Oklahoma football: Sooners seek to avoid slip-up in Stillwater
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma football has dominated the Bedlam Series with Oklahoma State, but that hasn’t always been the case when plenty is on the line for the Sooners.
The Sooners, ranked seventh in the latest College Football Playoff rankings, face off with the 21st-ranked Cowboys in Stillwater on Saturday on the final weekend of the regular season.
This will be the 114th meeting between these two teams, tying the longest continuing series against any Oklahoma opponent (with Texas). It also marks the 12th time in the last 15 seasons that the two in-state rivals have faced each other in the final game of the regular season.
Oklahoma leads the overall series with a record of 88-18-7 and is 40-7-5 in the games played in Stillwater. The Sooners are 15-1 against Oklahoma State when both teams are ranked, which they are this year, and 13-0 when OU is the higher-ranked team.
The Sooners have been the higher-ranked team in most of the Bedlam Series battles over the last two decades, but that hasn’t always worked in their favor.
Playing at home in 2001, Oklahoma was the No. 4 team in the country and in line to move up one or two spots in the BCS standings because No. 1 Nebraska had been upset by Colorado a day earlier.
The Sooners led Oklahoma State10-6 after three quarters in the 2001 game. The two teams exchanged field goal early in the fourth quarter to make the score 13-9. Then, with a little over three minutes remaining in the game, OSU began a 65-yard, 6-play drive that ended with a 14-yard game-winning touchdown pass from Josh Fields to Rashaun Woods. The Cowboys won the game 16-13.
The 2001 loss to their in-state rivals not only cost the Sooners a chance to play for the national championship for a second straight year but also sent Texas to the Big 12 Championship game instead of OU.
Oklahoma State also came dangerously close to ruining Oklahoma’s national championship season the year before in Stillwater. The Sooners survived a late scare from their in-state rivals in the final regular-season game in 2000 when a fourth-down pass into the end zone fell incomplete to preserve a 12-7 victory and an unbeaten season.
The Sooners head to Stillwater again on Saturday, winners of 23 of their last 24 true road games and 8 of the last 10 games played in Stillwater.
The last game between these two teams in Stillwater featured an offensive shootout between OU’s Baker Mayfield and Oklahoma State quarterback Mason Rudolph. The two teams combined for 1,432 yards of offense in a back-and-forth game that wasn’t decided until Trey Sermon’s 53-yard touchdown run with under a minute left in the game, giving Oklahoma a 62-52 victory.
Mayfield and Rudolph are both toiling in the NFL now, but both teams are still loaded with offensive firepower. which should make for make for another Bedlam barnburner on Saturday between these two bitter rivals.