At Bedlam, Sooners on field deserve better than they got from their coaches on sideline, up high
At Bedlam, Sooners on field deserve better than they got from their coaches on sideline, up high
It took so much.
Nic Anderson had to drop a ball that had 67-yard touchdown pass written all over it. It hit him in the hands in stride, yet the man who catches more TDs than he doesn’t, couldn’t.
The drive that put Oklahoma State on top for good?
It may not have happened but for a pass interference call against Makari Vickers, the Cowboys facing third-and-5 from their own 8. And it really may not have happened had Brent Venables himself not received his second penalty of the season, giving OSU an extra 15 after arguing the call all the way out on Boone Pickens Stadium’s artificial surface’s numbers, which is verboten coast to coast.
It took two fumbled snaps, one in the first quarter and another in the fourth, both resulting in Oklahoma giving the ball right back to its Bedlam rival.
Not to mention maybe the worst non-call in college football this season, when Drake Stoops was pulled to the ground in the end zone with 4:53 remaining.
Of play-by-play guy Dave Pasch, former Sooner defensive tackle and color guy Dusty Dvoracek, and the ABC rules guy, whoever he is, who popped in for just such moments, none could understand how Stoops was not interfered with.
So it took all that.
It took all of that for OU to fall 27-24 in the 118th and final Bedlam game, at least for a while, Saturday afternoon in Stillwater.
It took all those things conspiring together to keep the Sooners from once again claiming the rivalry they’ve dominated pretty much from the start, beginning the day they topped the then-Aggies, if they were even called that yet, 75-0 on Nov. 5, 1904, in Guthrie, still three years before statehood.
It did not, however, take only that.
It also took the Sooners failing to do anything with Billy Bowman’s 39-yard fourth-quarter interception return, setting them up at their own 44 and, one play later, at OSU’s 45 after an 11-yard pickup from Tawee Walker, a failure that involved another set of questionable play calls from offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby.
It also took OU falling short at the very end, stopped on downs at its own 46 despite consecutive completions to Jalil Farooq and Stoops, which would appear to beg a question.
How can that happen?
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