Relief and release Sooners and fans feel sweetness of tough victory

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- It was a sea of blue at Memorial Stadium, nearly uninterrupted by crimson but for this strip of fans on Oklahoma's side of the field, buried beyond an end zone, though not behind an end zone, extending up and into the bleachers.

And to get an appreciation of what Saturday afternoon was all about for the players that little slice of the stadium was rooting on you really had to be there when the Sooners walked off the field past their little partisan enclave.

Win an October game at the Cotton Bowl and you can run all over the stadium turf like you're Jim Valvano at the Final Four and never quit meeting your fans, deliriously welcoming you and your teammates as conquering heroes.

Well, that wasn't the scene following OU's 35-13 victory over Kansas, but it's hard to imagine it was any less sweet than what the Sooners failed to realize a week earlier in Dallas.

Much of that little slice of Soonerdom came down to the field's edge to meet the players as they walked past not politely so much as every bit as moved by their performance as their subjects.

They stopped, they talked, they high fived and fist bumped. Gerald McCoy, who never stops playing like maybe the best defensive tackle in the nation, struck a silly pose for the fans' cameras and the appreciation couldn't have been more mutual or endearing.

It was one long and extended sweet moment maybe 4 minutes after the final gun, but that was hardly the point.

The point was the painted picture of immense relief and release the Sooners and their nation finally realized. Here inside the stadium and surely in front of hundreds of thousands of television sets back home.

Think about it.

One-point loss to BYU.

One-point loss to Miami.

Three-point loss to Texas.

Nation's best quarterback on the shelf. Maybe the best tight end, too. And enough uncertainty on the offensive line to make the most irrationally confident Sooner diehard squirm and maybe even cry.

"It was a huge game," Bob Stoops said.

Probably bigger than that.

Nothing had gone right for OU lately this side of Tulsa coming to visit. Really, the four biggest stars on Owen Field this season have been the Irish quartet of Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr.

Yet there's been enough for all to see what might happen if the Sooners can get as healthy as the football gods will allow and as sharp and smart between the lines as their program's history and tradition demand they be.

This was a start.

The release was pure emotion, on both sides of the bricks. Like this team's been pushing a rock up a hill all season, never to arrive at the top.

But what Landry Jones and the offense did coming out of the half finally got OU near where it wanted to be.

The Sooners continue looking up at much of the college game, but finally they looked like a team that belongs near the peak.

"It kind of just felt like a snowball," Jones said.

A rock up a hill.

A snowball down a hill.

Anyway, OU got moving.

What it might mean by looking forward is the relief.

How could the Sooners ever think they could navigate the rest of the conference schedule without finding something like they finally found against the Jayhawks? How could the fans ever buy it without seeing something new?

But they found it and saw it.

Like a pass first, run second spread offense that may not be the best recipe of all, but one OU can successfully fry up just as long the players treat themselves kindly by playing with discipline and focus. And a defense that not only stops the other guy, but can dominate and score points, too.

The Jayhawks aren't a great team, but they're darn good and have been for a while and here they were on their home field waiting to club a wounded bunch of Sooners into submission.

Not only didn't it happen, but it was the Sooners doing the clubbing. Just not too hard because everybody still likes Mark Mangino around the Switzer Center.

It's what OU needed.

The season's still out there.

Success, however defined, is an attainable goal.

It was a good day.

You could see it on everybody's face as the Sooners left the stadium.

Clay Horning 366-3526 cfhorning@normantranscript.com