NEW ORLEANS, LA – Frankly, we wanted to write this right after the walk back from the Superdome in the wee hours of a glorious Friday morning, but it just wasn’t in the cards. The Sooners’ 45-31 victory over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl left us completely spent – emotionally, mentally, physically, vocally, and in every other way. Frankly, we felt almost like we’d played in the game ourselves.
And really, how else should one have felt after experiencing the greatest Sooner victory since the 2001 Orange Bowl National Championship Game? Games like this – wins like this – have been way too few and far between for those of us in crimson and cream. Nobody expected it, although we will say that it certainly didn’t surprise us that we won. Indeed, about the only outcome that would have surprised us would have been if we had blown Alabama out. We didn’t see that happening, but anything else was on the table as far as we were concerned.
And why should it have surprised anyone? Because people in Vegas (who are, admittedly, very good at what they do, and make a lot of money as a result) said it should have gone another way? It was really just like the OSU game – you’d have thought we were East Popcorn State. More than likely, a large contingent of our own fans were probably the most surprised, as it always seems that those are the people that have the lowest opinion of this team.
We said after the KSU game that Trevor Knight’s performance there showed us why he was named the starter coming out of fall camp. His performance last night was KSU writ large, on the biggest stage imaginable, playing Johnny Manziel for real against Alabama like he did on the scout team before our last bowl game. As Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated accurately observed on Twitter during the game, one QB last night looked like a Heisman finalist – and the other was A.J. McCarron.
The Sooner offense took all the flashes they have shown at various points all season and put them together in one night. The Sooner defense, meanwhile, had its struggles early, but threw McCarron out of sorts with constant pressure and seven sacks, only three less than the Tide had allowed all year. Frankly, if the Sooner secondary could have tackled a lick in the first half, all other things being equal, this game would have been 31-3 at the break instead of 31-17.
We could go on and on about the superlatives from this game, but we won’t. The main thing you need to take away from this game is that the sky is the limit for this team in 2014. The 2013 team came in with uncertainty at QB that continued throughout the season. That question was resolved in a big way over the last three games of the season, especially in the Sugar Bowl. Trevor Knight is going to be on the top of the list for the Heisman in 2014 after his performance against Alabama.
The 2013 team played the majority of the season without two of its best players on defense, and lost its best player on offense late in the year as well, and that’s not counting all the other starters that missed games with injuries. And after all that, all they did was go 11-2 and beat the two-time defending national champs by two touchdowns in a BCS game. A game that, by the way, made Oklahoma the only school to win all of the BCS bowls, in the waning days of the BCS system.
We have said before that we thought that 2009 might have been Bob Stoops’ best coaching job. That no longer holds. To take this team, with its youth, inexperience, and injuries, and do what he did is nothing short of amazing. And the thing about injuries is that it forces young players to play early, which makes them that much better going forward. And all that adds up to the 2014 Sooners having their sights set squarely on Jerry World and the national title game one year from now. That’s what the expectations are going to be, and it certainly looks like they can be fulfilled.
If you want to see the extremes of college football fandom, short of the national title, have a look at the attitudes of our fanbase after our last two bowl games. After the Cotton Bowl, we might not ever have won another game. After the Sugar Bowl, we might never lose another. And as for the real extremes of college football, someone please tell Harvey Updike that we don’t have any trees we really care about in Oklahoma.
And so ends another season of Sooner Football – maybe the best ending in 13 years. We're headed home tomorrow after a superb trip to New Orleans. We don’t want it to be over, though. Can it be August tomorrow? Please?
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