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Column: Oklahoma Fans Have Spoken: This WCWS Finale Was Hard to Take

Texas and Texas Tech staged a throwdown in Patty Gasso's own front yard, and even though Sooners fans strongly voiced their opinion, Mike White and the Longhorns came out on top.
John Hoover|
Texas Longhorns head coach Mike White and Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach Gerry Glasco
Texas Longhorns head coach Mike White and Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach Gerry Glasco | Brett Rojo-Imagn Images

For Oklahoma fans, it must have felt like watching two annoying neighbors square off in a fistfight — in your own front yard.

With the Sooners watching from their front window (let’s call it a “portal”), Texas and Texas Tech squared off for the softball national championship on Friday in Oklahoma City.

Devon Park, formerly Hall of Fame Stadium, is OU territory. It’s the patch of grass off Northeast 50th Street that Patty Gasso and her program have personally renovated, converting a nice, historic park into her own private, palatial, Crimson and Cream playground, where Gasso and her staff spend every spring stacking championship trophies.

But there they were, the Longhorns and the Red Raiders, throwing their haymakers on Gasso’s curb, the Women’s College World Series.

The nerve.

Tech stood boldly behind its star pitcher, NiJaree Canady. After carrying Stanford to OKC twice, she got the Red Raiders not only to their first WCWS, but took them all the way to the finals. But even the sport’s best pitcher couldn’t stand up to the beatdown the Horns and their talented hitters brought in their eighth trip to the WCWS.

Texas won game three of the 2025 WCWS Championship Series 10-4, nearly a TKO of run-rule proportions after jumping to a 10-0 lead after Mia Scott's grand slam and Teagan Kavan's outstanding pitching.

It was Mike White’s Longhorns who knocked the Sooners into the loser’s bracket last week, and it was Canady’s Red Raiders on Monday who sent Oklahoma back to Norman without a trophy, eliminating OU and breaking Gasso’s unmatched streak of four consecutive national championships. 

For White, it was a huge accomplishment — his first national championship as a college head coach and the Horns’ first as a program. That doesn’t compare to Gasso’s eight at OU, but let’s be honest, when your rival wins it all, it does chip away.

White, the brash-talking, bird-flipping New Zealander, is Public Enemy No. 1 in the eyes of Sooner Nation, so watching him hoist a trophy on their adopted field was a worst-case scenario for most OU softball fans.

Had Canady and Tech prevailed, it would have signaled a step in a different direction, one in which a wealthy booster can literally write a check and land the most impactful pitcher in the country and win a national championship.

No one begrudges Canady her NIL opportunities. One's market value is set by one's abilities. But do any fans of college sports really want their game to become a mercenary operation, wherein a million dollars can now buy a national title?

(Why not? Ohio State did it last fall, winning a title with college football’s richest “payroll.” Why shoudn’t it happen in women’s sports too?

Still, it flies in the face of every ounce of culture Gasso has carefully, intentionally spent her entire career building.

So, using the highly scientific methodology of Twitter/X, I asked Sooner Nation on Friday morning for its opinion on the big game.

Which team do OU fans want to lose more? Texas or Texas Tech? Or does it matter to Oklahoma at all?

In a six-hour poll that received 822 votes, the response was overwhelming: their preference, now and forever, is that Texas never win a national title — or anything, in any sport, for that matter.

In all, 73 percent of you said they wanted Texas to lose. Another 22 percent said the outcome had no bearing on OU softball. And a total of just 5 percent said they wanted Tech to lose.

It’s moot now, of course, as Texas lifts its first national title trophy in softball. 

Does “first” indicate more are coming?

Maybe. Gasso and the Sooners surely will have something to say about that.

Here’s what Sooner Nation thinks about choosing between the lesser of two evils — and in their own front yard.:

Published | Modified
John E. Hoover
JOHN 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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