 and Baylor, Texas A&M and Texas Tech joined the Longhorns and moved to what had been the Big Eight conference and was renamed the Big 12.

So for a very long time, there no affiliation between Texas and Oklahoma and the only thing that bonded the two was a type of pure HATRED for each other.

To some degree, Stoops and Brown have been forced to bring a civility to the rivalry, but don’t think for a second that either one has ever felt this game is less important than it was generations ago.

Stoops, in particular, has a rabid passion every time he takes the field against any opponent, especially Texas. His passion for winning started in early childhood.

As the son of coach Ron Stoops growing up in tough-minded Youngstown, Ohio, Stoops regularly fought and competed with three brothers who all had a passion for sports, especially football. All four brothers eventually went into coaching.

Bob Stoops may not have been the best athlete among brothers Ron Jr., Mike or Mark, but many around Youngstown remember him as the scrappiest.

Brown also grew up in a coaching family in Cookeville, Tenn. His father, Melvin Brown, was a coach and administrator at Cookeville High School and his brother Watson Brown also went into coaching.

There are differences, however. Even though Stoops is the younger man — he is 47; Brown is 56 — Stoops is the more demanding leader. He is known to push his team to the limit, something he was forced to do when he took over an undisciplined Oklahoma team in 1999 that had fallen hard in the college football world.

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