Oklahoma football: Is it the ‘Scott Frost curse’ or K-State version that doomed OU?
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma football fans have been desperately searching for answers to what happened to their beloved Sooners in the disappointing loss to Kansas State last weekend.
The purple- and white-clad warriors of Kansas State seemingly have a curse on the Sooners when playing before the Oklahoma home crowd in Norman. At a place where most teams come and go empty handed, K-State in recent visits had walked away with the thrill of victory, leaving the Sooners the wrestle with the agony of defeat.
Kansas State has defeated Oklahoma in four of its last five visits to Owen Field. To put that into broad context, the Sooners have lost just 12 times at home in the last 24 seasons. The opposite has been true when Oklahoma visits K-State. In fact, the road team has won nine of the last 12 games between these two teams.
Clearly something has to be going on when the Sooners host Kansas State. The Wildcats haven’t been the better or more talented team any of the four of the times they claimed victory at OU, but they surely were on the days those games were played.
This is a disturbing pattern that is reflective of some kind of curse that has been cast on Oklahoma when the schedule calls for the Sooners to play host to the visitors from that other Manhattan located in Kansas.
That is certainly one potential explanation for what happened to the Sooners last Saturday night. ESPN staff writer David Hale has come up with another possible other-worldly force that could have been at work at this year’s Oklahoma-Kansas State game.
In his ESPN article covering the highlights and takeaways from Week 4 in college football, Hale said, “Oklahoma became the latest victim of the curse of Scott Frost.”
Hale pointed out that Northwestern beat Nebraska on the opening weekend of the season and hasn’t won since. Georgia Southern upset the Cornhuskers in Week 2, leading to the firing of Frost as Nebraska head coach after four-plus seasons, then lost the following week to UAB. That brings us to the Sooners, who failed to stop former Nebraska quarterback Adrian Martinez, who was a major factor in handing Oklahoma its first loss of the season and potentially jeopardizing the Sooners chances for a 15th Big 12 crown.
Call it what you will, but there has to be something to it when the three teams that have beaten Nebraska all suffered defeats in their very next game.
Hale likens the Frost curse to the VHS tape in the supernatural horror film “The Ring.” Everyone who comes in contact with that videotape is doomed to perish within seven days,” he writes.