By John Shinn

Transcript Sports Writer

DALLAS — The passion of the fans makes Oklahoma-Texas one of college football’s biggest spectacles. But the stakes are what give the Red River Rivalry that extra shine.

For years they’ve met at the Cotton Bowl with national championships in the balance. Since the formation of the Big 12, conference and division titles have hinged on the outcome.

The two programs have represented the Big 12 South in the last seven Big 12 championship games. Only once during that span did that berth happen without a victory in Dallas.

There will be an electricity in the air when the 14th-ranked Sooners (3-1) face the seventh-ranked Longhorns (4-1) at 2:30 p.m. today.

“What’s exciting is the challenge of it,” OU coach Bob Stoops said. “There’s two really good football teams that have been competing and that makes it exciting, as well where so many years we’ve been in races for Big 12 and national championships.”

Texas coach Mack Brown doesn’t see any need to prop the game up any more. The Longhorns are well aware of the importance.

“They’ve watched this game since they’ve watched college football,” he said. “They know how important it is. We do have a lot of rivals. Our biggest rival out of state is obviously Oklahoma because it’s been a traditional game that means so much.”

From 2000-2004, OU thrived in that atmosphere. It rolled off five straight victories and all served as springboards to greater success. Over that span, the Sooners won three conference titles and finished the season in Bowl Championship Series games four times.

But that string of success ended with last season’s 45-12 loss. The Sooners were dominated in a game they’ve dominated.

The bravado the Sooners built up since the turn of the century was a major factor in their success. A lot of that appeared to get wiped away last year. Texas dominated from start to finish.

OU has tried to erase the memory of that game.

“We’re coming into this game real confident,” OU quarterback Paul Thompson said. “We can’t base things off of previous years, as you know Texas didn’t base last year’s success off of previous years.”

Since losing that game, the Sooners have gone 9-2 and are two highly-disputed calls away from an 11-game winning streak.