Oklahoma State Players Glean Confidence From How Far They’ve Come Since Bedlam 2014

Ramon Richards got beat, like most of the Oklahoma State players did in 2014.

Oklahoma had just punted to Tyreek Hill for the second time, and while the ball was in the air, the right-sided gunner Richards was supposed to fend off got past him. The gunner ran toward Hill, who waited for the punt to fall into his arms at the OU 8-yard line. Richards gave chase but couldn’t catch up. Hill never waved is arm in the air for a fair catch, so Richards thought he was about to get popped.

But he wasn’t.

“I don’t know why he didn’t touch Tyreek,” Richards said. “Tyreek, everyone knows, the fastest man in the world. So he does what Tyreek does.”

Hill ran 92 yards the other way to tie the Bedlam tilt in Norman, which sent it to overtime where the Cowboys eventually won, 38-35.

Winning that game, at the end of a dreadful 6-6 regular season, made OSU bowl-eligible, but more important, it spurned an everlasting confidence into a side that will undoubtedly need it Saturday when Bedlam pokes its head from the shadows for the 2017 rendition.

2014 Bedlam is still talked about a lot locally, far more than any other OSU game in the past half decade. The game is the only of its kind that brings up questions like, “What do you remember from that game?” No other game has had the emotional pull because, well, for this group of Cowboys, there hasn’t been anything like it — at least not yet.

Richards said just Monday he and fellow senior safety Tre Flowers were showing some of the younger players film from 2014. The Sooners had a different quarterback, running back, receivers, offensive coordinator and coach in 2014 than the group they will roll out Saturday in Stillwater. But showing film couldn’t have been so much about the schemes or the plays or the tendencies of the players so much as simply watching the Cowboys beat OU.

“Just showing ’em how all of us were freshmen,” Richards started to smile when he remembered it. “We had (Jordan) Sterns as a sophomore. (Kevin Peterson) was the only veteran in that back end. It’s just crazy how we matured together.”

Richards and Flowers were only about six months removed from sitting in high school desks when that game went final, and in the time between, OSU went on a five-game losing streak. Since then, the Cowboys have only lost six times in the regular season. Richards said times could never get worse than they were during that losing streak, and though it’s hard to think back on that stretch, it’s also enlightening.

Still, there have been two more Bedlam games since Tyreek ran it back, and OSU lost both by a combined 96-43. Stats like those have left Mason Rudolph bitter.

“Another bad taste, so you gotta get it out of your mouth,” Rudolph said. “And there’s only one way to do that.”

Rudolph looked younger than you did in your mom’s scrapbook when he earned his first Bedlam start as a freshman. He had just fought respectfully in Waco against a top 10 Baylor team, so playing again against the Sooners, “kind of solidified me as a starter.” Since that Baylor game, Rudolph has started 35 games and won more than 82 percent of them.

“We’ve got a lot of play-makers, a lot of guys, and a solid defense,” Rudolph said. “Guys have just rallied together all year and played well on defense, creating turnover like I wouldn’t have thought to start the year. Just playing with a lot of confidence.”

One of those play-makers is James Washington, and he was out there, too, in 2014. It seems as if the entire core of the OSU roster has been engulfed in this rivalry since it got on campus. Rudolph, Washington, Flowers, Richards, Marcell Ateman, Chris Lacy, Brad Lundblade, Zach Crabtree, Mike Yurcich and Mike Gundy were all part of that game.

“It was almost like a state championship,” Washington said.

OU’s stars didn’t experience that.

Baker Mayfield was at Texas Tech. Ogbonnia Okoronkwo wasn’t playing much until 2015. Mark Andrews redshirted. Abdul Adams and Rodney Anderson were in high school classes. And Lincoln Riley was the offensive coordinator at East Carolina.

None of the Sooners who will step inside Boone Pickens Stadium on Saturday have felt the sensation of an overtime Bedlam victory. But maybe more importantly, none have experienced a Bedlam loss or a five-game losing streak, unlike this group of Cowboys.

“Now we laugh about it because we learned from it,” Richards said. “We were talking about this just yesterday, it’s crazy. Just a great experience. At the time, obviously not, but now that we look back at it, it was a great experience.”

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