Oklahoma football: Bedlam battles Sooners would rather forget
By Chip Rouse
Because the Sooners have won 68 more games than they have lost in the 111 Oklahoma football games against Bedlam rival Oklahoma State, there are far more good memories than bad.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t certain Bedlam losses that are hard to forget. And with just 18 defeats total by OU against Oklahoma State in the all-time rivalry series, it is not that difficult to sort out the ones that were the most bitter to swallow.
Bob Stoops was 14-4 in Bedlam games. One of those four losses was a 44-10 pounding in Stillwater in 2011, but that one wasn’t a hard to take as the 16-13 loss at home in 2001, the year after Oklahoma’s national championship season, when Oklahoma State scored a touchdown with a minute and a half to go in the game to overcome a 13-10 Sooner lead and rip the heart out of the No. 4-ranked Sooners, who were very much in the national championship hunt prior to that regular-season finale.
And who will forget the Bedlam battle in 2014, when Oklahoma State punt returner Tyreek Hill ran a punt back 92 yards for a game-tying touchdown with 45 second remaining in regulation. That capped a 21-point fourth quarter rally by Oklahoma State, who trailed the 18th-ranked Sooners 28-14 going into the final quarter. It was the play prior to Hill’s punt return to the house that will forever be ingrained in the memory of diehard OU fans.
Stoops declined a defensive penalty on an initial Sooner fourth-down punt that was downed inside the Red Zone in Oklahoma State territory and elected to rekick, hoping to pin the Cowboys even deeper than the first attempt. We all know what happened next, and Oklahoma State would go on to win the game in overtime, 38-35.
The effects of that gut-wrenching 2014 loss to OSU clearly carried over to Oklahoma’s bowl game with Clemson in the Russell Athletic Bowl. Clemson hammered the listless Sooners, handing OU one of its worst losses in the Stoops era.
Bud Wilkinson never lost to Oklahoma State in 17 seasons, and Barry Switzer lost just once in Bedlam in 16 games against the Cowboys.
The 1945 Oklahoma team holds the distinction of suffering the worst Sooner loss in the Bedlam rivalry. Oklahoma State pummeled the Sooners that season, 47-0. The OU-Oklahoma State game in 1945 wasn’t a conference game for the Sooners. Oklahoma State was the champion of the Missouri Valley Conference that season, finishing 9-0 and No. 5 in the final Associated Press Poll.
For five consecutive seasons in the early 1930s, Oklahoma failed to score a point in its annual game with Oklahoma State. The Cowboys didn’t score many points either in that spam, but their 27 combined points was good enough to win all five games. Two of the games ended with a score of 7-0, one finished in a scoreless tie and one contest was a blowout, at 13-0.