NORMAN — Eighty-four Oklahoma coaches and athletes followed their coach in being swabbed or added to the national registry of bone marrow donors here Wednesday. Quite the gesture for Bob Stoops and his program, entering its 10th tour of duty.

Now, if there was only a swab that could detect a cure for the Sooners’ Bowl Championship Series flu.

Once again, Stoops and company are coming off a tough bout — that 48-28 Fiesta Bowl loss to West Virginia where, among other things, Oklahoma had yielded over 500 yards of offense with 9:21 still on the clock, and 349 total rushing yards, the most a Sooner defense has allowed in bowl history.

That’s zero for their last four in BCS games... oh sure, you know it well. LSU, USC, Boise State and that latest flare-up. Apparently the BCS disease is communicable.

You just want a cure.

Stoops has the lab results that clearly indicate the evidence of three missing starters in the most recent of games.

“Outside of that, it’s fair to say in those cases there isn’t any one reason why,” Stoops said at Wednesday’s Media Day presser. “I think you play together as a team. I don’t feel our offense was good in those games with turnovers and penalties. All that together, we didn’t play very well.”

It does seem the BCS flu surrounds good cells and even hides them from view. Using his own microscope, Stoops insists they’re there, as he indicated during a look-back on his first decade in Sooner Country.

The 2006 season which culminated with the Boise State shocker, Stoops says, “might have been one of my favorite years even though I don’t want to go through it again.” He noted how the team survived the loss of its starting quarterback, Rhett Bomar, just weeks before the season started and still won the Big 12.

Then, he noted, last year’s bowl loss to West Virginia came after a redshirt freshman in Sam Bradford led the team to a repeat title.

“No one else has won the (Big 12) championship with a redshirt freshman,” he said.

OK. There’s good cells present and active. But truthfully, the BCS flu doesn’t hit until after the first week of December, and that’s the growing problem in a nutshell. No need for a doctor until Christmas and make sure you have your insurance card.

“Everything you stand for philosophically — stopping the run, not giving up the big play and playing with consistency — none of it happened,” Venables said. “You identify what the issues are — we blew some coverages, we didn’t do our jobs up front. We’ve got to win the battle up front. If you’re not stopping the run, you’re not winning up front and it opens up a lot of options.

“We’re not dwelling on it, but we haven’t forgotten it either.”

One of those who hasn’t forgotten it is Lendy Holmes. Against West Virginia, Holmes was supposed to fill one of those holes at safety, moving from cornerback to fill the spot of the now-departed Reggie Smith, who missed the game with a broken toe. Holmes, however was ruled ineligible when he failed a class, dropping him one grade point below that needed to play.

Holmes is still feeling that sting. The BCS flu goes with you to the classroom, causing again, an inabiility to focus.

“I’m not one man or nothing like that ... I could say I put that game on me, though because I wasn’t there for my teammates,” he said Wednesday. “But I learned a valuable lesson. I will never, ever, ever let that happen again and I’ve got a lot to prove.”

That’s part of the focus factor that might serve as a remedy. From the fan’s microscope, the defense didn’t exactly have a lot of determination the last time out.

Venables is confident that his current defensive front, once Auston English gets healthy, could be the best unit since 2004 with Dan Cody, Jonathan Jackson, Dusty Dvoracek and Lynn McGruder. English is recovering from an appendectomy and should be ready for the season opener Aug. 30 against Chattanooga.

Gerald McCoy, DeMarcus Granger, sixth-year man John Williams and English’s current replacement, Jeremy Beal, have established themselves as the core of the defense and a front that Venables and company think can set the tempo.

“I think we can be a defense that Oklahoma prides itself on: stopping the run, getting after people, running after the ball and just being a really motivated and energetic defense,” English said.

Maybe so.

But can it do so beyond December?

We await a cure.