Oklahoma football: Sooners’ season has been streaky strange
By Chip Rouse
The Oklahoma football Sooners are sailing in uncharted waters this season, playing out the role of the hunter instead of the hunted. And they have some big prey coming up in Baylor on Saturday followed by Bedlam with Oklahoma State a fortnight thereafter.
In what has been an uncharacteristic up-and-down season for the crimson and cream so far, Brent Venables’ team is on an upswing currently with back-to-back wins over Kansas and Iowa State.
The Sooners currently sit at a 5-3 record overall with three mostly horrific losses sandwiched between a three-game win streak to open the season and the consecutive victories to close out October.
A win on Saturday at home over Baylor not only would continue the season pattern and give the Sooners a 3-3-3 trifecta but also serve as further momentum to pick off a couple more wins and finish out the season with a winning record, something no one thought possible after the beyond embarrassing 49-0 shellacking by Texas.
All of that remains a big “if” right now, but the way games have been going in the Big 12 this year, anything seems possible — even more than possible. You probably don’t need much more example of that than what happened Oklahoma State and Kansas State last weekend. If you thought OU’s 49-0 pasting by Texas was bad, how about K-State bulldozing previously once-beaten and top 10-ranked OSU by a staggering count of 48-0.
It wasn’t that Kansas State won the game. Everyone knew the Wildcats were capable of that, especially playing at home. But to completely dominate and bury the Cowboys like that just goes to prove that as good as the Big 12 is top to bottom this season, anything goes on any given Saturday.
While on the subject of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State and their joint ownership of undeniably the two worst losses in the Big 12 this season — think of Bedlam on Nov. 19 as a way to settle that dispute — Berry Tramel, sports columnist for The Oklahoman, wrote a column this week comparing the two mind-boggling losses by the two Big 12 schools from the Sooner State and posing the question: Which loss was worse?
In the end, it doesn’t really matter which loss was worse, Tramel wrote. The two things that are absolutely undeniable is that both losses were stunningly bad performances by the losing team and both were of a historic nature.
For Oklahoma, the 49-point loss to Texas was the most lopsided shutout in the long history of the Red River Rivalry; for Oklahoma State, the 48-point loss on Saturday at Kansas State goes down as the most lopsided shutout in Associated Press top-10 history by a lower ranked team.
Tramel offers several comparisons of why one loss was worse than the other in a short but fun read that is worth checking out. He ultimately comes to the conclusion that bad is bad in any language, and both of these stunning defeats clearly fall and belong in that category.
Bedlam is always a game of high interest and intrigue every season, but this year’s matchup on Nov. 19 in Norman might also be subtitled “Battle of the Lopsided Losers.”