Click here to read James Roth's opinion in the Friday Face-off

This Oklahoma Sooners football team has suffered several cruel tricks this season, losing the services of Jermaine Gresham, Sam Bradford, DeMarco Murray, Brian Simmons and others for full games, if not seasons.

It’s also offered up some sweet treats, with the play of the Sooners’ defense (second in the nation in scoring defense, sixth in total yards allowed) .

So, it’s fitting for the Sooners to take Owen Field Saturday, Halloween night, given the trick-or-treat nature of OU football from play to play in 2009.

Of course, there has been some concern about OU taking the field on Halloween night and depriving Norman children of their own trick-or-treat opportunities. But any gnashing of teeth on this issue is misguided. For starters, OU really has no choice in the matter. College football is traditionally played on Saturday, a convention the Sooners have observed save for rare occasions.

And OU will simply be adapting to the demands of those same broadcasters Saturday, just like college teams from across America will be doing as required by contract. ABC, ESPN, Fox and Versus pay the Big 12 quite handsomely ($60 million a year, according to a Sept. 18 article in the Columbia Tribune) for the right to televise Big 12 games.

If those networks say kickoff is at 6 p.m. Halloween night, it will be at 6 p.m. Halloween night.

Also, it’s not as if trick-or-treating won’t happen in Norman this year. The city is just asking folks to go a day earlier.

They can now do it without worrying about the game-day scene that puts 82,000-plus extra people on the roads of a town of about 107,000 with cars leaving lawn parking spaces and entering traffic from all angles and levels of driver inebriation. Several campus and city organizations are also hosting Halloween events and opportunities to beg for candy tonight.

The moved up trick-or-treat day is unfortunate for younger Norman kids wanting to watch their big brothers play football tonight, especially for those needing to travel to Midwest City to see the Norman Tigers take on the Bombers. And, moving trick-or-treat day up does also prevent Norman children from choosing between Sooner football and their Spongebob costumes.

Ultimately, it’s two important dates on the cultural calendar clashing with each other. In Norman, football will win that clash every time, not just Saturday.