By Don Williams | AVALANCHE-JOURNAL

After Texas Tech upset a third-ranked Oklahoma team one Saturday night last season, Colby Whitlock sat down for a late-night meal. With Sooners fans sprinkled about in adjacent booths, the Tech defensive tackle took care not to flaunt the upset.

Texas Tech receiver Tramain Swindall from Oklahoma City is the Red Raiders' fourth-leading receiver this season. He is one of several Oklahomans who are contributing to Tech's success.

How could he? They were his family.

“Everybody was happy,” Whitlock said of his visiting relatives, “but everybody was mad, because they all grew up in Norman their whole life. They’re Sooner born, Sooner bred. It was bittersweet for them, so it was a little awkward.”

A few weeks later, Tech cornerback LaRon Moore – a schoolboy star in Midwest City, Okla. – was back home at the Penn Square Mall in Oklahoma City. This was shortly after the Red Raiders’ triumph in the Gator Bowl, but for patrons who spotted Moore in a Tech jersey, the memory of the late-November OU loss remained fresh.

“Everybody was booing when they saw me in the mall, just out of games and fun, because we had beat them,” Moore said. “It’s all games and fun, just knowing that you can go back home and mess with everybody that loves OU and (Oklahoma State).”

Tech defensive end Jake Ratliff says fellow Oklahomans have never booed him on the street the way they did Moore.

“I’m a little bigger than he is,” said Ratliff, who stands 6-foot-7. “I don’t know if that’s it or not.”

For an increasing number of Red Raiders, give-and-take with the Okies is something that came with their college choice. One February several years ago, Tech coach Mike Leach noticed that Oklahoma and Oklahoma State had signed only a few players in their own backyard, prompting Leach to make recruiting forays across the Red River.

At first, the missions were almost furtive. Then four years ago, Leach hired as his running backs coach Seth Littrell – Sooner born, Sooner bred, member of a Sooners national championship team. Soon after, the Raiders were out of the closet in their willingness to cast a net for Oklahoma prospects.

They signed four last winter alone.

“It was Wes Welker forever, then me for a couple of years and now a whole bunch of them all of a sudden,” said Ratliff, a senior from Lawton Eisenhower.

When No. 2 Tech takes on No. 9 Oklahoma State today, Whitlock and Ratliff will be sporting colors their families didn’t quite picture when they were kids. Whitlock grew up just minutes from OU’s Memorial Stadium/Owen Field. Ratliff’s childhood loyalties swung toward orange and black.

“I’d say until I got in eighth grade probably, I always had an OSU hat on,” Ratliff said. “My whole family all went to school up there, or most of them did. It’s just kind of what I grew up liking.”

Tech is getting a solid return on its investment.

Ratliff has started for three years, and Whitlock seems set to start for four. In true Oklahoma fashion, Whitlock has saved a special wrath for the University of Texas – a combined 18 tackles and six tackles for loss in his first two games against the Longhorns.

Redshirt freshman receiver Tramain Swindall from Oklahoma City Millwood has 33 receptions for 422 yards, and Moore returns kickoffs and gets playing time at cornerback. Until an injury sidetracked him early in the season, Muskogee product Pete Richardson also was competing at corner and on special teams.

None of the imports has been a bust, which Whitlock says is a reflection of the talent in Oklahoma high schools.

“I think it’s underrated to a certain point,” he said. “Texas has more kids than we do, but I think the athletes we do put out are just as good or a little bit better than the Texas guys.”

Or, as Swindall put it, “People don’t really think there’s talent in Oklahoma, so it’s pretty good to see Oklahomans coming to Texas, trying to show what we’ve got.”

In discussing their roots and their recruiting experiences, however, most of the Tech Okies relate stories indicating that, although they might have attracted interest from their home-state programs, they weren’t prime recruiting targets for either OU or OSU.

Moore said OU coaches gave him the impression he was too small to play corner.

“I considered OSU,” he said, “but I believe they pulled their offer when they said I was getting recruited by Notre Dame and LSU and places like that.”

Whitlock got some attention from the Sooners, but said they preferred him at center, not as a defensive tackle.

“I think just a lot of us feel like we got a raw deal, because Oklahoma’s recruiting the Dallas area and stuff so hard,” he said.

Tough as the Big 12 is, though, the Sooner State fraternity, almost to a man, says all the conference games mean the same. Games against OU and OSU might lead to more telephone calls from family those weeks, but the players say the games can’t be given special significance.

Moore was the only one to offer a slightly different view.

“For me, it kind of does,” Moore said. “It’s kind of like a get-back-at-you game, because of how recruiting went down with me and them. It’s always fun to beat up on your home-state team, especially now. I really want to get OSU from last year.

“It’s fun to play the people that you know that go to school there. I have a cousin, (OU defensive tackle) Gerald McCoy, that plays there. I’ve been picking at him all year that we beat them.”

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