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Sooners Kickoff Title Defense in Front of the Nation August 24, 2001 by Justin Waganer Sports Columnist In a recent interview with SportingNews.com Frank Romero was asked where his National Championship ring was, his response should excite Sooner fans and send a message to college football. "In a safety deposit box. I gave up wearing that a few months ago. Once the summer started, we had new goals that we set. Believe it or not, the majority of the team doesn't wear their rings. That's something, 10 years from now, we can look at and relish. But the future's now. We've got things to accomplish." At 6:45 p.m. Saturday, Romero's Sooners will begin to do just that against a talented North Carolina Tar Heel squad that is talking upset. "Nobody expects us to win except for me, the staff and the guys who sit in this room. That's fine. I like that challenge," Head Coach John Bunting said earlier this week. Bunting, who rubbed a lot of college football people the wrong way with his verbal abuse of departed Zack Ferguson last week, is taking a page from the Bob Stoops motivation book with his buildup of Saturday's contest. According to Mike Stoops, Bunting does have a good advantage with his first game with a new staff. Referring to how difficult it is to prepare for a team that has a new head coach, offensive coordinator, and defensive coordinator he said, "That makes it a little more difficult for us than for them," Mike Stoops said. "That could give them a little bit of an advantage." However, you can be assured that there isn't one guy in the Sooner locker room that doesn't expect to be celebrating come Saturday night. Oklahoma hasn't lost a game at home since the Blake era and haven't lost a game period since the final day of 1999, an advantage is one thing, but winning is quite another. To the Victor Go the Spoils Oklahoma keeps adding to its list of players being recognized as "players to watch" for individual awards. Roy Williams and Derrick Strait are on the list for the Jim Thorpe Award, Rocky Calmus for the Butkus Award, Jeff Ferguson for the Ray Guy Award, Tim Duncan for the Lou Groza Award, and now Quentin Griffin is being watched for the Doak Walker Award. Griffin, who put on over 20 pounds and increased his speed in the off-season, rushed 823 yards as a Sophomore and had 17 touchdowns. Griffin is on the list with 42 other candidates in the preseason on a list that will be cut to eight on November 8th. Somewhat related, Oklahoma will honor it's newest College Football Hall of Fame members at halftime of Saturday's game. Keith Jackson and Barry Switzer will be recognized with framed certificates to be on display on campus. Controversy Brewing? Something to watch in the coming weeks is the brewing controversy over the new book by Jim Dent, "The Undefeated." Dent was on the Sports Animal around 4:15 on Friday and commented about a few select players running a "smear" campaign against his book for it's unfair portrayal of Bud Wilkinson. An hour later, Barry Switzer said on the same station that he regretted writing the forward to the book. He wrote the forward before reading the book and says he is totally against it's portrayal of Wilkinson and the information is fiction. Later in the evening Dent's party to celebrate his book was moved from the University owned Sam Noble Museum to Border's Books. Stay tuned....
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