IRVING — On that April evening, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell sounded as if he were divvying up players for the Crimson and Cream Game.

Sam Bradford. Gerald McCoy. Trent Williams. Jermaine Gresham.

The winds of change have shifted in Norman, as seven Sooner stars departed for the NFL, including that aforementioned quartet of first-rounders. But, then again, it’s nothing new. As anyone who has spent any amount of time in Oklahoma knows, the wind never really stops blowing.

Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops has had 48 players drafted by the NFL since his arrival in Norman in 1999.
Rod Aydelotte/Tribune-Herald

Old stars flutter away, and the Sooners just keep breezing along.

“Every year, if you’re at Oklahoma, you expect win a championship, whether it’s a Big 12 or a national,” defensive lineman Jeremy Beal said. “That’s what we face every year.”

Since Bob Stoops arrived in Norman in 1999, 48 Oklahoma players have been drafted by NFL teams. Yet even with that ever-flowing pipeline in place, the Sooners always seem to replenish the tank.

The expectation level “hasn’t diminished at all,” Stoops said Wednesday at the conference’s media days. “The guys we have replacing them replaced them a year ago (because of injuries). ... We’re optimistic that we have a chance to be back and hopefully compete for championships again.”

Gaze back in time a decade or so, and you’ll see an Oklahoma that couldn’t have won any championship, save for the state’s Class 6A high school title. From 1994 to 1998, the Sooners didn’t post a single winning record, and won just eight of its first 24 Big 12 games under then-coach John Blake.

Stoops revitalized everything. Stoops’ Sooners have won 80 percent of their games over the past 11 years. Eighty percent! That means anything less than a 10-2 regular season is viewed as an abject failure.

The Sooners went 8-5 in 2009.

“Our fans are very demanding,” Beal said, chuckling. “But not only are they demanding, but we’re demanding of ourselves. We match their intensity. I love our fans, and I don’t care if their demands are high, because my demands are even higher.”

Without question, the Sooners took their lumps last season. Oklahoma lost Bradford to a separated shoulder in the season opener against BYU, and Gresham didn’t even play in that game, missing the entire season with a knee injury.

So Stoops has reason for optimism, considering Landry Jones gained valuable experience at quarterback in Bradford’s absence, running back DeMarco Murray is healthy after back-to-back injury-plagued seasons and the defense returns proven playmakers like Beal and linebacker Travis Lewis.

Tabbed No. 1 by mag

Heck, Phil Steele’s college football annual even tabbed the Sooners as the No. 1 pick in the land. Although the OU players would prefer to slow the Schooner on that prediction.

“I see us being a lot better than last year,” Murray said. “I’m not going to say national championship range. I’m not going to put us up there, because I don’t think we deserve that right now. We still have lots of things to gain.”

Priority No. 1, even if the Sooners won’t fully cop to it, is beating Red River rival Texas. The Longhorns have won four of the past five in the series, which sticks in the craw of the OU coaches and players.

On Wednesday, Stoops bristled at the idea that the Big 12, which survived extinction over the summer, belonged to Texas.

“We’ve still won the Big 12 championship three of the past four years,” he said. “That’s somehow been forgotten. Championships matter a lot to us, and we’ve got a bunch. Our goal isn’t just to beat Texas, but also win conference and national championships.”

So, yes, the forecast in Oklahoma calls for gusts of adjustment, followed by flutters of transformation.

Somehow, I don’t think the Sooners are going to up and blow away.

bcherry@wacotrib.com

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