With their season on the line and legions of doubters already writing their season's obituary, the Oklahoma Sooners found a way to play their best football when they needed it most to beat the Texas Longhorns 27-24 in another historic addition to the Red River Rivalry's venerable history. Electric from kickoff to final whistle, it was yet another reminder that this game is unlike anything else in sports.
It is the best rivalry in college football, point blank. It's not even football, really. It's an event. A spectacle. It's pure chaos. Chaos coated in batter and deep-fried to golden perfection, and placed delicately in the center of a state fair packed to the brim with 200,000+ people clad in crimson and burnt orange eating and drinking and yelling and sweating, only then culminating in a football game unlike any other. For the Sooners in attendance Saturday–fans, players, coaches, Freddy the German guy who went viral touring America during the World Cup–it was a day about conquering much more than just their bovine bête noire, but also their own demons.
Genuinely, it felt like all of Sooner Nation exhaled all at once for the first time in months. One Sooner fan told me he literally passed a kidney stone in a bathroom by the Midway two hours before kickoff and that was how he knew it was about to be a good day. The joy in the stadium was unparalleled. But perhaps no one quite enjoyed the moment more than Courtland Guillory. A year ago, Cam Coleman in an Auburn uniform baptized him into real college football, giving him the absolute business for four quarters. On Texas's final drive, it was Guillory, one on one with Coleman, who got the pick that led to the game-winning field goal.
Others, too, seemed to break free from whatever funk had been holding them back.
Tate Sandell, fresh off winning the first Lou Groza Award in OU history, missed his third consecutive field goal on the Sooner's only sustained drive in the first half. His magic from last season's Tennessee game had seemingly finally run out. And yet, with the game on the line, he was absolutely nails. Baby draw right through the uprights for the walk-off. He said after the game: "When I went to the Lord, I didn't ask Him to help me make it, just give me a chance." He did, and he did.
Peyton Bowen has seemingly dropped more interceptions than any player in recent memory. Securing any of them could have dramatically shifted more than one game this season. Saturday, he finally got one, and then went on to take it all the way to the house for good measure. If he wasn't already regarded as one of the all-time greats among OU safeties, he absolutely is now. That play (and his name) will be spoken of in the same breath as Roy Williams and Tony Jefferson and all of the others who came before him, forever.
John Mateer has been nothing if not chased by ghosts this entire season. While certainly a team sport with plenty of blame to go around, his excruciatingly painful and backbreaking turnovers on the road against Michigan and Georgia have earned him choruses of boos from his own fans that surely haunted him throughout the bye week and in the days leading up to Saturday. Whether or not those are fair or warranted, especially in the days of NIL, is a topic for another time. There was even a murmur–a rumbling–after he started the game with a third down strip sack fumble that was very nearly every bit as costly as his prior errors before it was very luckily recovered by a teammate. The rest of the first half wasn't much better. The offense had five straight three and outs in the 1st half, and on their only drive with any signs of life, they missed a long field goal. Texas then scored again to take a 10 point lead into halftime, set to get the ball back on the other side. If there was ever a time for player, or even just the man himself under the uniform, to give up and fold, it was then. Instead, he avoided any turnovers, outplayed Arch Manning in clutch time, and led a game-winning drive with two of the best throws of his entire life. His OU legacy was always going to be cemented on Saturday afternoon, for better or worse. And it was.
After the game, as the team celebrated around him, he planted the flag in the end zone as Toby Keith and 45,000 elated OU fans belted "How Do You Like Me Now" at the top of their lungs. After everything he has been through in the last 365 days, all of the things said about him online and out loud, to deliver like that in that moment? That's why you love college football.
So, what does it all mean? Is the season salvaged from the depths of mediocrity? Truthfully, nobody knows. The offense still wasn't very good. But, they did what they had to do, and were elite when it mattered most. Every defense they play the rest of the season will be worse than what they've seen so far. The Sooners defense, respectively, will only get healthier and more terrifying. There are elite quarterbacks still ahead on their schedule; there are "elite" quarterbacks that have looked pretty pedestrian against them thus far. Brent Venables continues to buy himself goodwill with the fanbase each and every time he's about to run out. The talking heads, both at home and abroad, will sing praises and claim they never gave up on the Sooners. The message boards will sound more like Ted Lasso's "Believe" than Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (author's note: I'm a high school English teacher. I do not apologize. Also, this was an elite reference, look it up.). But ultimately, the next chapter won't be told again until the next Saturday, when a soon-to-be ranked Kentucky Wildcats team comes to town for the SEC home opener in Norman. Until then, Sooner Nation sleeps soundly once again after the second Saturday in October, no ghosts, demons, or nightmares to be seen.