Sooners anxious for return to BCS

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — When he discovered that word had leaked out about his struggle to complete a conditioning drill in his freshman year, all Sam Bradford could do was grimace. With his strength coach telling him he was too slow and should get out of the way, Bradford insisted on finishing.

Even as tight end Jermaine Gresham described the scene, he was telling a tale of the perseverance and dedication that helped his quarterback win the Heisman Trophy a year ago.

“That was not one of my finer moments,” Bradford recalled. “I think I was just trying to show my teammates that I wasn’t going to give up on them, I wasn’t going to give up on myself. It would have been easy for me, when he told me to leave, just to walk out and not finish.

“To me, that was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to finish and I wanted to finish with my teammates.”

Now, Bradford and his teammates have some other unfinished business at hand: making amends for the 24-14 loss to Florida in last season’s BCS championship game.

“I think any time you lose the national championship game, it’s going to stick with you. Obviously, I think about it a lot,” said Bradford, who threw for 4,720 yards and 50 touchdowns in the highest scoring offense in college football history. “I think anyone on the team who told you they didn’t think about it a lot would be lying to you.”

Chris Brown, the Sooners’ leading rusher last season with 1,220 yards, said he hasn’t seen a replay of the BCS loss and doesn’t have any interest in seeing one.

“That’s something I’ve been thinking about since the day I walked off the field and this whole summer. This being my last year, I’m laying everything on the line for my team and I think a lot more of the seniors are doing the same thing,” Brown said Friday at Oklahoma’s annual media day.

The Sooners have won an unprecedented three straight Big 12 titles and have three straight BCS bowl defeats to show for it, with back-to-back Fiesta Bowl losses to Boise State and West Virginia preceding the Gators’ triumph in Miami.

“It just makes you want it so much more. You wouldn’t believe,” Brown said. “Before my sophomore year and before we even made it to the national championship, it really wasn’t on my mind until we made it. But after we lost it, it really ... hurt.”

Dating back to the Sugar Bowl loss to LSU following the 2003 season, Oklahoma has lost its last five BCS bowl game appearances.