Sooners Lack Style but Not Substance

The last time Oklahoma won a game so ugly on a national stage it made you want to switch channels, the Sooners ... celebrated their seventh national championship?

Yep. In fact, No. 3 Oklahoma’s 14-3 win over No. 5 Texas on Saturday before a crowd of 75,587 at the Cotton Bowl felt so much like last year’s 13-2 win over Florida State in the Orange Bowl it made you want to call the engraver.

“We’ve shown in big games we step up and play,” Sooner linebacker Teddy Lehman said. “Just like we always have.”

Just like they always will?

Oklahoma’s victory was its 18th in succession and eighth in eight tries against a top-10 opponent since Bob Stoops took over this restoration job.

Exciting? Good gracious no.

Lived up to billing?

Hardly. Texas-Oklahoma fell flatter than the road to Lubbock.

Oklahoma, though, has proved over time it doesn’t care much how it wins. Last week, in a performance worthy of a sweeps week, the Sooners breathlessly held off Kansas State, 38-37.

Saturday’s game resembled more of a scrum. There is a fine line between winning and losing--Oklahoma knows how to straddle it and Texas doesn’t.

A year after losing this game, 63-14, Texas played Oklahoma to a state fair standstill but made just enough boneheaded plays to lose.

Oklahoma (5-0) might look back on the final minutes as the span that helped it win another national championship, while Texas (4-1) may be looking at a time frame that cost it a title.

It doesn’t take many plays to make a difference. Texas Coach Mack Brown guessed Oklahoma made five plays and his team didn’t.

Yet, this is how legacies are made and maintained.

Take Saturday: Oklahoma was nursing a 7-3 lead and trying to run out the clock when the Sooners’ drive stalled at the Texas 27. Tim Duncan trotted out to attempt a 34-yard field goal. Or, so we thought.

Mike Stoops, Oklahoma’s defensive coordinator, chased brother Bob down on the sideline and convinced him to have Duncan abort the field goal and pooch a punt to pin Texas inside its 10.

Bob Stoops bought the idea, even though a field goal could have put the game out of reach.

You talk about brotherly love.

Not only did Duncan pooch the kick, but Texas defender Nathan Vasher made a Texas-sized mistake by downing the ball at his own three-yard line.

Two minutes remained. Texas had all three of its timeouts, and the Longhorns actually had notions of driving the field and, perhaps, changing the course of its season.

Wrong.

On first down, Oklahoma safety Roy Williams made like Superman on a blitz and rocked Texas quarterback Chris Simms’ arm as he was throwing. The ball fluttered into the waiting arms of Lehman--”right place, right time,” he said--and returned the interception two yards for a touchdown.

Game over.

Get this: Williams was explicitly told not to leave his feet on the play, for fear of leaving a gap in the defense.

These are the kind of aggressive moments that have led Oklahoma’s resurgence. Lehman’s touchdown was the fifth scored by the Oklahoma defense this year, one more than Penn State’s offense has in four games.

Texas tried to put its best spin on the defeat, but it was a gut punch.

Yes, the Longhorns’ defense played well enough to win, holding the Sooners to one touchdown and 206 yards.

Yes, Texas acquitted itself for last year’s embarrassing loss in the Red River Shootout.

But losing big games has become a familiar yarn in Austin, and this was a game there for the taking when Oklahoma starting quarterback Nate Hybl was forced out in the first half because of an injury.

The nature of this injury (believed to be a shoulder) remained a mystery. One sign a team is becoming a super power is an increased paranoia, and Oklahoma’s Stoops is apparently head of his team’s secret police.

Afterward, Stoops would not reveal the nature of Hybl’s injury, stating, “I’m not much with letting people know what’s wrong with our guys.”

Texas might have welcomed the emergence of backup Jason White, who had attempted four passes all year when he stepped in for Hybl, but it was White who exploited the situation.

“There were a lot of jitters,” White would say later, “but my teammates calmed me down and helped me play.”

White replaced Hybl for good mid-drive in the second quarter and led the Sooners to their only offensive touchdown.

On fourth and two at the Texas 30, White rolled left on an option and pitched to tailback Quentin Griffin, who ran to the 13. From there, White ran 11 yards to the two. On first and goal, White again opted for the option and pitched to Griffin for the score.

It seemed implausible that the sophomore White could make more big plays to win the game than Simms, Texas’ touted junior quarterback.

But, in the end, White prevailed. Simms completed 24 of 42 passes for 198 yards but finished with four interceptions.

It would be hard to pin Lehman’s game-clinching interception on Simms, but there would be other faults to find, particularly the fourth-quarter pass Simms floated into the end zone that was intercepted by defensive back Antonio Perkins with 8:33 left.

You talk about a rally killer. Texas had been given new life after Duncan missed on a 24-yard field-goal attempt and was driving toward the go-ahead touchdown when Simms’ pass was intercepted.

Simms cited history as a reason not to give up on the Longhorns as a national title contender. He talked about how, in 1998, Florida State shook off an ugly loss to North Carolina State and mounted a run to the national title game.

“I don’t think that the season’s ruined at all,” he said.

Not ruined, perhaps, but certainly soiled.