Perhaps the most amazing thing about Bob Stoops' coaching reign is just how starkly this season contrasts with every other.
That would leave out OU's inexplicable inability to win a BCS bowl game since the 2003 Rose, but that's still probably best.
Losing the last game of the year is never fun but it's hardly worth an apology just as long as it's played in Glendale, Miami Gardens, Pasadena or New Orleans.
It's seasons like this one coaches must answer for, and even then, only when they become a trend and one season does not one make, and that's where the Sooners find themselves with Bedlam staring them in the face.
It's not over, but the die has been cast.
Winning's better than losing coming up and it will make all the difference to the fans come Saturday. Yet what just happened at Jones AT--T Stadium is still more telling.
Because to get any kind of bounce from one season to the next, the Sooners needed to beat the Red Raiders, the Cowboys and maybe their bowl opponent, too.
Now, it's very much a lost season.
A 41-13 loss to Texas Tech notwithstanding, this remains one of Stoops' and Brent Venables' very best defenses and perhaps their best. Statistically maybe not, but you try plugging the dike breached by an Oklahoma offense with less consistency than Oklahoma weather week after week and see how you play against Mike Leach's offense in Game 11.
Yet OU has little to show for it.
Other trying regular seasons robbed the Sooner Nation of thinking about championships very early, yet revved that same nation's anticipation of next season late. Yet this season, win or lose against the Pokes, will do nothing of the sort.
When has national signing day ever loomed so large toward the immediate future? Typically, signing day questions are answered two and three years later, but if OU can't find two or three offensive linemen who can play right away and fairly well, consequences will be paid only months hence.
Then there's the case of Landry Jones.
He's turned in a solid freshman season, maybe, yet he's been horrible away from home and how much difference can one offseason make?
Maybe plenty, but if he nor Drew Allen's the guy to get OU back in the Big 12 title race, where is that guy and when does he arrive?
It's been an absolute thud (or dud, whatever) of a season and what's down the road couldn't be more mysterious. Remember, next year was always going to be OU's rebuilding season. Well, it still is, without any of the good vibes or confidence a nice sendoff this season might have created.
To get there it took losing the nation's best quarterback, the nation's best tight end and many other here-today-gone-tomorrow-back-in-a-few-weeks issues for other key cogs in the machine.
But that doesn't get what's left of the offensive line off the hook and just how much difference could Sam Bradford and Jermaine Gresham have made playing behind something a little bit porous and a whole lot undisciplined?
It is the tale of the Sooner season and it's no fun at all. Of course, since the guy running things arrived, it's never been that way before and it took some awfully bad luck to get there.
Not that it matters now.
Now, it just stinks.
Clay Horning 366-3526 cfhorning@normantranscript.com
OU Sports
Tough season to swallow, next year remains mysterious
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