MANHATTAN, Kan. – Is Kansas State this bad or is Oklahoma this desperate for BCS love?
The Sooners, despite a blowout win here, is in full scramble mode. Oklahoma started the day No. 9 in the BCS. It needs help. Lots of it. That loss to Texas Tech still stinks like a varmint that crawled up into the attic and died.
The Sooners can say all the nice things about still pursuing a Big 12 title but even that looks like a risky proposition.
They may not even be the dominant team in the conference. That designation probably belongs to Oklahoma State which routed Baylor and remains, you may have noticed, undefeated. The Dec. 3 game that once looked like a national semifinal, now looks like a Cowboy steppingstone to New Orleans.
Oklahoma smashed K-State and impressed no one who saw the Texas Tech game. It may have rebounded here from an inexplicable loss. Ryan Broyles may have set the Big 12 career receiving record. Landry Jones may have set the school passing record. The Sooners may have kept their slim BCS championship hopes alive but is it all too late?
These Wonder Cats saw their undefeated season end but not for lack of effort. They picked off Oklahoma’s Landry Jones twice. They rallied from a 14-0 deficit to score 17 consecutive points. They don’t have the athletes to match up with Oklahoma but it’s still a program with possibilities, with a future.
The coach is only in his third year. Never mind that he’s 72. Oklahoma won easily? Big deal. That’s what it was supposed to do. That Texas Tech loss remains an F on the Oklahoma season report card.
If we’re going to let go of K-State for this season, let’s remember them for how they got it done.
Take this slice of Wildcat life: In scoring 17 unanswered points to take a three-point first-half lead , Kansas State’s quarterback 1) lost a shoe while running for a first down, 2) a Flea Flicker turned into an Oklahoma pass interference penalty 3) a reverse netted 10 yards and 4) that shoeless quarterback imitated Michigan’s Shoelace.
Only his mother and college football sabermaticians know that Klein came into the game second in quarterback rushing to Michigan’s Denard Robinson. In starting a rally from 14 down, Klein swept around on left end for 11 yards but not before the quarter lost his left shoe while running out of bounds.
That’s in everyone’s playbook, right?
It was fun for a while, until Oklahoma woke up from the worst six quarters of its season and scored 44 in a row on the Wildctats. K-State isn’t all there yet. It got to 7-0 with a combination of pluck, luck, trick plays and Snyder’s magic. It was a victim of a better team on Saturday.
Based on Saturday more questions have to be asked: How did Kansas State get to 7-0? Also worth asking, how is Oklahoma not still undefeated?
