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Oklahoma State Rallies to Beat BYU, Locks Oklahoma Out of Big 12 Championship Game

The Sooners have now gone three seasons without a conference championship, the program's longest streak since before Bob Stoops' arrival.
John E. Hoover|
Oklahoma State Rallies to Beat BYU, Locks Oklahoma Out of Big 12 Championship Game
Oklahoma State Rallies to Beat BYU, Locks Oklahoma Out of Big 12 Championship Game

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Oklahoma Sooners

After all the angst over fuzzy tiebreaker rules, the the Big 12’s championship game matchup is officially set.

And for the third year in a row, the Oklahoma Sooners are on the outside looking in.

Oklahoma State came back from a 24-6 halftime deficit to beat BYU 40-34 in double overtime on Saturday in Stillwater, officially locking OU out of next week’s Big 12 title game and sealing the Cowboys’ championship showdown against Texas.

OU players and coaches said Friday night after beating TCU 69-45 that they would watch other Big 12 games with great interest in hopes they might back-door their way to Arlington, TX, next week.

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Instead, the Sooners’ already thin hopes washed away on a rainy Saturday afternoon as Oklahoma State rallied to beat BYU in Stillwater.

Texas finished atop the 2023 standings at 8-1 in Big 12 play and gets the home-team top seed, while OU and OSU finish tied for second in the standings at 7-2. But OSU’s head-to-head victory over the Sooners in Stillwater on Nov. 4 sends the Cowboys to Arlington.

OU’s last appearance in the Big 12 title game was 2020 — the Sooners’ sixth consecutive league crown and the program’s 14th conference championship in a 21-year span.

Oklahoma owns 50 conference championships in history, the most of any college football program. But OU has now gone three seasons in a row without a conference title. That’s the program’s longest stretch without a championship since Bob Stoops’ first one in 2000 ended a 12-year drought in Norman.

No. 13-ranked OU finished the regular season 10-2 overall a year after Brent Venables' first year ended in a disappointing 6-7 campaign. The Sooners suffered two losses this year — at Kansas and at OSU in consecutive weekends — despite being heavy favorites to win both.

After Oklahoma beat then-No. 3 Texas and started the season 7-0, the Sooners were actually the favorite to win the national championship, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index formula. But back-to-back poor performances in Lawrence and Stillwater quickly derailed that talk.

OU players and coaches said Friday they would spend Friday night watching Texas-Texas Tech and Saturday watching Oklahoma State-BYU, hoping to squeak into either a rematch with UT or OSU. But the Longhorns demolished the Red Raiders 57-7 at Darryl K. Royal - Texas Memorial Stadium to lock up their spot, and the Cowboys dashed the Cougars' bowl hopes at Boone Pickens Stadium to secure theirs.

Venables said Friday if the weekend didn’t work out in OU’s favor, he would have no regrets.

“I don’t live like that,” Venables said. “We’ll get what we’ve earned, and what’s done is done. We’ve learned from it. And I’ll use this moment — this season and those moments — to teach. We already have.

“Learn from it. Get better from it. Move on and don’t let that beat us again or define us. It’s a chapter in a book. You got a whole book. That’s one. And it’s an important one. I believe in God’s will and I believe in eyes forward.”

At No. 13 in last week’s College Football Playoff rankings, the Sooners probably still need other teams to lose to get to a New Year’s Six bowl game. But OU did get a boost Saturday from No. 10 Louisville’s loss to Kentucky.

Going into this season, only nine of the 84 teams to play in New Year’s Six games since 2014 were ranked lower than No. 12. Next week's CFP rankings will be revealed at 6 p.m. Tuesday on ESPN.

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John E. Hoover
JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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