Late in the second half of his team’s playoff game on Friday night, the best kicker in college football lined up for a chip shot of a field-goal attempt from 36 yards away.
I sat in my chair at Cowenstan National Stadium and announced to everyone that OU’s Tate Sandell would absolutely, certainly, undoubtedly MISS what should be, for him, an easy kick.
Others watching the game around me shook their heads and said that was no way I would be correct. Their confidence made sense, as Sandell had already tied a record for 50-plus-yard field goals in a season. He had also made a school-record 24 consecutive field goals, and an earlier kick in this very game boosted him to an unfathomable 8-for-8 on attempts from 50 yards and beyond.
Yet, there I was, swimming against a tide of logic as I proclaimed a heart-rending miss was assuredly in the cards.
Sandell’s kick drifted just outside the left goalpost and kept his team down two scores with fewer than three minutes remaining. After a season of near perfection, what caused the sure-footed placekicker to miss in such an important moment? And as my friends asked, how in the hell did I know it would happen?!
Mark Twain famously — supposedly — proclaimed that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Those words sum up my thoughts on Sandell’s erstwhile field goal and OU’s ultimate 34-24 loss to Alabama in the first round of the College Football Playoff. Since the early 2000s, the Sooners have taken Twain’s words to heart with their postseason forays.
A Rose Bowl win to cap the 2002 season marked the end of a three-straight bowl victory by the Sooners, including the 2000 national championship game. Since the victory in Pasadena, however, OU is a morbid 8-15 in bowl and playoff games.
Those defeats included some real doozies:
- A loss to LSU in the 2003 national championship game where an offense that had averaged better than 50 points per contest was held to just 14.
- An embarrassing 55-19 blowout to USC in the 2004 national championship game.
- An equally embarrassing — and still discussed — loss to mid-major Boise State in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl.
- A — well, stop if you’ve heard this before — embarrassing 20-point loss to a Big East-affiliated West Virginia team in the following year’s Fiesta Bowl.
- Another offensive no-show in the 2008 national championship game, when an Oklahoma team that broke the NCAA record for most points scored in a season managed only two touchdowns in the 24-14 loss to Florida.
- A 41-13 mauling at the hands of Johnny “Football” Manziel and his Texas A&M Aggies in the 2013 Cotton Bowl.
- A plain-and-simple 40-6 ass-kicking by Clemson in the 2014 Russell Athletic Bowl, notable as the game that got then-offensive coordinator Josh Heupel fired.
- Another loss to Clemson the following postseason, only this time in the College Football Playoff. OU wasted a one-point halftime lead in the resultant 37-17 defeat.
- THREE consecutive losses in the opening game of the College Football Playoffs at the end of the 2017, ’18 and ’19 seasons. The first was an absolute heartbreaker in overtime to Georgia when the Sooners frittered away a 17-point lead. (Hmm, sounds familiar.)
- The latter two were unequivocal blowouts at the hands of Alabama and LSU.
- The Brent Venables Era started with three bowl losses to the likes of Florida State, Arizona and, ahem, Navy.
After Friday, we can add one more memorable defeat to the list, as the Sooners AGAIN let a 17-point lead fall from their hands against Alabama. Incredibly, OU tied its own College Football Playoff record for largest blown lead.
I guess if you’re going to do something, do it in a record-breaking way.
As an unabashed Atlanta Braves fan since the early 1980s, I’m well accustomed to postseason failure. My Braves practically invented it during a stretch when they won 14-straight division titles but only one World Series. My oft-used line about how an Atlanta Braves fan in the postseason feels akin to being a 120-pound man in a Turkish prison is true, although it might only make sense if you’ve watched the awesome 1978 movie, Midnight Express.
So, as the clock ticked down on the Sooners’ season Friday night, it was simple PREDICTABLE fate that pushed Sandell’s kick outside the goal posts and allowed me to be a paragon of prognostication to my friends. I saw that same fate barreling down the tracks for much of the final three quarters of the game, and I was unsurprised to face its familiar failure once again.
If that doesn’t leave a person with a hangover, I’m not sure what will — outside of some tasty Horns Down Apple Pie moonshine I enjoyed Friday night. Thus, let’s look at the OU game, and others, in this week’s Hangover Highlights:
- The Sooners had a good game plan and came out of the tunnel with their collective hair on fire amidst one of the best in-game atmospheres in program history. It culminated in a surprisingly quick 17-0 lead before Alabama had gained a single first down.
- The Crimson Tide took the near-knockout punch, however, and retaliated with a long drive for a score. Still, even at 17-7, it felt like ’Bama would need aid from the Sooners to get fully back into the game.
- Back-to-back plays during OU’s next possession offered that olive branch, with running back Xavier Robinson dropping an almost-guaranteed touchdown pass and punter Grayson Miller inexplicably fumbling the ball into a blocked boot.
- ’Bama converted the field position into a field goal and pulled within one score. Four plays later, OU quarterback John Mateer threw an interception that was returned for a game-tying touchdown just before the half.
- When the dust settled, OU had managed to waste a 17-point lead in less than six minutes. The night air suddenly felt ominous.
- In the third quarter, the seemingly impervious OU defense began to flounder. After punting on their first possession of the half, the Crimson Tide didn’t again until the fourth quarter.
- By then, the Tide had built a 27-17 lead and appeared in complete control. The Sooners, to their credit, fought back with a 37-yard touchdown pass from Mateer to Deion Burks on the first play of the fourth quarter.
- The rest of the fourth quarter, however, saw the fates shift their evil eyes to the OU special teams. A shanked punt by Miller midway through the period gave Alabama the ball at OU’s 35-yard line, which led to a quick touchdown and another 10-point lead.
- Sandell missed the aforementioned 36-yard field goal attempt, as well as a last-minute 51-yarder, either of which would have pulled the Sooners within one score.
- Still, despite the gut-wrenching outcome, the Sooner season must be considered a no-doubt success for the first time in the Venables era. Even the 10-3 team two years ago endured losses to unheralded Kansas and Arizona squads, along with that gut-punch failure at Oklahoma State.
- The future bodes well, too. While my editor insists an off season filled with the Dak Prescott “hip-whip” routine is needed to straighten out his lower half, Mateer looked spunkier than any time since his hand injury in September, in my opinion. The defense should remain fairly loaded, and the recruiting looks promising. Next year’s schedule appears daunting, but that will always be the case with a nine-game SEC lineup.
- The key will be for 2025 not to be proven a fluke. Within the next two years, I think Venables and the program need another CFP berth and at least a nine-win mark in the other season. Accomplish those things, and the Sooners will be rolling with a consistent program and steady coaching staff to the envy of much of the college football world.
- If OU fans still need to feel better about their lot in life after the Alabama loss, just look south to College Station, Texas, where Texas A&M lost 10-3 to Miami on Saturday in another CFP first-round game. After all, misery loves company, and there was a lot of company in that 102,000-plus-seat monstrosity of a stadium.
- Yep, that’s right: A&M scored three points. Three measly points. Cue the Bob Uecker/Major League clips. An Aggie team that scored fewer than 30 points just TWICE all season — and never below 16 points — managed a single field goal Saturday. Interceptions, fumbles, blocked kicks, failed fake punts — it all added up to a miserable outing for A&M’s offense.
- Of course, neither team covered itself in glory, as the game stood tied at three apiece late in the fourth quarter. The Miami offense finally found a spark behind running back Mark Fletcher Jr., who broke off a 56-yard run with four minutes left. His Hurricanes chalked up the game’s only touchdown five plays later when Malachi Toney scampered into the end zone from 11 yards out.
- A&M did get to the five-yard line on its next, and last, possession of the game. Yet again, it was undone by a mistake when quarterback Marcel Reed notched his second interception, which was also his third turnover.
- This weekend’s other two first-round playoffs games … well, the less said the better. Both mid-major qualifiers were absolutely annihilated Saturday. Ole Miss beat Tulane, 41-10, and Oregon crushed James Madison, 51-34. The Oregon game was not nearly as close as the final score suggests, with the Ducks scoring touchdowns on their first five possessions and averaging better than 16 yards per play doing so.
- I, for one, enjoy mid-major programs getting a real shot at a title. I just think it’s a damn shame it’s only happening now and not two decades earlier. Until recently, the best mid-majors were competitive against teams from any conference. The current NIL and transfer portal era, however, has leveled the playing field amongst major-conference programs that can pick up top-notch, proven transfers from lesser conferences. In the process, though, it has weakened mid-majors. Thus, you get the Tulane/James Madison outcomes and not much hope for anything different in future playoffs.
- Coming around the New Year’s holiday are the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff with games between Oregon/Texas Tech, Alabama/Indiana, Miami/Ohio State and Ole Miss/Georgia. One of the things I’ll be interested in seeing is if the two teams not from the SEC and Big 10 can hold their own, or will the playoffs remain a two-conference invitational? I’d be stunned if Miami could upset Ohio State, and while Oregon/Tech seems evenly matched on paper, I can’t help but think Oregon has played a considerably better schedule than the Red Raiders this year.
- Other than independent Notre Dame, no team currently outside the SEC or Big 10 has won a single playoff game since TCU toppled Michigan in 2022 … and the Horned Frogs were immediately dispatched with much prejudice by Georgia in a 58-point stomping for the championship.
- Maybe Miami and Texas Tech — and, by extension, all teams outside the SEC and Big 10 — can avoid building upon what might be a similar vein of fait accompli that has derailed OU’s postseason the past two decades.
