The tailgaters were already setting up shop across from the stadium Friday morning. They hardly appeared nervous, but why should they?

It's Idaho State for crying out loud. The Bengals have no chance. They're no Appalachian State.

But one wonders what the tailgaters, if so inclined to entertain deep college football thoughts, are really thinking.

What's up with this team?

What about the line?

Can Landry Jones throw the ball?

Who will catch it?

Because the intellectuals among them must realize one thing. For an absolutely worthless game, what happens on Owen Field tonight has never been more important.

For the skill and talent on one side of the ball and not the other, today's game is no more than a scrimmage between first- and third-teamers. Indeed it would be if only...

n The Sooners hadn't shocked the nation, their coaches and themselves with last Saturday's self-imposed self-destruction inside Cowboys Stadium.

n The stadium wasn't chock full of fans still wanting to believe in something greater than their worst fears about this team, fears they could happily plead ignorant to until BYU, even on a day it gave four turnovers away, topped OU 14-13.

n It wasn't the actual college football season, two weeks in, with no mulligans allowed and today is like the shortest par 5 the Sooners will ever play. Best to take advantage before facing the really tough holes on the course, like Miami, Texas and Oklahoma State or, considering last week, every other hole on the course.

It clearly doesn't help the nation's best collegiate quarterback will be watching from the bench, hoping Eli Manning was right about his shoulder sprain probably being a two-week hiccup. Nor that the nation's best pass-catching tight end has already seen his season washed away.

But that doesn't change the fact Sam Bradford's and Jermaine Gresham's injuries are not nearly the most bothersome things about this team.

Had they been well last week and had OU taken advantage by slipping past a good, but not that good band of Cougars, the issues would be the same and no less pressing when placed against the national championship expectations the Sooners thought they might live up to once Bradford, Gresham, Trent Williams and Gerald McCoy all decided to return for another season of college football, an expectation only bolstered when Travis Lewis, Dominique Franks, Jeremy Beal and DeMarco Murray joined their preseason All-American teammates as preseason All-Big 12 first teamers.