Red Raiders are sent tumbling by Sooners

NORMAN, Okla. -- Make way for a Sooners surge.

Sam Bradford and Oklahoma are on their way up in the national championship race, and Texas Tech sure came down with a mighty fall.

Bradford threw for 304 yards and four touchdowns, and DeMarco Murray and Chris Brown combined to run for five more scores as the fifth-ranked Sooners brought an unceremonious end to No. 2 Texas Tech’s run toward perfection in a 65-21 blowout in a Big 12 Conference game Saturday night.

The question now is this: Did the Sooners (10-1, 6-1) do enough to make up for that loss to Texas?

The Longhorns have held a trump card since the annual Red River Rivalry game in October, having beaten Oklahoma, 45-35, on a neutral field at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

But the Sooners came up with as resounding a statement as they could by stifling Graham Harrell, who came into Norman as the Heisman Trophy favorite but might have relinquished that title to Bradford.

Harrell was 33 for 55 for 361 yards and three touchdowns, which looks good on paper, but most of those numbers didn’t mean much.

“It wasn’t easy,” Sooners Coach Bob Stoops said. “They’re a great team. They really are.”

The Red Raiders (10-1, 6-1) fell into a three-way tie atop the Big 12 South with Texas and Oklahoma, with only one week left in the regular season. If the three finish tied, the BCS standings would determine which team plays No. 12 Missouri in the Big 12 championship game at Kansas City, Mo., on Dec. 6.

So the Bowl Championship Series controversy could come early this season, a week before the pairings are even set.

The suddenly stingy Sooners held Tech scoreless on five straight possessions for the first time this season, and got to Harrell -- who’d been sacked only five times all season -- on back-to-back plays in the first quarter while the nation’s highest-scoring offense kept on clicking.