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Wort's story stands on its own

NORMAN — It was Austin Box who settled Oklahoma’s defense last season, returning from injury for the Texas Tech game and, through his singular contribution, allowing the Sooners to chart a new defensive course. Because of that, there is reason to tell Tom Wort’s story too dramatically.

It was Wort who struggled to find consistency at the middle linebacker position a year ago, thereby creating the opportunity for Box to save the day. It was Wort, given the starting job in his redshirt freshman season, who couldn’t close the deal.

He is now in a position to redeem himself.

Through his struggles last season, Wort proved just how important the position is to the Sooner defense. And with the comeback he’s hard at work on, his story is absolutely intertwined with the one about OU gunning for a national championship.

So don’t go for the from-tragedy-to-redemption storyline. It’s the wrong one, not fair to Box’s memory nor Wort’s experience. But feel free to consider Wort alone. Should it turn out well, his story is a very good one. And, thus far, it’s going very well.

“Like night and day from a year ago,” Sooner coach Bob Stoops said during Media Day festivities Saturday afternoon.

Perhaps nobody has ever gone from so far ahead to so far behind as Wort.

Born and raised in England before moving to New Braunfels, Texas, Wort stood out when he arrived at OU not only as a result of his occasional accent, but also because he appeared way ahead of the game, enrolling in the spring of 2008 before getting talked up as a guy who would play immediately when fall camp opened.

Until he tore his ACL and left the field completely for most of a year.

He was a redshirt freshman going into last season, but “a true freshman, basically,” defensive coordinator Brent Venables said.

Hurt or rehabbing, he missed all the reps redshirt freshmen typically accumulate. Still working things out physically, he was held out of much of spring practice prior to last season. Given the job in the fall, he was not entirely ready. He wasn’t himself.

Now, he is.

“I feel like I got my wheel back, my knee back,” Wort said Saturday. “Last year, I had still not been in a game. I was still learning. This year, I’ve done it.”

It is more than that.

Stoops calls it “exciting.”

“I told him, out at stretch (Saturday morning), I can tell the difference,” he said. “If you just watch the tape (you see) his understanding of where to be, what to do, his confidence in understanding it all. And his knee feels better.

Financial Accounting – Don't Reinvent the Wheel When Accounting ...

It has been said that the only thing that’s constant is change, and if you’ve been in business for any length of time, you know how true this is. If there’s one thing that sets companies that have been successful over the long haul-think IBM, General Electric, Wal-Mart or Microsoft, for example-apart from all the others, it’s their positive reaction to change.

Adapting to change impacts a company’s ability to capture and hold onto its market, grow its business and profitably sell its products and services. However, every small business owner or manager must learn to differentiate between those business processes that must evolve and those that should remain stable.

When Change Is Destructive

While evolving in order to meet changing consumer demands and an ever-shifting technological environment is essential, there are some business processes where change and evolution are counter-productive, even destructive. Financial accounting is one of these.

The accounting scandals that brought down several large corporations in the early 2000s illustrated the destructive potential of getting too “creative” when it comes to financial accounting. While the government passed legislation that attempted to tamp down such accounting irregularities, it’s still primarily the responsibility of business owners and their accounting professionals to create and provide financial information that is what I call ARTistic: Accurate, Relevant and Timely.

Accounting rules can and do change over time to reflect changing business models and new types of business transactions. However, financial accounting as a business process should remain stable, evolving only after careful thought is given to the potential implications of reporting transactions differently.

A complete overview of the basics of financial accounting is way beyond the scope of this article. However, by sharing a few standard accounting concepts with you, I hope I’ll motivate you to perhaps take a little bit closer look at the financial statements your CPA slides across your desk next month.

The Chart of Accounts

Let’s start at the beginning: with the financial data recording system that’s known as the chart of accounts. This is a systematic listing of all ledger account names and associated numbers used by your company, arranged in the order in which they will appear in your financial statements (more on them in a minute): usually Assets, Liabilities, Owner’s or Stockholder’s Equity, Revenue and Expenses.

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