Mark your calendars for Sept. 13, Sooners fans. Oklahoma's trip to Seattle, Wash., to face the Washington Huskies just became significantly more interesting.

The NBA approved the relocation of the Seattle Sonics to Oklahoma City, pending the resolution of litigation between team owner and fellow Oklahoman Clay Bennett, the city of Seattle, Sonics' season-ticket holders and former club owner and coffee entrepreneur, Howard Schultz.

Schultz is suing Bennett with the hope of finding a judge loosy-goosy enough to rescind a sale that happened two years ago. Even the most optimistic of lawyers-who-happen-to-double-as-Sonics-fans say that Schultz' burden of proof is staggering and that he stands virtually no chance of winning.

Season-ticket holders have filed a class-action lawsuit against Bennett's LLC on the premise that they bought tickets under the assumption that the team would be in Seattle permanently. And the city of Seattle, spearheaded by Mayor Greg Nickels, is suing to enforce the lease at Key Arena -- not for the purpose of anything but to buy time in hopes of annoying Bennett to the point of giving up.

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On Thursday afternoon, I got a call at work from a young woman named Monica Guzman, and she identified herself as being with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She didn't say whether she was its circulation manager, janitor or what; however, I later learned she is the paper's online reporter, the primary content manager, if you will, for what seattlepi.com calls The Big Blog

Very nice newspaper site blog, by the way, and Guzman's work is stellar. I definitely checked her out online later on. Graduated from Bowdoin College, does on-air reports for KOMO and can even sing a pretty mean version of "Here Comes The Rain Again," by the Eurythmics.

Her line of questioning pertained to koco.com's sports section, where we list "Sonics" as a local team and had since Bennett bought the team. The local team section, and it definitely could be called something else, also includes teams from Texas and Missouri with absolutely no affiliation to the Sooner State other than interest.

I was sure to be polite and clear about our intentions, which were to make information available in the most logical place possible for the purpose of usability and not to insult anybody in the Emerald City.

And that's the truth, really.

What I was sure not to say was, "What do you care? Your basketball team IS coming to Oklahoma as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow."

However, in the back of mind, I absolutely thought it.

And that's the truth, really.

My prediction is that litigation will never come to pass, except perhaps on the behalf of ticket owners. The city of Seattle cannot possibly be so inept as to ensure the NBA never returns there on account of pride and hurt feelings.

Even fiscally, the city of Seattle has to reorder its priorities for the purpose of ensuring the most advantageous outcome. If the city is in fact guilty of scheming to "bleed the Oklahomans" through a course of litigation, we then move beyond the civil to the potentially criminal. Extortion is a crime.

And it's this pattern of ineptitude with which NBA and its commissioner David Stern are so darned frustrated. The association told them long ago that Key Arena was not suitable as-is, not so much because of the quality of the infrastructure but moreso because of its "footprint," which I do believe means its physical size and capacity to hold suites and offices and things that generate revenue.

During a news conference on Friday, Stern was quick to note that he wasn't an expert with regard to the exact nature of Key Arena's unworthiness, only to remind reporters that the NBA had been through this with the city enough to make the exercise of even talking about mind-numbingly frustrating.

However, I'm no expert as to arena footprints, either. What I do know is that one cordial Seattle fan wrote me to say that the fans in Seattle absolutely love Key Arena. While he didn't spell it out this way, I suspect he was suggesting that its charm, its location made it a fan favorite.

From a business perspective, I'm not sure what that has to do with anything -- what the fans think of the arena. It's irrelevant.

What happened during the early part of the 2000s and most certainly once Clay took the team over in 2006 was that the city of Seattle and the state Legislature in Olympia, Wash., could never get it together to the point that funds could be approved and allocated by deadline toward an arena, whether it be an acceptable-to-all-parties renovation to Key or a new stadium out of town, like in Renton, Wash.

The key here is that the NBA and Bennett gave everybody a deadline, a deadline imposed after Schultz sold the team on the basis of his resignation from having to deal with a city and state government that could never come together for a plan that meshed with the will of the people with regard to an arena.

That's right, the will of the people.

Sonics fans have a rich history in Seattle, 41 years worth. However, not everybody in that metro area is a giant basketball junkie, nor are they supportive of mass public funding for sports properties -- particularly in the face of new baseball and football locales, built on taxpayer dimes.

Complicated, right?

To the outsider who reads espn.com this afternoon to find out the Sonics got the OK to move and who knows nothing about the history of this process and with the NBA's frustration with Seattle, they immediately think: "Carpetbagger! Bennett's stealing this team and moving them to Oklahoma! How dare he rob the 12th largest market in the country of its precious basketball team!"

But to the insider, the average Washington resident who had the opportunity to lobby his or her lawmaker about this, who had the chance to do what it takes to ensure the Sonics would stay, minds were made up not on Friday but long ago.

Seattle said goodbye to the Sonics even before Bennett bought the team by indirect but absolute will of the people.

To litigate now, to make proposals now is tantamount to attempting to inbound the ball after the clock hits :00 for one last shot. All the e-mails in the world from club executives don't make up for the years of paperwork and evidence on behalf of the team and the NBA relative to their good-faith efforts to keep the team there.

Alas, my prediction is that somebody with good sense in Washington will sit down with Clay and workout an appropriate buyout that not only allows him to get out of the Key Arena lease and move to Oklahoma City but also allows the city of Seattle save face with the possibility of getting another team someday.

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However, the reporter's call to me on Thursday made me realize something very integral to this story. Nobody in Washington had been paying attention to this story, to the dilemma of its basketball team, to the very real possibility of the Sonics bolting for a smaller market.

The NBA has been thriving in smaller markets for many, many years, the one professional league to excel at developing the untapped, one-team market. Take the San Antonio Spurs, for example. Or the Utah Jazz. Even the Portland Trail Blazers. The Orlando Magic.

The response to the story and even, perhaps, the way her story idea came about also caused me to realize that Seattlites and Washingtonians, perhaps, have come to take the impending departure of its team very personally.

They blame Clay Bennett, personally, but oddly enough don't reserve much disdain for government leaders there. I'm pretty sure they still don't care for Schultz, even in light of his 11th-hour lawsuit. However, they also blame Oklahoma City and Oklahoma.

In the past 48 hours, we've been called Dust Bowlers (echoed by Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban), hicks, rednecks and worse. One e-mailer contacted us today to suggest we take the dip out of our mouths and get out of our trailer homes long enough to &%$^# ourselves.

They don't want to know about Oklahoma City's local leaders working with state leaders, who both worked with the community to put forth a plan to bring a team, any team, to OKC. They don't want to acknowledge business leaders, sports leaders and the city of Tulsa for stepping up to the plate in partnership roles when it came time to wow the NBA.

And make no mistake: Oklahoma City didn't merely do well enough to convince team owners on that relocation sub-committee that our market (OKC and Tulsa combined) would be able to handle an NBA franchise, we wowed them.

For those of you who don't know, Oklahoma City is a future major hub in the Southwestern part of the United States, what I'd call the Phoenix of the region. In 1970, Phoenix was Oklahoma City, and now it's a Top 5, Top 6 American city in terms of population.

First, our economy is booming, and it's not just about oil. It's about energy and aviation and bio-technology. The reason why is simple: Our cost-of-living is low. Our property costs are low. And our current leadership, at both the city and state level, really have it together.

Furthermore, Oklahomans have a ton of disposable income for these very same cost-of-living reasons, and we just happen to be sports nuts. When the Hornets were in Oklahoma City for those two years post-Hurricane Katrina, the Ford Center was packed.

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So, what does this have to do with the Sept. 13 Washington-OU game? That will be the first chance for the city of Seattle to collectively take out its frustration on the entire state of Oklahoma. And don't think for a second that they don't view this situation as Seattle vs. Oklahoma City and, in fact, the entire state of Oklahoma.

We're not sure why. All the city did was do what the NBA asked it to do, and all we Oklahomans did was do what city and state leaders asked us to do: Vote our conscience.

Did we want an NBA team? Vote yes for X.

However, the tens of thousands of fans in Husky Stadium on Sept. 13 will be out for blood, and it's a mood that will not be lost on Washington's media or, more important, its coaches and players. It will be their one and only shot for revenge.

Because all this talk about litigation and rescinding sales and "bleeding the Oklahomans" will soon give way to diplomacy, negotiation and resignation on the part of city and state leaders, looking to save face and to get the best financial buyout possible.

That leaves Sept. 13. And with all the high hopes OU has for a great football season this year, Bob Stoops and company need to be fully aware of the unique time-bomb that awaits them.