Hangover Highlights: Hope, hype and horrible offense

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There’s an oft-used phrase in England’s version of football: “It’s the hope that kills you.”

It refers to the idea it may be best for fans not to raise their expectations and anticipations because, if their team fails, the blow is all the more crushing.

While not as prevalent here stateside, the idiom still holds true. It’s nothing short of heart-rending when your favorite sports team loses a game you believed it would win.

That was the shadow that befell me during this OU/Texas week. I wanted, oh so badly, to believe the Sooners possessed a legitimate chance to pull an upset over the top-ranked Longhorns. At the same time, I DIDN’T want to believe because, well, to tweak the phrase, it’s belief that slays a person’s soul.

I have experienced it many times before, sometimes DURING games:

• It’s when Steven Parker returned a fumble for a touchdown to give the Sooners a lead in the 2017 Rose Bowl.
• It’s when shutdown OU closer Trevin Michael entered the game with a one-run lead in the eighth inning of the 2022 College World Series against Ole Miss.
• It’s when (then) home-run queen Lauren Chamberlain blasted a homer to give her softball Sooners a 3-1 lead with just two innings remaining in the deciding game of a 2015 super regional.
• It’s when all-time Sooners saves leader Ryan Duke needed just a final strike in a 2010 College World Series contest against South Carolina.
• It’s when Atlanta’s John Smoltz matched Jack Morris out for out for seven innings in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.
• It’s when Meldrick Taylor rose off the mat with just 10 seconds remaining in his title fight against undefeated Julio Cesar Chavez in 1990.
• It’s when OU jumped up by five points in the second half of the 1988 NCAA National Championship basketball game against Kansas.
• It’s when Barry Switzer reached into his bag of tricks and ran the fumblerooski with offensive lineman Mark Hutson in the 1988 Orange Bowl.

In each of those contests, I was already led to believe victory might happen before it started. By the time those specific events materialized, I harbored more hope than a regular viewer of The 700 Club.

At the end of each and every one of those events, however, I felt the overwhelming stomachache of a man whose sports-fandom testicles had been slammed in a desk drawer … again and again and again.

THAT’S the feeling I strive to avoid when I see hopeless — or at least incredibly doubtful — sport situations about to unfold. Why get one’s hopes up only to have them dashed by an easily foreseen disaster?

So, last week, when several of my friends and family asked my prediction for this year’s iteration of the Red River Rivalry, I replied honestly, in my best Marvin the Paranoid Android voice: “It’s all going to proceed horribly.”

Therefore, when the final gun was fired in Texas’ lop-sided 34-3 victory Saturday, I had saved myself the ultimate pain that comes with hope. After all, as Red told Andy, hope’s a dangerous thing; hope can drive a man insane.

Here’s hoping you enjoy this week’s Hangover Highlights!

• About that “hopeless” OU/Texas game: The Sooners sure tried to trick fans into a false sense of accomplishment with a 3-0 lead after one quarter.
• Let me burst the bubble, though. Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers was undoubtably rusty after missing the past few weeks with an injury. He misfired on two WIDE-open third-down throws in the first quarter — one that resulted in an interception — and gave OU prime field position twice.
• Not that it mattered. The Sooner offense continued to show zero growth. True freshman quarterback Michael Hawkins simply has a disconcerting inability to … throw … the … damn … ball. So many times, on replays, we could see OU receivers open in a narrow window. But Hawkins could not see them in the moment, which meant we would see him do … nothing.
• I’ll stab someone in the eye if they say OU’s defense is elite. It’s good, but nothing more. First against Tennessee and Saturday against Texas, we see an opposing offense crawl into conservatism that would make Barry Goldwater blush. And that made sense. It’s not like the Sooners’ offense could move the ball anyway. The comparatively competent OU defense is the only threat to turn the tide of a game, as Auburn found out two weeks ago. So, opponents might as well play everything close to the vest to avoid big defensive plays, but the Sooners defense still gave up 34 points this weekend and — at times — tackled like OU teams of the recent past.
• Inevitably, Texas and Ewers shook off the rust and blew out the Sooners. The part so concerning to me, though, is an utter lack of competence I witnessed. Back-to-back penalties on the OU punt team … a defense so discombobulated it tried to run a player on — after a timeout — at the last second before Texas scored a long touchdown … a grand total of 100-something yards at halftime … a timeout right before Texas missed a field goal because there weren’t 11 defenders on the field … a game-long pass by the OU offense of 15 yards … a game-long run of 13 yards for OU … a quarterback who literally threw the ball away to avoid a sack ON FOURTH DOWN. If Brent Venables’ name was actually “John Blake,” would anyone really be surprised by the aforementioned errors?
• At this point, I’m not sure Hawkins is salvageable, at least for this season. Starter-turned-backup Jackson Arnold probably isn’t either. I question the coaching staff not playing backup Casey Thompson, as he has shown to be a competent signal caller for several years at different schools. (He is the last quarterback to throw for five TDs against the Sooners, as a matter of fact!). I’ve watched Thompson play several times, and if he’s healthy, he’s better than both Hawkins and Arnold at this point. Yet, much like Blake went all-in on his chosen quarterback starter, Brandon Daniels, back in 1998, I see a coach who doesn’t know what he’s doing offensively and who is out of answers as a whole.
• Like many OU fans, I wanted the Sooners to be in the SEC. Barring an inspired offensive turnaround over the next six games, I suspect it will be time — sooner rather than later — for OU to join the conference tradition of coaching churn. Sure, I have always said schools should be wary of ejecting a coach, because the odds are they’ll end up hiring someone worse. Yet, after OU’s two embarrassing outings against Texas in three years and the threat of another losing record staring the program right in the face, it’s more than fair to start drawing up the rubric by which to judge whether Venables can be the answer.
• With all that said, the above is just my opinion at this particular snapshot in time. Six games remain, and while I obviously have doubts, everything is on the table from a 6-0 resurgence to a 1-5 slide. (Maine is pretty much a gimme, one would think.) Now, maybe OU goes 2-4 or 3-3, and whether Venables should stick around remains unclear. Or maybe the Sooners will go 5-1 or 1-5 and answer the question rather definitively. The next few weeks of the season might be among the most interesting in the history of OU’s program.
• In a way, Alabama fans could almost be as disconcerted as OU fans after the Crimson Tide’s 27-25 escape at home against South Carolina. ‘Bama scored the first 14 points of the game but watched as the Gamecocks roared back. It took the Tide fighting back against a two-point conversion, and a resulting onside kick recovered by South Carolina, to win the game. Yet, after last week’s seismic upset at the hands of Vanderbilt, Alabama fans have to be feeling a bit sick about the future. As for the spunky South Carolinians, they’ll be visiting Norman next week in a crossroads game for both squads.
• Speaking of feeling sick, Sooner fans had to be a bit nauseated as they watched their former quarterback play for the reversed version of OU. Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel led UO to a 32-31 win against Ohio State in a matchup between top-5 teams. Gabriel was who he is: a competent, sometimes more so, college quarterback. Ohio State’s Will Howard — previously of Kansas State — was about the same. Still, I simply can’t think of Gabriel or Howard being behind center for a national championship-winning team. Both are undeniably “good” … but neither strikes me as being better than simply “good.”
• After weeks of playing footsies with the Utah fanbase, star quarterback Cam Rising finally returned to the lineup Friday night against Arizona State, and the 16th-ranked Utes probably wished he hadn’t. Coming off a hand injury in week one, the SEVENTH-year senior promptly tweaked his knee on the first drive of the game, and he hobbled around ineffectively for the rest of the contest. Utah lost 27-19, severely hampering its Big 12 title hopes. Rising completed less than half his passes for no touchdowns and three interceptions. Maybe it’s time to move on from the oft-injured Rising, to whom I sincerely wonder if his teammates refer as Mr. Glass.
• Speaking of the Big 12 title race, Iowa State stayed undefeated by running the ball up the middle two dozen times against West Virginia. BYU also kept a pristine record by blasting Arizona. And Kansas State moved to 5-1 with a 50-yard touchdown pass to top Colorado. With OSU licking its wounds on an off week, the top-tier of the Big 12 got even more clear.
• LSU held off Ole Miss in a contest between two ranked teams, 29-26, in overtime. The Tigers tied the game in the last seconds of regulation, and then they won the game on passes from quarterback Garrett Nussmeier. I didn’t think much of Nussmeier going into the season, or even this game, but he’s proven to be at least an adequate replacement for Heisman-winner Jaden Daniels.
• Florida lost a chance for an upset at top-10 ranked Tennessee for one simple reason: the Gators’ head coach has zero guts. The 14.5-point-underdog Gators scored a TD with 36 seconds left to make the score 17-16. After feigning some type of swinging-gate 2-point conversion attempt that forced Tennessee into a timeout, Gators’ head coach Billy Napier came back with a wimpy extra-point kick to send things to overtime. There, his team unsurprisingly lost 23-17. A two-TD underdog on the road decided to play overtime instead of going for the gusto with a win-or-lose two-point conversion? I mean, just … wow.
• Perhaps Napier just felt it was easier to let things melt away, inevitably and unsurprisingly in overtime, rather than to kill his fanbase with the hope of a single do-or-die play. I mean, it is the hope that kills you, right?

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