Like the Big 12, Oklahoma seeks respect in addition to titles

NORMAN, Okla. — In the days leading up to a showdown, Ty Darlington recognized the storyline if Baylor were to beat Oklahoma — again.

“The Big 12 is no longer Oklahoma’s,” Darlington, the Sooners’ senior center says, reciting the mantra. “It’s Baylor’s conference, and Coach Stoops is fading.”

That faulty narrative is why, after a 44-34 road victory last weekend in Waco, Texas, Darlington and his teammates say they’re not paying attention to the new narrative.

If all of a sudden Bob Stoops has Oklahoma back in its customary place among college football’s elite — well, the Sooners aren’t buying it. First, they’ll tell you Oklahoma never went away. Next, they’ll remind you — and this appears as much as anything to be a reminder to themselves — that everything could change again with a loss Saturday to TCU or next week at Oklahoma State.

“When we lost to Texas, we were the worst team ever to play football,” Darlington says. “Then we beat Baylor, and everybody loves us.

“The dream can end in a heartbeat.”

For now, Oklahoma controls its destiny in the Big 12. At 9-1, the Sooners are No. 7 in the College Football Playoff top 25 and seem well-positioned to make the four-team field if they win their next two games. And, at least momentarily, they’ve squelched the notion that they’ve been surpassed by the Bears in the Big 12’s hierarchy and that, in his 17th season, Stoops’ program is in a slow, downward spiral.

You want to make a head coach bristle? Stoops insists the Sooners weren’t far off last season. Yes, 8-5 is below Oklahoma’s standards, but three of those losses were by a total of nine points.

“People wanted to say we fell off the face of the earth — or were we pretty close?” Stoops says.

He’s got a point. But there were also 34-point losses to Baylor and Clemson (in the Russell Athletic Bowl). The 48-14 home loss to Baylor, especially, fed the idea that Oklahoma wasn’t what it had been. It was the Sooners’ second consecutive blowout loss to the Bears, who won their second consecutive Big 12 championship — an ascent that coincided with and contributed to the Sooners’ slippage.

With one more victory, Oklahoma will notch its 13th season of at least 10 victories under Stoops, an unmatched run at the school. But since playing for the national championship after the 2008 season — a 24-14 loss to Florida — the Sooners have slipped from their lofty perch.

In Stoops’ first 10 seasons, Oklahoma was 109-24, winning six Big 12 championships and one national championship while playing for three more. From 2009-14, the Sooners were 59-20, winning one outright conference title and a piece of another. They were rarely a national factor in late November.

After a strong finish in 2013 that included a Sugar Bowl whipping of Alabama, the Sooners were a trendy pick to reach the inaugural Playoff, a fixture in almost everybody’s 2014 preseason top five. And then, however it happened, they lost five games.

“We were one year removed from (finishing) sixth in the country and beating Alabama in the Sugar Bowl and it’s spiraling and we win eight games? That’s been our spiral,” Stoops says. “Compare that to some other people’s spiral — and that was a one-year deal. It’s one year. People want to tie it in like it’s been four or five. That’s not the case.”

Nevertheless, Stoops almost completely retooled the coaching staff during the offseason. When he was finished, eight of nine positions either featured new coaches or shifted responsibilities. Co-offensive coordinators Josh Heupel (who quarterbacked the Sooners to the national championship in 2000, Stoops’ second season) and Jay Norvell were among those who were let go. New coordinator Lincoln Riley was tasked with reinstalling the “Air Raid” — essentially the same scheme Oklahoma ran for the first few seasons under Stoops.

If the program wasn’t far off, it was a radical shift of staff and philosophy.

“That’s fair,” Stoops says. “Obviously, I felt things needed to happen myself — to take another step forward, is what I felt.”

It has worked. The “Air Raid” is the perfect fit for transfer quarterback Baker Mayfield’s abilities. The run game has gradually developed over the course of the season. And just as important, so has a defense that had struggled in recent years to contain the Big 12’s explosive offenses. Oklahoma ranks among national leaders in offense and defense.

The Sooners won at Tennessee with an epic second-half rally, turning a poor performance — their words: “We played badly,” Darlington says — into a confidence-building victory that proved, as Darlington puts it, “We have what it takes to win.”

Time will tell if Oklahoma is back. Part of the trend in the last few years has been the Sooners’ penchant for delivering big wins only to falter in inexplicable losses. Like Texas.

The Sooners came to the Cotton Bowl on Oct. 10 playing very well. The Longhorns seemed to be disintegrating into dissension and turmoil.

“They came out and hit us in the mouth,” Mayfield says.

The Sooners can’t explain how that performance squares with what we’d seen from them before and especially since. But then, maybe no one can. Consider this tweet last Saturday from Longhorns linebacker Peter Jinkens after the Sooners’ win in Waco:

@RIPS_SHIRT_OFF: “OU cold bro lol dk how we beat them”

The tweet finished with an emoji laughing and crying at the same time — which sort of captures how the Sooners feel about it six weeks later. They say they learned and grew from the setback. Stoops says this team might be his best in terms of practice habits and attitude. Several players suggest after Texas, they’ve only become more focused.

“It’s inexcusable,” Darlington says. “But I don’t know if we’re the team we are today without that loss. Our complete mentality, energy and mindset changed after that loss. The vibe is so different.”

Since then, Oklahoma has won five in a row, developing into a formidable, balanced team — or as selection committee chairman Jeff Long might say, “a complete team” — that is playing as well as anyone in the country.

“Bottom line, we’ve grown and we’ve matured,” Stoops says, “and we’ve constantly kept improving.”

Oklahoma hosts an apparently depleted TCU on Saturday. Win that, and the annual Bedlam battle with Oklahoma State might become a play-in to the Playoff. Or not. That would depend on the selection committee, which has been strangely reluctant to move Big 12 teams up the rankings.

Although Jinkens’ tweet was later deleted, the Texas result won’t be. As Long said Tuesday night: “It doesn’t go away.” If Oklahoma wins out and is compared by the selection committee against a one-loss Notre Dame for, say, the fourth and final Playoff berth, Texas will be a factor, and it’s not at all certain which team would get the nod.

But if nothing else, this much seems apparent: Oklahoma under Stoops isn’t going away.