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Despite an Uneven Start to Big 12 Play, Bedlam for the Driver’s Seat Was Always the Goal

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6 years ago

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Well … I thought at least one of these teams would be undefeated heading into Bedlam. I didn’t know which one — probably Oklahoma State considering OU had to go to Columbus — but I didn’t expect a pair of one-loss teams to be playing this game before the season started.

It’s an odd thing to be ranked No. 11 in the country and be 7-1 on the season and still feel like you haven’t really had the season you wanted. Maybe it was the way OSU lost to TCU. Maybe it’s that the Cowboys only have a couple of good wins and no great ones. Maybe it’s that the offense has looked bumpier than we thought it would eight games in. I don’t know the reasoning — probably a combination of all of those things — but this season has lacked the juice I thought it would have had heading into November.

I’m with many of you, this season has not exactly been fun. It’s been exciting and thrilling and frustrating and intriguing, but it hasn’t been the joy that 2011 was. Maybe that’s our own fault for improperly setting expectations. Maybe this team just isn’t as good as that one. Maybe we’re just spoiled.

But despite all of that, Bedlam will still be played next Saturday for the driver’s seat into the Big 12 title game. That’s what we all wanted, right? Amid all the noise and the hoopla and the #FireYurcich banter, all we ever wanted is for this game to be as meaningful as it has been the last two years when it was for the outright Big 12 championship.

Now we got our wish.

And yet I have absolutely no clue what I’m getting on Saturday. Last year, I thought I knew. I thought Oklahoma State was going to go to Norman and bang around for 60 minutes with a title contender. They laid an egg early, though, and tucked their tail late. Oklahoma State got housed in a trajectory-changing game.

Now, after four consecutive offensive performances that left us wanting for (a lot) more, anything between a three-TD outcome either way, and I probably won’t raise an eyebrow.

Gundy said on Saturday he doesn’t try to “figure out these millennial kids anymore.” That’s probably wise. The narrative changes so drastically from week to week — from drive to drive! — that it feels futile to even try and scheme up what may or may not happen six days from now (and yet that is exactly what we’ll spend much of the next six days doing at this very URL!)

“It’s always a fun game,” Gundy said of Bedlam on Saturday. “We don’t have professional football in our state so everybody always wears orange or red to work during the week. Should be a good game. They’re having a great year, and I know everybody will be excited about the game.”

It’s not Gundy’s job to try and contextualize these things so I’ll do it for him. The winner of this game will almost assuredly make it to Arlington for the Big 12 Championship. There are a variety of permutations, but it’s tough to imagine a scenario in which a 5-1 OU or OSU with multiple games still left at home doesn’t eventually make it to Dallas.

Forget the College Football Playoff. Forget the bowls. Forget it all. Your goal if you’re Oklahoma State every year is to collect Big 12 titles. It’s a big deal to win one of those around here, and like Mason Rudolph pointed out after the TCU loss, all of OSU’s goals are still out in front of OSU. Somehow, after Austin and Morgantown, that’s still true.

We can argue back and forth about what play should have been called or which game should have been scheduled or which coach should have been hired — this is what blogs are for after all. But in the end, for these schools, all that matters is whether you’re playing for titles. Whatever world you’re in and however big that trophy is doesn’t mean much. For Oklahoma State right now, the size of the prize can be clutched in Bob Bowlsby’s hands. It has played for four of these trophies in the last six years and won just one. A Bedlam win would go a long way to making it five in seven.

So maybe these last nine weeks haven’t been everything we dreamed they might be, and maybe it’s been more confusing than we thought — although, hell, trying to figure all of that out has been half the fun. But in the end, the Cowboys still got what they craved before the season began. A final shot at Oklahoma with this core group of Rudolph, Washington, Ateman and Co. with a license to drive the Big 12 bus straight down I-35 at the beginning of December and the added bonus of knocking OU clear out of the CFP picture on the table.

They may have taken a circuitous route to get to this point, but at 3 p.m. on Saturday in BPS with 60,000 people screaming unspeakable things at Baker Mayfield, none of us will care. All that matters now is what you do with the moment.The Big 12 dream is still alive, and Oklahoma State is now within 20 quarters of pay dirt. The next four will tell us everything we need to know about how it’s all going to end. Time to take the flag from Baker. Time to inject this season with an all-time performance. Time to put a punctuation mark on Rudolph’s career. Time for OSU to eat.

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