A game as big
as Texas

TULSA is coming to town, and that's enough to make everybody sound like he's from Oklahoma.

"I'll tell you what," June Jones said yesterday, speaking of TU quarterback James Kilian. "He's a tough sucker, he really is. He's really earned his stars for Tulsa.

"He's a Texas-Oklahoma kind of tough football player."

And that's what Tulsa brings. The Golden Hurricane is 1-3, and the early scores have not looked good. TU got shut out by Navy, was held to 3 at Kansas.

But these are Texas-Oklahoma kind of tough football players you're talking about. A lot of these guys have endured a 17-game losing streak, looked the possibility of winless seasons in the face.

They run a Dust Bowl offense.

I'll tell you what.

This is an interesting game, suddenly. This is Hawaii's bounce back game. Tulsa supposedly already bounced back, having throttled Southwest Missouri State last week 49-7.

That's misleading, of course, because SMS is a Division I-AA team. Then again, that's what you're supposed to do to Division I-AA teams, so Tulsa should feel OK about itself again. (Hawaii got well against Army last year down the stretch. It doesn't matter who they come against, bunches of touchdowns always help.)

Hawaii should win -- if for no other reason than the game is at Aloha Stadium on a Saturday night and not at Skelly Stadium on an Oklahoma afternoon. In our "Football Fever" contest, I am picking Hawaii to win. (Alert the serious gamblers.)

But Tulsa is a running offense, a tight end offense, a play-action offense. Tulsa grinds it out and mixes it up, and thus far this UH team has had a hard time against Texas-Oklahoma kind of tough football offenses.

And this year even the WAC's "off" weeks are just a little bit tougher. It looks like even the cupcakes have at least a chance of biting back. Tulsa may be 1-3, but this will be interesting, to say the least.

"I challenge people to find better parity in a league," Tulsa coach Steve Kragthorpe said in yesterday's WAC coaches' conference call.

His voice sounded like he was a coach coming off a 49-7 win.

These guys are dangerous. They have a big, tough Oklahoma quarterback who likes to run. A five-DB defensive scheme. Another coach who has come from the pros.

"They're going to do what they do," Jones said.

Kragthorpe even took a dry-run trip to Hawaii this summer, half business, half pleasure, to see if he could glean any insight into that kind of travel.

That tells you something. It tells you coaches make a lot of money these days.

It also tells you Tulsa has been looking at this game.

So TU has not been as good as we've expected this year. Neither has Hawaii, not yet.

But if you go back and look, Tulsa wasn't a great team last year, in its eight-win bowl season, not at all. All Tulsa did was win every game it should have won.

For both of these teams, this is that kind of game.

As they say in Oklahoma, this has the makings of a good 'un.

I'll tell you what.