COLUMBIA, Mo. — It kicks off at 11 a.m.It’s an ABC game, so that says something. It’s not like it was booted over to Fox Sports Net. It’s even the only game in the nation today between two ranked teams.

And still, it’s better.

This is a great game.

Remember Oklahoma in 2000?

Well, believe it or not, that can still be Missouri in 2006.

It’s a long shot, but it’s still out there.

More on that in a moment.

Then there’s Oklahoma.

Bob Stoops was asked about the Oregon game earlier in the week and here’s what he had to say.

“That loss haunts you all the way through,” he said. “There’s no way around it.”

There isn’t, but every couple of weeks its worth putting things into perspective by asking yourself what everybody would be saying about OU if the officials hadn’t all gone dumb, from the field to the replay booth, simultaneously.

It’s too late to for the Sooners to be the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about. Loss No. 2, at the Cotton Bowl, took care of that. But what if this was 6-1 Oklahoma (the Sooners are 5-2, 2-1 in the conference) against 7-1 Missouri (the Tigers are indeed 7-1, 3-1 in the conference), with the Sooners not completely out of the South race, and the Tigers still atop the North, with the Sooners about five spots higher in the rankings and both teams thinking they could still reach a BCS bowl?

Now that’s a matchup.

Well, the subplots are not the same, but the teams are.

And then, something bigger may even be at stake, like the direction of the conference for the next two, three or four years.