Kevin Sherrington

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NORMAN, Okla. – When DeMarco Murray speaks, he occasionally avoids personal pronouns and refers to himself by name, DeMarco Murray, which can make you feel like you're in a Seinfeld episode or maybe an old Saturday Night Live skit with Al Franken, the recovering comic.

Anyway, when DeMarco Murray talks about DeMarco Murray sometimes, you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Unless you're a Sooner fan watching another BCS title slip away, and then I can guess.

Because of a hamstring injury on the opening kick of the Big 12 title game last season, Murray didn't play against Florida. Everyone tried to play it down going in. The Sooners still had Chris Brown, didn't they? Still had a Heisman quarterback in Sam Bradford and the nation's best offensive line and a star-studded defense.

Question: How good do you think Florida would have been without Percy Harvin's 171 yards rushing and receiving in the Gators' 24-14 victory?

Answer: Maybe not as bad as the Sooners were without Murray, but close enough for further inspection.

From a purely physical standpoint, Murray, a 6-1 running back, played at around 200 pounds last year. An all-state basketball player out of Las Vegas, he reportedly has a 41-inch vertical leap. In NFL workouts last spring, Harvin, 5-11, 192, got up to 37 ½. Murray has been timed at 4.4 over 40 yards; Harvin, 4.39.

As far as production goes, Murray isn't as far behind Harvin as the latter's well-deserved buildup might indicate, either.

Last year, Harvin rushed for 660yards and 10 touchdowns and caught 40 passes for 644 yards and seven more touchdowns.

Meanwhile, Murray rushed for 1,002 yards and 14 touchdowns and caught 31 passes for 395 yards and another four scores.

The difference? Murray had 93 more total yards and one more touchdown.

Bottom line: Both are difference makers, a rare commodity in any sport.

"He's just so explosive," Bob Stoops said of Murray. "He has the ability to make big plays."

And at the very least, he would have given Florida problems to consider.

"That was an obvious disadvantage for us," Stoops said, "him not being there."

Oh, Murray made it to Florida, all right. He just didn't go to any practices.

Hung around the hotel pool, mostly, hoping his teammates wouldn't see him upset.

"It made me think of DeMarco Murray and not my team," Murray said. "It was very hard."

Murray won't say that the results would have been different had he been able to play. He called Florida a "great team" and said the Gators played a "great game."

Frankly, I'm not willing to say Murray could have made 10 points' difference, either. But let's consider what the Sooners managed without him.

Murray's replacement, Mossis Madu, carried four times for 12 yards.

And receiving? One catch for seven yards.

In a championship match against the best of the SEC, a better conference, you simply need all the help you can get.

The last couple of years, it may have been easy for Sooner fans to take Murray for granted. He's had a lot of talent around him, and he's been less than 100 percent or missing altogether from some big games because of injuries.

In fact, he missed a couple of weeks this summer because of a hamstring pull.

"I'm not worried about injuries," he said. "My body's feeling great right now. Since I didn't practice as much, they didn't beat me up."

On a similar note, he says he won't play on special teams this year. Besides the pulled hamstring on the kick return, he dislocated a kneecap trying to recover an onsides kick.

Otherwise, he's gained 15 pounds, up to 212, and says he hasn't lost any speed or quickness, which is not how most diets work.

But the kid's different, as noted. A healthy DeMarco Murray gives the Sooners an edge, and not in name only.One in an occasional series by Kevin Sherrington on Big 12 South football