STILLWATER — Oklahoma probably deserves a spot in the Big 12 championship game coming up at Arrowhead Stadium.
The Sooners have likely earned their spot in Miami to play for all the marbles for the first time in four seasons should they get past Missouri in Kansas City.
Only here is the sweet truth of all that’s happened going back to Tennessee-Chattanooga and rolling all the way to Boone Pickens Stadium Saturday night:
The Sooners don’t need BCS validation. They don’t have to edge Texas out. They probably have but it is not required.
It’s only required to stick another championship trophy or two in the Switzer Center, but it’s no prerequisite to call the season a success. OU must still win its bowl game, wherever it might be, but that will be enough.
How can it be looked at any other way?
OU lost to Texas.
Yes, it happened, but shouldn’t final judgment be made on the response? Isn’t it all about handling adversity, like what to do after losing your most important defender and, having tumbled at the Cotton Bowl, doing everything a team can do to claw its way back into the fray?
That’s what the Sooners have done this season, without backing into anything and without having luck play a role in beyond the 73-yard touchdown pass Jermaine Gresham was credited with Saturday after Sam Bradford threw a spiral so fine it skipped out of Manny Johnson’s hands like a smooth stone through water and into those of the tight end, already behind the defense.
Yet the series before Oklahoma State got away with a fumble that wasn’t so all it did was even things up and, anyway, everything’s fair in love and war and Bedlam.
Who would have thought another 60-point output could possibly be achieved on the very same night that left the Sooner Nation on collective pins and needles until nearly the very end? Yet that was the case inside a stadium OU has had a devil of a time winning with any kind of cushion for a very long time. Maybe that makes it only seem right that even winning by 20 there was hardly a cushion to be found.
Instead, what will be remembered is Sam Bradford’s helicopter act, as he took flight late in the third quarter, just trying to do anything to reach the end zone. And then having not reached it, recovering a fumbled snap on the very next play in time to pick it up and score facing fourth-and-goal to offer one more Sooner answer on a day the Sooners answered over and over again.
Or Keenan Clayton’s sack of Zac Robinson halfway through the fourth quarter, when it looked like the first big defensive play might win it. It pinned the Cowboys deep and led to the first punt since the first quarter. Or the fumble Jeremy Beal forced and Adrian Taylor pounced upon that really put the game away. Or Bradford all over again, this time through the air, where he tossed four more touchdown passes without a pick.
The only reason why he might not be the best quarterback in college football is because his offensive line gives him all the time he wants to pick everybody apart. Like it’s easy. Then again, who would you take first instead?
This time around Bedlam wasn’t so much a war or a battle or a blood feud so much as an exclamation point. A big one on a big regular season with only one blemish, yet a regular season that can be defined by everything that occurred after the blemish was incurred.
All signs point toward the Sooners receiving some very good news today and yet they still might not. Should the news not come, it will be unfortunate, though not a crime. The crime would be thinking it was all for nothing.
The journey, this journey, is its own reward.
Clay Horning
366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com
OU Sports
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Jerry Laizure-US PRESSWIRE
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