Gundy on Bedlam Loss: ‘Hell of a College Football Game’

NORMAN — Mike Gundy put his hands on the shoulders of two reporters who packed out his press conference on Saturday evening deep in the bowels of Gaylord Memorial and hopped through the gap in his Nike thermals, his black visor a little higher on his forehead than normal.

He sat like a young kid in a chair that was too big, the kind that forces you into poor posture and makes you feel smaller than you actually are. He took the microphone.

“That was a heck of a college football game,” he said.

He’s not wrong.

It was 1,342 yards and 95 points worth of a college football game. The first seven drives of the game were all 73 or more yards and ended with 45 combined points. Seven drives for 45 points!

The teams were on pace for 2,000 yards for most of the first quarter. Everything you want from a Bedlam game, and probably a lot more than anybody expected. OSU set a Gundy-era high for first downs. They’ve only scored more than the 47 they put up two times in Bedlam history. Both teams put up over 7 yards per play. It was unbelievable (although if you’ve watched these defenses all year, maybe it was very believable).

“We could probably talk about a lot,” Gundy added. “We made a couple mistakes in the game and they didn’t, but I’m very proud of our guys to come down and compete and play hard. They bought in, practiced hard and showed a good culture.

“It was a hell of a college football game. You sure would’ve liked to complete that last pass, but sometimes things don’t go your way. I told the team that I couldn’t be any more proud of them. They came to the fight and stood tall. As a coach, that’s all you can ask, for guys to buy in, practice hard and when it comes time to play, to play. I’m very excited about them standing toe-to-toe. We made a lot of plays and it was a fun game.”

I thought this was a great opening statement by Mike Gundy. This is all #okstate fans really want to hear and see out of their team in #Bedlam. And credit to him for coaching aggressively. Pulled out all the stops. pic.twitter.com/8E7aaZykC5

— Carson Cunningham (@KOCOCarson) November 11, 2018

That will get lost. Gundy’s 2-12 record will be cited. The 2-point conversion whiff will be broken down. Where was Justice? What if Chuba hadn’t fumbled? Exactly how fast is Kyler Murray?!

But I’m here for elite college football games. Games where 88,000 people are letting it rip. Games we’ll talk about a year or three years or five years from now. Yeah, it was a loss, but it was a game.

That’s what I was thinking about as Kyle B. and I stood under the bowled-in portion of the stadium as OSU drove the other way. “They should go for two,” KB said halfway through that final drive. “They are,” I said a few minutes later.

I get it. Another year, another Gundy loss. Another 12 months of OU smacking its gums about whatever the heck the all-time record is now. But this one was different than the rest of them. OSU has never taken a team with a mediocre record and balled with an elite OU team in Norman. Good OU teams? Sure, they did that in 2014. Average ones? Yeah, 2012. But not great ones like this one is.

Les Miles did it, but Gundy never has. That’s why Saturday, despite the loss, was special to me. A virtuoso performance is often marred by what went wrong, sure, but I hope we remember this one as the classic it was.

“It’s basically a 200-play game, and they made one play at the end,” concluded Gundy. “I know we’re supposed to end up with more points on the board when the clock expires than they are. I would be hesitant to take away from anything out guys did … wins and losses are important, but I can’t take anything away from [Corn or anyone on OSU] … It was a hell of a college football game.”