If there’s one season where the popular analogy that a it’s a marathon not a sprint truly applies, it’s baseball. A few games mean little in the scope of a 56-game season or 27-game conference slate.

But neither Oklahoma nor Oklahoma State have that luxury. In the eyes of many fans, the Bedlam Series is the season.

“You always tell the young guys, ‘This is a series you’re never going to forget the rest of your life,’” OU coach Sunny Golloway said. “It means a lot. It’s the No. 1 college baseball series in the United States. Everybody talks about it from Florida to California. We’re fortunate to be a part of it.”

Nearly 30,000 fans are expected to attend the three games that begin Friday night at Drillers Stadium in Tulsa and move to Oklahoma City’s Bricktown Ballpark Saturday and Sunday.

“I’ve heard a lot about it and I can’t wait to play in it,” OU catcher J.T. Wise said. “It should be fun.”

There isn’t another forum where interest swells as large for three regular season games. The pressure that ensues can be overwhelming.

No team wants to struggle in front of the biggest crowds of the season. The Sooners have experienced the bad end of it the last two seasons, having been swept in the last two Bedlam Series.

However, playing in front of 50,000 fans couldn’t put anymore pressure on OU at this point in the season.

The Sooners currently hold a half game lead over Kansas State for eighth place in the Big 12 Conference and the final spot for next week’s Big 12 tournament. It took winning two of three from the Wildcats this past weekend to move up the standings.

The Sooners did it while controversy swirled outside the clubhouse.

Golloway’s job status has been a hot topic on talk radio and message boards for the last month. During the middle game of the Kansas State series, a fan took a lap around L. Dale Mitchell Park holding a sign calling for Golloway’s ouster.

With all that going on, Andrew Doyle (Saturday) and Ryan Duke (Sunday) pitched two of OU’s best games of the season and OU rolled to two much-needed wins.

For whatever reason, the Sooners looked like a different team. The pitching was better. Timely hits were plentiful.

“We played really loose and got to focus on playing really good baseball and not external things,” Golloway said.

OU’s goal for its remaining three games will be to take the same attitude into Bedlam. The team best able to ignore outside distractions is usually the one that plays best.