Schmelzle, president of Tulsa's K-State booster club, wasn't one of them. The difference, however, was the timing. The Wildcats were readying for the Alamo Bowl, a game they lost, and losing a chunk of the coaching staff made preparations difficult. But now talk of bad blood between the coaches has quieted, and the Sooners and Wildcats are settling into an intense rivalry. It is as far from a traditional rivalry as you can think of.
Most rivalries involve either schools from the same state or programs with long and storied history.
Oklahoma and K-State have neither factors. For decades, the Sooners and Wildcats might have played in the same conference but might as well have been on different planets. OU has won 64 of 84 games against K-State. But then as the Wildcats became competitive in the '90s, the Sooners took a turn for the worse. They were hardly competitive during the Howard Schnellenberger and John Blake years.