Two, the paranoia.

You really can’t call it anything else.

Maybe it takes a control freak to be a great football coach and that’s just the way it is. Maybe, as Stephen Stills wrote and Buffalo Springfield performed, paranoia “starts when you’re always afraid” and Stoops really believes, should he step out of line, the man will come and take him away. Or, at the least, facing third-and-2 in the red zone, the defensive coordinator on the other side will have a better clue.

But every team prepares for every team’s best game and putting more on the plate should make things tougher for the other side. Besides, there have been wrinkles here and there that have caught the opposition unaware over the years, yet none of them left anybody saying “that’s the new thing they were running the first week of August.”

Three, not that we’re anything special, but shutting media out along with the fans is really like shutting out the fans twice.

We constitute a small enough group to control. We, though aggravating and a headache, ask questions people want answered and cut through the baloney to get to the real meat. And we’re able to do it because we saw it with our own eyes. Now all we’ll have is what a bunch of people are saying.

It’s better than nothing only because a group of more than 100 players, coaches and assorted personnel can’t possibly all toe the party line. They never have and they won’t this season. But it’s not much because most of them will try.

So we’ll have to wait for Chattanooga for answers?

Right.

Clay Horning

366-3526

cfhorning@normantranscript.com