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While center Jon Cooper was preparing for the Shrine Game last month in Houston, his West roster teammates began receiving e-mails containing invitations to February’s NFL Scouting Combine.

Cooper, voted the Big 12 Offensive Lineman of the Year by the league’s coaches, waited for his e-mail to arrive, too.

It never came.

"I was worried I wasn’t going to get invited,” Cooper told The Oklahoman in a phone interview. "I called the National Football Scouting office just to see, and they said the first invites, which is for seniors, had been sent out.

"I wasn’t one of them.”

Eventually, Cooper — as well as former OU guard Brandon Walker, who also was left off the first list — received a Combine invitation earlier this month.

But only after spots were available following the second round of invites, which go to selected underclassmen who have declared for the NFL Draft and then to leftover seniors who didn’t get invited the first time.

"I kind of got overlooked,” said Cooper, who’s been working out in Los Angeles with Walker and ex-Sooner offensive tackle Phil Loadholt. "I felt like I had done well enough in college to get invited the first time.”

Who knows why Cooper, a four-year starter at OU out of Fort Collins, Colo., was not part of the initial combine invite list?

But the best guess is that it was his size.

At 6-foot-2, 275 pounds, Cooper was undersized for college, much less the NFL.

But Cooper is quick to point out a center of similar size, Jeff Saturday of the Indianapolis Colts, was, despite being 6-2, 300 pounds, a Pro Bowl selection in 2005, 2006 and 2007.