Jalen Hurts, named starting quarterback by Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley, has an impeccable football background.

Sooner fans will get their first look at the former Alabama star as OU hosts Houston at 6:30 Sunday night.

“It’s been a very healthy competition,” Riley said. “There’s a lot of respect for each other in that room.”

Hurts beat out Tanner Mordecai and highly recruited freshman Spencer Rattler to get the starting nod. Riley again waited until less than two weeks before the opening game to name a starter.

Hurts “was just a little bit better,” Riley said. “I don’t know if there was one category or thing that you would point to. I think on his down days, when maybe he wasn’t at his best, he was a little bit better than the other two. They all did a great job. It was close and that’s what you expect and that’s what you hope it will be.”

Hurts started 14 games for Alabama in 2016 and 2017 seasons and played in 13 games in 2018. Hurts played in three College Football Playoff National Championships and helped Alabama to the 2017 national title. Alabama was 41-3 in those three seasons.

As a starter at Alabama, Hurts had a record of 26-2. Last season, he replaced injured starter Tua Tagovailoa and led an Alabama rally for a 35-28 victory that got Alabama in the national championship game.

Hurts, a Houston native, was the top rated quarterback in Texas when he was a senior in high school.

Hurts has the Alabama quarterback career record with 23 rushing touchdowns and ranks second in school history among QBs with 1,976 career rushing yards and 71 touchdowns responsible for. Hurts racked up 7,602 yards of total offense and threw for 48 touchdowns. Both of those total rank third in Alabama records.

Faced with the prospect of playing behind Tagovailoa this season, he transferred to OU to get a chance to start and be tutored by Riley. Riley’s last two quarterbacks – Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray – won the Heisman Trophy and were the No. 1 picks in the 2017 and 2018 NFL drafts.

“You have to work for everything in life,” Hurts said. “You try to compete and be the best.

“I am not the same player I was as a freshman or sophomore at Alabama. Things have changed – I am a different player.”

OU coaches and players know a lot about Houston but the Cougars expect to be full of surprises under first year Coach Dana Holgorsen. Holgorsen came to Houston after 8 seasons in West Virginia and has faced Riley’s Sooners many times, including as an assistant coach at Oklahoma State. His record was 61-41.

“One of the challenges is what elements from their previous tenure as a head coach (the Cougars will continue),” OU defensive coordinator Alex Grinch said. “What you don’t want to imply is you know exactly what you will see here… You go down a bad path when you do that.

“Certainly, you have to lean on the video that you can find to kind of suggest maybe what you are going to see. It’s appropriate as you prepare your guys to not say that we’re playing West Virginia this Sunday.”

The last time OU faced Houston, the No. 4 Sooners were upset by No. 15 Houston, 23-33, in Houston. Texas coach Tom Herman was the Cougar head coach in 2016 and Bob Stoops had not yet retired as OU coach.

OU has a star quarterback but so does Houston in senior D’Eriq King. King has been on the Walter Camp Football Foundation Player of the Year watch list for three years in a row.

Before tearing his meniscus in mid-November, King set The American Athletic Conference single-season record with 50 touchdowns responsible for (36 pass, 14 rush), despite missing the last 2.5 games with injury in 2018. The Manvel, Texas, native led the nation with 27.5 points responsible for per game, four points ahead of the No. 2 spot shared by Heisman finalists Kyler Murray and Dwayne Haskins.

King is one of only three quarterbacks in Football Bowl Subdivision history with 35 passing touchdowns and 13 rushing touchdowns in a single season

King has caught 59 passes for 504 yards with three touchdowns during his career and returned 10 kickoffs for 254 yards and one touchdown as a freshman.

“We have a lot of respect for him and how they are going to use him, it’s going to be wait-and-see,” Grinch said. “To pretend like we’re going to know exactly is naïve on our part. Lean on the film and make sure we’re playing with an effort to fix the plays that we don’t have a chance to rep in practice.”

OU is asking fans to wear white instead of red at the Houston game for a “white out.” The game kicks off at 6:30 p.m. Sunday and will be televised on ABC-TV.