Their lives are like a game of H-O-R-S-E.

Bob drains a 3-point shot over his shoulder, only to see Bo call “bank” and — Swish!

Bob Stoops, brilliant athlete and bright student, graduates from Cardinal Mooney High School in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1978.

In 1986, Bo Pelini follows him.

Bob earns a scholarship to a Big Ten school — Iowa — where he stars at safety. Bo earns a ticket to Ohio State.

At 22, Bob starts a coaching career as a graduate assistant for Hayden Fry. At 23, Bo takes the same job.

Shot for shot, they go on.

At 36, Bob wins a national championship as an SEC defensive coordinator. Bo's a few years late on that one, 40, but only because of a detour through the NFL, where he coaches in three prestigious franchises and scores a Super Bowl ring.

At 38, Bob gets his first head coaching job at one of college football's superpowers, a perennial force in the old Big Eight. He hires his brother to coordinate the defense, revitalizes a fallen program and wins seven games his first year.

OK, OK, that's the equivalent of bouncing one off the wall and through the net, right?

Bo concedes nothing. In 2008, he copies Bob's formula and wins nine.

Each grew up in a large, middle-class, Catholic family. Each has three kids.

Each possesses the innate ability to walk into a room and command respect. Each would rather lose 63-7 than mince words.

Seven years, three months and four days separate their birthdays, but if two men had any more in common, they'd share DNA.

Yet events of the past month underscore a cold reality for Bo Pelini: Keeping up with Bob Stoops is only getting harder.

Pelini's phenomenal feats as an assistant coach mean little anymore. To stay in lockstep with Stoops, Bo must restore Nebraska's glory and, in the process, beat his old friend.

Daunting?

Four weeks ago, Pelini appeared on his way.

After a 34-point drubbing at Oklahoma in 2008, Pelini had won 8 of 9, capped by an inspired rally at Missouri. He had a top-20 team. He was climbing.

But back-to-back home losses and a shaky win at Baylor signal regression from Pelini's first year.

The October slump also signals the first time since Pelini's return to college football in 2003 that he noticeably diverged from Stoops' path.

In year two at Oklahoma, Bob won a national title. He followed it with six more BCS bowls — including three national title games — and five more Big 12 championships, all in a course of eight seasons.

Meanwhile, in year two at Nebraska, Bo is no cinch to win more than he loses.

“I'm at the infant stages of my tenure,” Pelini said. “I'm not in the position right now to measure up to what Bob's done. He's won a national championship, he's won Big 12 championships. I'm finding my way and trying to build a program here.

“Obviously, I think he's set a hell of a benchmark in how to go about that. I take a lot from that because I've followed him his whole career.”

Talk to friends and family of Stoops and Pelini, and they say Bo doesn't measure himself against boyhood friends. His personal standards exceed even the best coaching records.

But is there any reason Bo can't continue to match Bob?

Nope.

In some ways, Bo may even have an edge.

In Youngstown in the 1970s and '80s, the four Stoops boys wanted to win. The five Pelini boys wanted to win.

Proof lay in the sweat and scrapes they brought home from the schoolyard.

But the youngest of the bunch had something extra, according to the oldest Stoops brother, Ron. And people from Mooney still talk about Bo Pelini's desperate desire to beat you.

“Vince and Carl and myself and Mike and Mark and Bob, I think people would use the same words: very competitive,” Ron Stoops said.

“But Bo was, and still is, really legendary.

“We all have it. Don't get me wrong. But some people take it to another level. He stands out in that way ... He had a certain confidence.”

Audacity, Ron Stoops called it.

The oldest Pelini brother agreed.

“Let's face it,” Vince said. “When Bob and I were 18 years old and seniors in high school, Bo was 10. He was really in his formative ages. He was experiencing all that (competition) ...

“Bo was really competing at a high level in both football and basketball at a young age. He was hanging and playing with older kids who were accomplished athletes.”

Those who know Bob and Bo say the primary difference these days is head-coaching experience, not skill.

Collecting details isn't easy.

“I won't go there,” said Nebraska linebackers coach Mike Ekeler, who worked for Stoops at OU. “I'd probably get in trouble. They're definitely different in a lot of ways. I really don't want to say. I don't want it to come off the wrong way.”

“Bo wears his emotions a little bit more on his sleeve,” Ron Stoops said. “Bob, he sometimes keeps it in a little bit more. It's not as recognizable, that fire that's burning.”

It hasn't always been that way. Stoops has tempered his emotions over the years.

“Everybody forgets that Bob is eight years older and he's been in it a lot longer,” Vince Pelini said. “He's had a chance to mature in the job.”

Leaders adapt to their circumstances. And Bo's situation requires a different leadership style than Bob's. Bo has to fix the engine, not simply keep fuel in the tank.

They meet tonight at Memorial Stadium, each 5-3, each enduring an autumn that didn't meet his own expectation.

Since 1994, when they became full-time coaches, neither Stoops nor Pelini has lived through a losing season — that includes Bo's nine seasons in the topsy-turvy NFL.

Since 2003, when Pelini returned to college football, his teams are 71-17. During the same stretch, Stoops is 71-18.

If Bob wins, he'll head back to Norman with the edge in that category, leaving Bo with bragging rights in ... bocce ball?

Each June, the Youngstown gang of alpha males returns home to raise funds for old Cardinal Mooney.

There's Bob and Mike and Mark Stoops, Bo and Carl Pelini, Tim Beck, Mark Mangino, Jim Tressel, Mark Dantonio, Kelly Pavlik, Ray Mancini, the list of local celebrities goes on.

They meet at a local restaurant, eat steak, talk football and compete like heck to bowl a little ball down a narrow lane.

Who wins?

“Bo,” says Mark Stoops.

“He's got a little Italian in him.”

Contact the writer:

679-9899, dirk.chatelain@owh.com