Team 131 of Oklahoma football, as head coach Brent Venables often refers to it, made a season out of stepping up to adversity and capitalizing on opponents' mistakes.
On Friday night, in the opening round of the 2025 College Football Playoff, all that good fortune that led to the Sooners' magical November run switched sides and quickly snowballed into Oklahoma's undoing.
No. 8 Oklahoma entered its playoff matchup against No. 9 Alabama owning a home-field advantage, with Friday's game being played for the first time at the "Palace on the Prairie" in Norman, along with the confidence of knowing it already had a regular-season win over this same Crimson Tide team. The Sooners had everything going for them in their quest to continue to defy the odds and add to their already stellar season by capturing their first playoff win in five tries.
Only, Oklahoma was unable to finish off what it had started in such grand fashion and, unlike the previous month, wasn't able to summon enough -- or any -- Sooner Magic to find a way to the winner's circle. Alabama came out on top 34-24 and moved on for the seventh time in nine playoff appearances. Meanwhile, Oklahoma went home, its season now over, forced to the sidelines until next season.
Not the ending Sooners wanted, but does nothing to alter an otherwise exceptional season
Disappointment naturally pervaded the postgame Oklahoma locker room. In the moment, there was little thought or conscious appreciation of how far the program had come in a year's time. Just a year ago, the Sooners were coming off their second losing campaign in three seasons under Venables, finishing out a 6-7 year with a loss to Navy in the Armed Forces Bowl.
Flip the script to 2025, and a roster that returned the majority of key personnel and depth from a much-improved defense and some major additions on offense and special teams. That led to a four-game improvement over the 2024 season and a return to the College Football Playoff after a six-year absence.
None of that really mattered that much in the minds of the OU players or fans after losing to Alabama -- and in the manner in which they did -- in the most important game in a season saturated with big games. But it should have.
Let's be honest with each other, who would have thought at the beginning of this season that Oklahoma would win 10 regular-season games, as many as mighty Alabama, especially with the same daunting SEC schedule the Sooners had to face the year before, plus a nonconference game with Michigan? Best guesses were seven or eight wins, with luck possibly nine, but 10 seemed a virtual impossibility.
"It doesn't take away from the season we had," Venables said in his postgame press conference following the playoff loss to Alabama. "It doesn't take away from, again, the pride I have for the group of seniors, the guys that won't be her in the future... and for the group of guys returning as well.
"Our best days are sitting in front of us. I really believe that. We've got a great foundation coming back, and I think a vision for what it needs to look like moving forward."
"We did a lot of things people didn't expect," said Sooner quarterback John Mateer after Friday's game. "And it's just because of the group of guys we had."
To be completely truthful, this year's Oklahoma team overachieved. It was able to achieve a 10-win season with one of the country's most outstanding defenses and special teams that was second to none. This was not a complete Sooner team, however. It achieved success despite concerning limitations on offense -- something that is highly uncharacteristic of successful Oklahoma teams of the past.
Success at programs like Oklahoma is measured in championships, and particularly of the national kind. The Sooners' goal every season is to play for and win a national championship. Just because they fell short of that mark this season, though, doesn't make it any less of a major achievement.
"Because we didn't have a big diamond on our pinkie ring?" said senior All-SEC edge rusher R Mason Thomas said to the question of if the playoff loss dampened the belief of this being a successful season. "Yeah, you could say it. But at the end of the day, to go out with my guys like this, I count it as successful."
The pregame atmosphere leading up to Friday night's kickoff was electric and overwrought with excitement and anticipation. Even the ESPN College GameDay crew was visibly caught up in all the drama and emotion.
In the early going of Friday's playoff matchup against Alabama, it appeared that Oklahoma was responding positively to the support of the sell-out crowd and finally going to get that elusive first playoff win as the Sooners surged to a 10-0 lead at the end of the first quarter and stretched it to 17-0 early in the second.
Unfortunately, Alabama had yet to get going, and as all Sooner fans are painfully aware, that seemingly brief moment of euphoria turned out to be the high point of the game as far as OU was concerned. Alabama seized control in all three phases of the game from the midpoint of the second quarter forward.
Unlike the earlier encounter a month ago in Tuscaloosa, when it was three Alabama turnovers that fueled the 23-21 upset by Oklahoma, in Friday night's playoff rematch it was the Sooners committing the critical mistakes -- in the kicking game and on offense -- that enabled the Crimson Tide to reverse the earlier outcome and in a game in which much more was at stake.
As a direct result, it is Alabama that advanced to play No. 1 Indiana in the quarterfinals in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1 and not the Sooners.