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I’m not much of a comic book fan, but I do remember the character Bizarro from the fantastic Super Friends cartoon.
In a land of comic-book-built silliness, Bizarro stood as some sort of “mirror image” of Superman. Within the lore of the TV show, he seemed to have all the powers of Superman, albeit without the intelligence.
Watching OU squeak out a 17-13 win against LSU on Saturday, another doppelgänger-like comparison dawned on me. For weeks, we have been admiring “Bizarro U,” the College Football Playoff-bound alternative to the 2017-2019 versions of the crimson and cream.
Think about it. This year, the Sooners have all the abilities of OU’s College Football Playoff teams of 2017, 2018 and 2019, but completely in reverse.
Those three squads had incredible offenses.
This year’s team has an incredible defense.
Those three squads had defenses that smelled as bad as the south end of a northbound armadillo.
This year’s team has an offense that sucks so bad, it could manually start a diesel engine.
I will say I believe this 2025 version of OU has more of a “puncher’s chance” in the playoffs than previous qualifiers, and maybe it is akin to Bizarro. He lacked the intelligence of Superman, so instead of outthinking his opponents, he preferred to drag them into a simple brawl. If you extend that metaphor to the gridiron, I love the idea of OU facing any opposing team in a proverbial rock fight.
Regardless, there was one thing Bizarro and Superman had in common: superhuman abilities. There’s also one thing those 2017-19 OU teams and this year’s squad have in common: playoff berths.
Comic books aside, let’s ignore the hangover my celebratory Samuel Smith’s Organic Chocolate Stouts offered Saturday night and instead focus on the many other Hangover Highlights from the weekend!
- At one point in the third quarter, I simply wanted LSU to put the Sooners out of their — and my — misery. A buddy of mine said he had mentally fired every coach and sent quarterback John Mateer packing to the hinterlands of North Texas or Louisiana-Monroe during the same third quarter. Another friend loudly wished for the return of Jackson Arnold.
- As OU trailed by a touchdown — and later a field goal — Mateer was throwing interception after interception. The day looked as bleak as it did blustery, and even my editor texted me an appropriately sour working headline for this week’s column — no small feat given the challenge of achieving alliteration with “Arbuckle” in the mix.
- Suddenly, the double-reverse jinx worked. Mateer completed two passes in a row, and then a third — a 58-yard go-route that became the game-winning touchdown on a busted Tiger coverage.
- In the end, a 17-13 win over the Tigers is a win, no matter how the Sooners got there. Don’t tell that to OU fans, though. I, for example, pretty much began cheering for LSU during the third quarter because I desired to be released from the lunacy. Essentially, I became one of Prince Barin’s minions in Flash Gordon. Stung by the wood beast, I wanted Barin to “spare [me] the madness” from the injury.
- While the Sooners have completely flipped their script from just a few years ago, it would probably help the sanity of OU fans like me if the script were not flipped so freaking literally. While OU’s defense is as good, or better, than any in the country, the offense has stepped back to the point of being comically inept. As of now, it feels like Brent Venables knows that his team’s best strategy is to sit around and wait for a big play to develop because there’s little to no chance of putting together a consistent drive for a touchdown.
- The big play happened again on Saturday — the busted coverage pass to Isaiah Satenga — but it’s a maddening thing to depend upon.
- Who am I to gripe, I guess? OU should be comfortably within the College Football Playoffs, although their opponent and location of the opening game is yet to be determined. Without question, this has been a successful season. Still, much like OU’s appearances in the playoffs from 2017 to 2019, the Sooners seem incredibly one-dimensional. The dimension simply switched from one side of the ball to the other.
- Oklahoma State’s season mercifully ended with a 20-13 defeat to Iowa State. The Cowboys lost 11 games in a row this year without a win against an FBS opponent.
- Honestly, there’s not much to discuss. OSU again showed some spunk as it trailed just 10-7 at halftime Saturday. Many of these players and likely all the coaches will be either gone or on the way out the door this time next week, however, as newly hired head coach Eric Morris begins to shape the Cowboys into his image.
- Morris played wide receiver and was the coach’s son at Shallowater High School when I was a sportswriter at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in the early 2000s. A Class 3A school, Shallowater is a 3,000-person puddle just northwest of Lubbock in the same county. Morris was 5-foot-nothing, one-hundred-and-some pounds, yet he still struck fear in opposing defenses. Enough so, he walked on to Texas Tech and had a nice career in Mike Leach’s offense.
- I’ve told my OSU friends since September that Morris would be a good hire for the program, and I remain confident of that. One thing to watch is whether he can get a top-notch defensive coordinator to join his staff. Other Leach disciples — and Leach himself — had little problem fielding powerful offenses, but they were notoriously inconsistent on the defensive side of the ball.
- As I watched Texas pull away in the second half from in-state rival Texas A&M for a 27-17 win Friday night, I had flashbacks to OU’s own game with the Longhorns. The drama unfolded in a similar way. Texas’ offense was impotent in the first half, but the ‘Horns stayed close thanks to a bend-but-don’t-break defense. After halftime, however, the UT offense finally found its footing and blasted away for a win that was closer than the final score.
- The Longhorns seemed to save that specific script for their most bitter rivals this year. They escaped with quarterback Arch Manning bouncing back from a nightmarish start when he completed just five of his first 18 passes for 28 yards. Manning’s strong second-half performance — with more than 150 passing yards and a score — was just what his ‘Horns needed to end their regular season with a win over an undefeated rival.
- Will it be enough to jump into the playoff picture? I’m not entirely sure how, especially with Miami and BYU winning this weekend. Texas supporters will argue the Longhorns’ season-opening loss at No. 1 Ohio State should not keep them out of the playoffs. I don’t disagree … but a bigger point is entirely missed in that statement. It’s not the loss to Ohio State that will shut the Longhorns out of the playoffs, it’s the late-September defeat to woebegone Florida. If they had taken care of business then, this entire discussion would be moot.
- Now, we wonder what to make of A&M? The Aggies have been living off an early-September victory at Notre Dame — a no-doubt nice win against another playoff contender. Since then, however, they have beaten only two teams with winning records: an LSU squad that fired its head coach the next day and a Missouri team missing its starting quarterback.
- Essentially, before Friday’s loss to Texas, A&M hadn’t played anyone higher than ninth place in the Southeastern Conference, nor have they beaten anyone with a winning conference record within the SEC. Now, with the disheartening performance against Texas, the Aggies will miss out on a conference championship game for the 27th consecutive season.
- Battered Aggie Syndrome is a real thing, people. Talk to your doctor if you ever have feelings that you want to cheer for A&M, as side effects include hopelessness, anger, the memorization of stupid cheers and worship of a canine.
- Michigan players came out with their hair on fire at home against those No.1 Ohio State Buckeyes — hell, one of their linebackers even head-butted an official — but they couldn’t sustain the adrenaline boost in a 27-9 defeat. Michigan’s defense combined an interception and goal-line stand in the first quarter but could only watch as the offense sputtered behind overly conservative play calling.
- Two runs and a short pass … two runs and a short pass … two runs and a short pass … became the menu for the Michigan offense. When the Wolverines did open things up with a longer throw, as they did to start the second half, they would immediately retreat into a shell. It was a strange way to approach things with probably the nation’s most sought-after freshman quarterback, Bryce Underwood, under center. Underwood had only attempted eight passes at the midway point of the third quarter, by which point the game was securely in Ohio State’s hands.
- Ole Miss didn’t sweat much in its 38-10 Egg Bowl win over Mississippi State on Friday, a victory that probably clinched a playoff berth for the Rebels. But the lingering, looming and indecisive decision by head coach Lane Kiffin on whether he would stay with the Rebels during their playoff run or jump ship to LSU seemed to overshadow everything. As this column publishes just shy of 11 a.m. Sunday, ESPN’s much-ballyhooed anonymous sources say Kiffin is expected to sign a deal with LSU today after meeting with Ole Miss players and explaining how, “You did a fine job this year, boys, but I’ve got millions to make down on the Bayou, so have fun in the playoffs without me. Stay loyal to yourselves, and whatnot.”
- If Lane Kiffin ultimately leaves his team in the lurch mid-season, here’s hoping it becomes a career-defining karmic catastrophe moving forward — one that needs to be remembered whenever a player is overly scrutinized for entering the transfer portal.
- Meanwhile, Georgia staved off Georgia Tech, 16-9. Considering the GaTech defense was ripped for 124 points in its previous three games, Georgia must wonder what happened to its offense? Only one touchdown and 260 yards against a defense that had been a ramblin’ wreck the past month is noteworthy with the SEC championship game coming up.
- I’ve given plenty of love to New Mexico State in my columns here the past few years, but how about throwing some to their in-state brethren? New Mexico knocked off San Diego State, 23-17, in two overtimes to collect its first nine-win season since the early 1980s. When head coach Bronco Mendenhall scooted off after last season in a weird lateral move to Utah State and took many of his UNM players with him, the Lobo program looked destitute. New head coach Jason Eck swaggered in from Idaho State, however, and has given the program hope, including a cathartic win earlier this season against Mendenhall.
- What Eck likely can’t do, though, is decipher the Mountain West’s championship game tiebreaker. A four-way tie between Eck’s Lobos and their Friday foe, San Diego State, along with Boise State and UNLV will evidently be solved by “computer metrics” today — whatever the hell that means.
- Vanderbilt took down Tennessee, 45-24, on the road behind another superb performance from my ride-or-die, Diego Pavia. He had 268 passing yards to go with a team-leading 165 rushing yards in the win. I’m sorry, but if a kid can lead Vanderbilt, of all programs, to the brink of a playoff berth, it should be enough to win a Heisman Trophy.
- Besides, Pavia and his family are simply more interesting than the average Heisman candidate.
- Finally, I just shook my head as Nebraska was starched 40-16 by Iowa. Since the Cornhuskers inexplicably gave head coach Matt Rhule a contract extension at the end of October, they are 1-3, with the lone win coming against 3-9 UCLA. The contract extension essentially upped Rhule’s buyout, if fired, from $49 million to $71 million — all for a coach who is 2-10 in November games with Nebraska and 2-24 against ranked teams in his career.
- As I sit here also realizing we’ve entered the Eli Drinkwitz-making-nearly-$11-million-a-year stage of dumbassery, I must say it again: Athletic directors are dumb, have been dumb and will continue to do dumb things.
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