Oklahoma football: The 5 best teams of the Bob Stoops era
By Chip Rouse
#4 — Oklahoma Sooners (12-2, 7-1), Big 12 champions
Oklahoma began the 2008 season ranked No. 4 in the nation in both the Associated Press and USA Today Coaches Poll and rolled to wins in its first five games.
By the fourth game of the season, the Sooners, behind the outstanding play of quarterback Sam Bradford, had climbed to the top spot in the polls, which set up a top-5 Red River Showdown with No. 5 Texas and quarterback Colt McCoy.
The Longhorns upset the top-ranked Sooners, 45-35 in a shootout, handing OU its first loss of the season and knocking them back down to No. 4 in the rankings.
Texas eventually climbed to the No. 1 spot, only to lose a heartbreaker at Texas Tech, which took over the North Division lead, ahead of both Oklahoma and Texas. That set the scene for Texas Tech comingto Oklahoma in late November with a 10-0 record and ranked No. 2 in the country.
The Red Raiders may have been ranked No. 2 and unbeaten on the season, but they played no where near that level as the Sooners put the pedal down from the get-go and never let up.
Oklahoma scored the first 28 points in the game and raced out to a 42-7 halftime lead. The Sooners added 23 more points in the second half and rolled up over 600 yards of total offense on the way to a 65-21 beatdown of the visiting Red Raiders.
OU, Texas and Texas Tech ended the regular season in a three-way tie in the South Division of the Big 12. Because the Sooners were the highest ranked of the three teams in the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) at the end of the 2008 season, they were awarded the divisional crown by virtue of the tiebreaker and would go on to face North Division champion Missouri for the Big 12 championship.
The Sooners had not faced Missouri in 2008 conference play because of the unbalanced scheduling format, but they had beaten the Tigers twice the year before, including in the conference championship game, which Mizzou entered as the top-ranked team in the nation.
Bradford completed 34 of 49 pass attempts for 384 yards and two touchdowns and the Sooners added another 243 on the ground en route to a blowout 62-21 win over the Tigers, OU’s seventh consecutive victory over Missouri.
And the Sooners weren’t done that season. Bradford and Co. moved their way into the No. 2 position in the final BCS standings, earning them a date against No. 1 Florida in the national championship game.
Bradford won the Heisman Trophy that year, beating out Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, who had won the award the year before.
That set up a showdown in the Orange Bowl between the current Heisman winner (Bradford) and the previous year’s winner (Tebow).
The game was tied 7-7 at the half, but No. 1 Florida outscored the Sooners 17-7 in the second half and held on for a 24-14 win and the national championship.
Between 2000 and 2008, Bob Stoops’ Sooners appeared in four of the nine national championship games, but came out on top just once (2000).