Perspective Piece: Big 12 Championship Game

The Oklahoma Sooners will be a heavy favorite to beat the Missouri Tigers Saturday night, but if the underdog rises up and pulls a Texas-sized upset that would catapult Mack Brown’s Longhorns into the BCS title game, don’t say that such an event would be unprecedented.

Sure, Bob Stoops has an offensive juggernaut that should light up the defanged defense offered by Gary Pinkel’s pupils from the Show Me State. Naturally, an OU team that beat Missouri twice last season figures to win again in this particularly controversial contest, a creation of the BCS standings that broke the Big 12 South’s three-way tie. Of course, Chase Daniel is going to have to play the game of his lauded life just to keep his team close. No one’s saying the Crimson and Cream face a superior or equal opponent… on paper, at least.

But there’s this funny thing about Big 12 title tilts over the years: They’ve provided some supreme shockers that have rocked the college football world.

The first Big 12 championship showdown, in 1996, saw a Texas team coached by someone other than Mack Brown—remember John Mackovic?--knock Nebraska and Tom Osborne out of the bowl alliance championship game. Mackovic dialed up a gutsy rollout pass on a fourth-and-2 near his own 30 to register a huge gain and set up the game-sealing insurance touchdown in the fourth quarter of a 37-27 triumph.

In 1998, Texas A&M somehow caught and then beat Kansas State in overtime to knock Bill Snyder’s Wildcats out of the Fiesta Bowl, that year’s BCS national championship game.

In 2001, Texas—once the spoiler in this event—experienced the other side of the story in a 39-37 loss to Colorado. What made the defeat that much more wrenching for the Longhorns was the fact that the game was played in Dallas, a friendly venue for Bevo's boys.

And then, we come to 2003 and 2007, two years that make the backdrop for this year’s Big 12 title match even more fascinating.

The 2003 season gave the college football world a milestone occurrence: The year marked the first time that a loser of a conference championship game played for the national title. Yes, Nebraska became the first non-conference champion to compete for the crystal in 2001, but the Huskers didn’t even play in the Big 12’s biggest battle. In 2003, something new happened in the heartland. The victim-turned-victor in this singularly strange turn of events was none other than Oklahoma.

The Sooners—anointed by some news outlets as the greatest team of all time before taking the field against Kansas State for the 2003 Big 12 Championship Game (gee, any parallels with USC before the 2006 Rose Bowl against Texas?)—promptly proceeded to lay an egg against a wired Wildcat squad. The setback wasn’t a 28-27 squeaker. It wasn’t a field-goal loss produced by a fabulous KSU drive in the final minute of regulation. No, Oklahoma lost 35-7 on that night in Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium. The Sooners went from being No. 1 with a bullet to the Big 12 outhouse. A team intent on winning a national title lost hold of its conference on one calamitous evening.

The Sooners would somehow wake up the following Sunday morning and realize that they would still play LSU in the 2004 Sugar Bowl for all the marbles, but that’s where the comparisons between 2003 and 2008 end. What’s worth remembering here is that Oklahoma once was a huge Big 12 title game favorite… in Kansas City… at night… on national TV… playing the last really big game of the college football season against a seemingly inferior North division champion… and wound up doing a face-plant on the Arrowhead turf.

If Oklahoma gets ambushed by Missouri this weekend—giving the Tigers their first Big 12 title, just as K-State won its first league crown at OU’s expense five years ago—history would not be made. It would be repeated. The bedlam of the Big 12 isn’t confined to the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State rivalry. One week after outscoring the Cowboys in a backyard battle, the Sooners could cave in to even more craziness if they can’t tame the Tigers. Bob Stoops has a history lesson to offer when he gathers his team ‘round the campfire this week.

In the Missouri camp, this league-deciding donnybrook has a different flavor, but a flavor that is also connected to the recent past. Oklahoma isn’t the only team looking to right a wrong in this Kansas City collision, and that’s why Saturday’s showdown is so deliciously loaded with intrigue, despite the surface disparities between the two teams and their records.

One year ago, in San Antonio, Missouri encountered what was both literally and figuratively an Alamo moment. Oklahoma has been a nemesis for the Tigers over the years, but when the 2007 Big 12 brouhaha kicked off, the crew from Columbia—not the traditional power from Norman—sat in the catbird seat atop the BCS standings, with the BCS title game in its sights. It was as true as it was improbable: Missouri needed just 60 solid minutes against OU to play Ohio State (not upset-prone West Virginia) for the whole enchilada in New Orleans.

Something else became true on that night in the Alamodome, however: The Sooners weren’t about to let Missouri gain a fresh foothold in a lopsided head-to-head series that dates back to the days of the Big 8 Conference.

Oklahoma—who beat Missouri in the 2007 regular season—entered last year’s Big 12 title game having lost exactly once to the Tigers in the past 24 years, and just three times since 1970. That Crimson and Cream confidence emerged near the Riverwalk, as a tidal wave of tested Sooner toughness overwhelmed the men in black. Bob Stoops watched with pleasure as his white-shirted wonders clobbered Pinkel’s pupils, hammering Missouri with markedly superior intensity from start to finish. The 38-17 smackdown gave the Sooners another league title, while leaving the North champions bereft of any additional hardware. Chase Daniel and his other veteran teammates were punched in the gut on that sad Saturday in San Antone. They have some revenge to tend to in this week’s rematch with the thermonuclear force led by Heisman Trophy hopeful Sam Bradford.

The stage is set in Kansas City. Can Oklahoma avoid the 2003 nightmare and conjure up visions of its Alamo City conquest from last season? Can Missouri channel some Kansas State karma and stun the Sooners in the atmosphere of Arrowhead? Sure, OU rates as a huge favorite on Saturday night, but the Big 12 Championship Game is an event where many national title dreams have died over the years. Bob Stoops wants to avoid a death that would enable the hated rival from Texas to mosey on to Miami on January 8, 2009.