Perspective Piece: Oklahoma-Oklahoma State

This year, Bedlam isn't just a handy reference to the in-state war between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. In 2008, the "B-word" can describe the BCS standings that loom over this Saturday's showdown in Stillwater like a corrupt Olympic figure skating judge.

It will be silly, unfair, and bizarre in the extreme, but there's just no denying the reality that will emerge when Bob Stoops brings his troops into T. Boone Pickens Stadium to play Mike Gundy's Cowboys: The object for OU isn't just to win, but to win with flair. The Sooners could turn in several impressive triple toe loops and double lutzes, but if they don't look pretty when they skate, the Olympic judges known as pollsters will downgrade them. The backdrop to this particular Bedlam ballgame will turn a football fight into a theater of the absurd. Such is life in a world where the Big 12 Conference--instead of doing something sensible and making in-division point differential its fifth tiebreaker--chose to give the BCS standings undue leverage in deciding a division and conference championship.

Entering a game this big, normal circumstances would allow for a rather straightforward and respectable portrait of the participants, a profile in which Oklahoma State could be properly appreciated alongside the Sooners. It's been a forward-moving season in Stillwater for a team that has thrown off the shackles of mediocrity and emerged as an upper-tier team in a doggone daunting league. Mike Gundy has tossed aside his YouTube moment from 2007 and shown that he can coach a little bit. The Cowboys solidly mashed Missouri in Columbia, and took Texas to the wall before succumbing by four points on the road in Austin. A win over the Sooners would bump OSU from the Alamo Bowl to the Cotton Bowl, all while giving Texas Tech a division title and a new lease on national championship life. The Cowboys should be commended for what they've done in 2008, but unfortunately, the specter of the BCS will not allow them to receive their due as they prepare for their Big 12 finale.

No, the all-consuming element of this contest is going to be, "How nice will the beauty pageant contest from Norman look in those all-white uniforms with the red trim?"

When OU scores a touchdown, how many decimal points will shift in the direction of the Sooners?

When OSU notches a field goal, how many Harris Poll voters will downgrade OU for "insufficient artistic expression"?

When the Sooners stop the Cowboys only because of a false start by the home team on a fourth-and-1 situation from the OU 42, will the voters in the USA Today Coaches Poll credit OU for the defensive stand, or downgrade the Crimson and Cream for getting bailed out by a mistake from the opposition?

Given that this is a nasty rivalry, with no love lost between the two schools in a state that takes its football very seriously and is obsessed with the ways in which the local media portrays OSU and OU, it will be fascinating to see how the post-halftime phase of this game plays out. If the Cowboys take a 10-point lead late in the third quarter, will OU--realizing that it has lost the style-point competition with Texas--get frustrated and collapse? If the Sooners acquire a big lead, will Stoops continue to pour on the points late into the fourth quarter to gain as much of an "artistic expression" score as possible, with all the figure skating judges looking on across America? And if the Sooners take a comfy but not gigantic lead into the final minutes, will Oklahoma State milk the clock so that OU can't run up big numbers, thereby preventing Oklahoma from gaining those extra aesthetic brownie points with the panel of pigskin pundits that will help determine the contours of the Nov. 30 BCS standings, the most influential non-season-ending standings in the 11-year history of the Bowl Championship Series?

This game will be fascinating, all right, but for all the wrong reasons. If OU wins by seven points, the Sooners might walk off the field feeling something less than fully satisfied. If OU scores a touchdown on a 53-yard pass with 19 seconds left to win by 29 points instead of 22, you might see an ugly brawl marring the proceedings, and the BCS (with an assist from a clueless Big 12 office that needs to revamp its fifth tiebreaker for three-team divisional ties) will be embarrassed to the fullest possible extent. If the nation sees any hint of unusual cat-and-mouse games between these two rivals, the BCS will be to blame for the wholly unsatisfying scenario that would emerge in Stillwater.

Oklahoma is a sexy beauty contest participant, and the Sooners--in their white road swimsuits--will walk onto the Stillwater stage two days after Texas enters the meat market on Turkey Day against the A&M Aggies. Oklahoma State will want to dunk the bathing beauty from Norman, and make the town of Lubbock explode with the biggest roar this side of Harrell-to-Crabtree. But if the Cowboys don't do the deed, we'll only be talking about one thing Sunday morning... and wondering how the Olympic figure skating judges in the BCS system will grade the Sooners in terms of both technical merit and artistic expression.

The more one thinks about this game, the more it seems appropriate that Tonya Harding should be in attendance when the Sooners and Cowboys enter a state of Bedlam once again.