I opened up the crystal ball this Sunday morning to take a peek into the future.
There it was. The long list of Twitter posts from Sooner fans complaining, after a nail biting close win over a good but less than elite TCU team, that starting QB Spencer Rattler couldn’t run the football like Jalen Hurts and was hurting the team.
As the old saying goes, the more things change the more things stay the same.
I remember when fans were apoplectic that Jack Mildren couldn’t hang onto the football. Or that Sam Bradford’s judgment was lousy.
Make no mistake about it, Hurts has made enough mistakes the last three games (five turnovers — three in the red zone) that Oklahoma fans are miffed at him.
The luster of his story — benched by Lord Saban, transferred to Oklahoma, taking the Sooners to the Big 12 championship promised land during a season when Oklahoma might otherwise not be such a shoe-in, has been scuffed up by it.
But by reading social media you would have thought the Sooners lost the game on a chilly Saturday night in Norman. They didn’t.
One Facebook post actually used the word sabotage.
Breaking News: Oklahoma defeated TCU 28-24. Oklahoma is going to play in the Big 12 Championship game on December 7,
The previous week’s amazing comeback — down 25 points against a much tougher opponent in Waco — another nail biting 34-31 win for the Sooners — all of a sudden seems forgotten.
Hurt’s mistakes in that Baylor game (two fumbles and one interception) actually helped his stock among fickle Sooners fans, albeit after the fact, because they set up the opportunity for his stellar second-half play to carry the Sooners to a victory.
Not so much this week. It was the defense, those no-name and mostly maligned bums on the opposite side of the ball, that saved the day.
By reading social media you would have thought the Sooners lost to TCU.
By reading social media you would have thought the Sooners lost to TCU.
Including Brendan Radley-Hiles. “Bookie,” who will never run a tackling clinic in his life, jumped TCU QB Max Duggan’s pass late in the fourth quarter to grab an interception and end the Horned Frogs’s last chance to upset No. 9 Oklahoma.
I guess the point in all this is this: After attending more than 200 Oklahoma games in my lifetime two things are very clear: 1) The passion of Sooners fans is extremely high; and 2) Their patience is extremely low (manifested in some unfortunate Twitter posts).
Our Oklahoma State Cowboy friends up the way would call us spoiled brats.
And that might be the only thing those OSU folks have right.
In other words, humans are flawed.
Football players. And fans.
But this week as we sit down at the Thanksgiving dinner table with our families to give thanks to what we have in life, let’s give thanks to those young Sooners players who remind us that we all screw up sometimes.
But, oh what a fun ride life is — mistakes and all.
(Meanwhile, let us all hope the ‘Pokes prove my point by doing some dumb thing in Bedlam on Saturday in Stillwater. As those flawed Aggies are want to do.)
NEXT UP: Bedlam at Stillwater. 7 pm Saturday (FOX).
Photo credit: Caitlyn Epes/Oklahoma Daily
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