All's well that ends well for Oklahoma State football after surviving a Shakespearean Bedlam
Berry TramelOklahoman
STILLWATER — Caleb Williams broke free, and it looked like he could run all the way to Cushing.
OSU led OU with maybe 45 seconds left in the game, and the Sooners were 80 long yards from paydirt. But Williams scrambled past the Cowboy pass rush and was sailing on open seas.
Bedlam horrors of 100 years flashed throughout Boone Pickens Stadium. You half expected a bunch of OSU fans to storm the field right then and there, try to take out Williams and accept the consequences.
The seventh-ranked Cowboys had disintegrated in a third quarter that was on a one-way trip to infamy. The Sooners, with virtually no offensive help, had turned a seven-point deficit to a nine-point lead.
But OSU, a veteran team with a winning culture that Mike Gundy won’t stop talking about, rallied to regain the lead. Then with the stadium bouncing like a rock concert, Williams threatened it all.
Staying in the College Football Playoff. Stopping the hated Sooners’ run of Big 12 championships. Winning the first Bedlam since OU announced it is leaving the Cowboys behind for the Southeastern Conference. All imperiled when Williams broke free.
“Just get him on the ground,” OSU defensive coordinator Jim Knowles thought, while his mind also raced about what to call next. “I’m just assuming we’re going to get him on the ground.”
Gundy made no such assumptions.
“I wasn’t sure we were able to catch him and get him down,” Gundy said. “I’ve seen him do that two or three times on TV, and they never catch him.”
But though Williams glided past safety Jason Taylor, the Sooner quarterback started running out of gas, and cornerback Christian Holmes shoved Williams out of bounds at the OSU 24-yard line. Then the Cowboy defense did exactly what it had been doing the entire second half — stop the Sooners.
Eight times the OU offense took the field in the second half. Eight times the Sooners failed to score. Freshman Collin Oliver did the final honors with a last-play sack of Williams, and soon enough delirious OSU fans restaged the Oklahoma Land Run, celebrating a 37-33 thriller.
Thousands of fans flooded the field. It’s college football’s latest fad, but in this case, understandable. This Shakespearean drama, this Bedlam curse of OSU football, finally had ended the Cowboys’ way.
Offensive tackle Hunter Anthony caught Gundy with a Gatorade bath. Gundy’s oldest son, Gavin, stuck a black cowboy hat on his dad, and Gundy didn’t seem to mind. He wore the Stetson while shaking hands with Lincoln Riley.
Golfer Scott Verplank, a megafan going on 40 years, hugged athletic director Chad Weiberg. Amid the mosh pit of students, an older couple walked along the turf, waving orange pom-poms. Several fans jumped to injury, leaping down perhaps eight feet and finding themselves in a makeshift triage in the stadium tunnel.
We’ve talked for a week about the future of Bedlam, but no spoken or written arguments were as convincing as this game itself. How could anyone support suspending a series that gives us this kind of theater?
The Sooners not going gently as their championship hopes started slipping, after six years wearing the Big 12 crown.
The Cowboys rallying when the third quarter seemed to be their Waterloo, with a fumble in the end zone that gave OU a safety, Brennan Presley’s muffed punt that gave the Sooners a touchdown, a missed field goal that seemed to fortify OU and finally an interception thrown by Cowboy quarterback Spencer Sanders.
OSU’s defense played spectacularly, yet a 24-24 tie had somehow become a 33-24 Sooner lead. But the Cowboys exercised the demons of dozens of Bedlams past with a championship fourth quarter
“There’s four quarters in football,” Sanders said. “Why drop your head?”
The fourth quarter didn’t start much better. Sanders hit Martin with a deep ball that Martin caught as he dove into the end zone, but the officials ruled incomplete when Martin rolled over and the ball squirted free. Replay upheld the call.
That’s about the time you wondered if it just wasn’t OSU’s night. Just wasn’t OSU’s series, this maddening thing called Bedlam football that seldom fails to entertain but seldom gives the Cowboys joy.
But OSU scratched out a first down, then on second-and-10 from the Sooners 37-yard line, Sanders ran an old-fashioned option play. Rather than pitching to tailback Jaylen Warren, Sanders ducked inside, then back outside, then in, and finally out, reaching the end zone for a huge touchdown.
“In my mind, that kind of swung momentum,” said OSU guard Josh Sills.
You figured the Cowboys at least had a chance, because the Sooners had quit scoring, and when OU’s Eric Gray dropped a Tom Hutton punt, OSU’s DeMarco Jones fell on the ball at the Sooner 5-yard line. On third down, Warren bulled in for a touchdown and OSU had the lead for good.
Still to come was the Williams jail break and the field-storming. Still to come IS a Big 12 Championship Game against Baylor, with a possible playoff berth on the line.
No matter what happens in Arlington or beyond, OSU fans always will have 2021 Bedlam, a game for the ages.
“That’s about as good as it gets for college football,” Gundy said. “Sometimes, we need to be careful with messing with the structure of college football,” perhaps talking to the Sooners, perhaps not. “College football’s pretty good the way it is.”
By then, the black Stetson was gone. But the memories from an instant classic were building, and even better, even more great memories could await.
