Instant Analysis: Big 12 Championship Game

Oklahoma played like Oklahoma Saturday night in Kansas City, giving Missouri no chance to send the Texas Longhorns to Miami on January 8. By trouncing the Tigers with almost casual ease, the Sooners punched their ticket for South Beach against the Florida Gators, in the 2009 BCS Championship Game.

If you were looking for drama on the first Saturday of December, you didn’t find it in Arrowhead Stadium, the same ballpark where the Sooners—five years before—got stunned in the Big 12 title tilt against Kansas State. This time around, Bob Stoops’ boys didn’t fool around, and as a result, the Crimson and Cream did what Alabama’s Crimson Tide failed to do earlier in the day: seal a spot in South Florida for college football’s ultimate showcase.

How authoritative was this OU onslaught? One could simply say it was every bit the offensive avalanche the Sooners used to bury Texas Tech two weeks earlier. To put a finer point on this pounding, Oklahoma rolled up huge video-game statistics despite losing star running back DeMarco Murray in the first quarter. “No Murray” was “no problem” for Sam Bradford and company, who lit up the cold night with a typical display of pitch-and-catch precision. Since he had a virtually unlimited amount of time to throw the ball, due to his airtight offensive line, Bradford carved up Missouri’s back seven with a typically icy and mechanical consistency. When the Tigers failed to generate any semblance of a pass rush, their hopes of a surprise conference title—and a dose of revenge after last year’s OU team knocked them out of the BCS title game—faded into the frosty Kansas City air.

There’s a full month of OU-Florida hype to be had, so in the meantime, the Sooners’ Big 12 title needs to be put in perspective, alongside the Gators’ own SEC crown, clinched earlier in the day (and with a lot more drama). With tonight’s win, the Sooners have won their third straight Big 12 championship, making them the first team in the 13-season history of the conference to pull off the feat. OU has also notched its fourth league title in the past five years and its sixth in this calendar decade. Only Colorado (2001), Kansas State (2003) and Texas (2005) have interrupted Oklahoma’s run of backyard dominance in the heartland since the 2000 college football season. The supreme steadiness of Stoops’ troops is absolutely remarkable in an environment of cutthroat competition; Oklahoma’s yearly excellence inside its own conference can be matched only by Ohio State and USC (with Virginia Tech ranking a clear but distant fourth) over the past several seasons.

Oklahoma may or may not beat Florida a full month from now, but what this conference title should establish, once and for all, is that Bob Stoops knows how to win big games. Perhaps more appropriately, Stoops never forgot how to prevail in prime-time pigskin passion plays.

College football teams labor hard and long to win their respective leagues. For clubs in the Big 12, SEC, ACC and Pac-10, nine conference games (factoring in the title game for the first three leagues; the Pac-10 plays nine regular-season games without a two-division setup) need to be played in order to gain regional bragging rights and an accompanying BCS bowl bid. A conference season represents roughly 70 percent of a team’s season (give or take a game depending on the particular conference involved). Winning a league is therefore the most reasonable and attainable goal to which an FBS program should aspire on an annual basis. Luck is needed to claim the national championship; skill wins conference titles.

Yes, yes, Oklahoma did need luck to beat out Texas for the right to thump Missouri for the Big 12 in 2008, but one should get the point: The Sooners’ record of sustained Big 12 brilliance is and has been something to behold over the years. Not enough credit has been given to the program in Norman for its amazing ability to beat back familiar foes on the Central Plains. Perhaps a third-straight conference title will reshape some opinions across America.

The result of the national title tilt against the mighty Gators should have no bearing on the barometer that measures the bona fides of Big Game Bob. With or without another BCS crown, this conference scalp should enhance the legacy of the Sooners and their credentialed head coach.