A No. 1 ranking has become common enough at the University of Oklahoma that it’s easy to forget just where the Sooners program was when Bob Stoops arrived in 1999.

One .500 season under Howard Schnellenberger in 1995 preceded three losing seasons under John Blake.

A big player on the national stage?

OU was 10-21 in conference play under those two coaches for those four years. The Sooners, clinging to an outmoded style of football, were struggling to win the state championship, let alone anything else.

Five Big 12 titles, a national championship and 28 weeks atop The Associated Press poll later, Stoops has the program back where Sooners fans assume it belongs leading up to the game Sooners fans don’t think about for more than 12 months of the year.

Oklahoma fans are enjoying the weekend in Dallas like never before, really.

After beating Texas six times in nine years, Stoops’ winning percentage against the Longhorns is better than Barry Switzer’s, better than Bud Wilkinson’s and, well, quite a bit better than his immediate predecessors.

Asked why he has done particularly well against Mack Brown, Stoops responded, “That’s not a fair statement. We’ve done well as a football program. We’ve been fortunate to win six of them, and we got our butts beat in three of them.”

I’m not sure “fortunate” is the most accurate way to describe the Sooners’ 63-14 win over Texas in 2000, or their 65-13 victory three years later.

Even Stoops couldn’t keep from joking about how Texas fans greet his team’s bus when it arrives at Fair Park.

“They treated us a lot better in 1999 and 2000,” he said. “After that, they weren’t too cordial.”

But it’s true that Stoops has a stellar record against just about everyone and in just about every situation other than BCS national championship games (1-2).

The Sooners’ most recent journey to the top of the poll has made Oklahoma the most frequently ranked No. 1 team in the land, just ahead of Notre Dame, Ohio State and Southern Cal.

It has been four years since Oklahoma was ranked No. 1, but this team’s swift rise to the top indicates Stoops and his staff are doing one of their best jobs yet.

The Sooners lost seven football games the last two years, including a pair of Fiesta Bowls. They lost some good players in that period, too, led by Vikings running back Adrian Peterson.

But this team, coming out with what amounts to a fast-break offense, is burying teams quickly on a regular basis. Sophomore quarterback Sam Bradford was second only to Missouri’s more seasoned quarterback, Chase Daniel, in an ESPN.com Heisman Trophy poll this week – and for good reason.

Bradford has completed more than 72 percent of his passes for more than 330 yards per game. One pass out of eight finds the end zone. About one out of 50 gets intercepted.

Stoops is quick to give credit to Bradford, not the team’s evolving no-huddle offensive style.

“We’re not moving the ball well because we’re in the no-huddle,” Stoops said. “We’re moving the ball well because we’re blocking, we’re running the ball, we’re delivering it. It just comes down to execution.”