Remembering the 2003 Oklahoma Sooners: The greatest team ever — until it wasn’t
Ava Arnold The big, bold headline in USA Today on Dec. 5, 2003, summed up how most people felt about that season’s Oklahoma football team.
“Oklahoma: First Big 12, then history.” The subhead: “Sooners could rank with all-time greats.”
The article detailed how No. 1 Oklahoma could lose the next day’s Big 12 Championship Game to Kansas State but still reach the Sugar Bowl — site of that season’s national title game — because of the Sooners’ big lead in the BCS standings. The article went through the plethora of reasons Oklahoma — ranked No. 1 all season — was so dominant, then compared the Sooners to four of the all-time great teams: 1971 Nebraska, 1972 USC, 1995 Nebraska and 2001 Miami.
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“After all, the Sooners are chasing a goal beyond championships, one that doesn’t come with a trophy and never gathers dust,” reporters Kelly Whiteside and Jack Carey wrote, that goal being the title of greatest college football team ever.
As it turns out, there was no dust. That’s because Oklahoma — with seven first-team All-Americans and four national award winners — won no championships and no team trophies.
“I think it’s the best team that never won a trophy,” ESPN’s Chris Fowler, who hosted “College GameDay” at the time, told The Athletic.
Quarterback Jason White, wide receiver Mark Clayton, offensive tackle Jammal Brown, defensive tackle Tommie Harris, linebacker Teddy Lehman, cornerback Derrick Strait and cornerback/return specialist Antonio Perkins were first-team All-Americans. Five — Harris, Lehman, Perkins, Strait and White — were unanimous first-team All-Americans. That list doesn’t include starting safety Brandon Everage, who was a first-team All-American in 2002, or center Vince Carter and defensive end Dan Cody, who were first-team All-Americans in 2004.
White won the Heisman Trophy and Davey O’Brien Award. Harris won the Lombardi Award (best lineman). Lehman won the Bednarik (best defensive player) and Butkus (best linebacker) awards. Strait won the Thorpe (best defensive back) and Nagurski (best defensive player) awards.
“That might have been the best group we ever coached,” then co-defensive coordinator Mike Stoops told The Athletic. “All 11. It was unbelievable.”
The Sooners trailed just twice all season before the 2003 Big 12 Championship Game and won their 12 regular-season games by an average of 35.1 points. That season, Oklahoma mauled three of its biggest rivals: Texas 65-13, Oklahoma State 52-9 and Texas A&M 77-0. The final against A&M also was the score at the end of the third period, and Oklahoma could have scored 100 that day if it had wanted to.
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Yet, the day after that USA Today article was published, Kansas State stunned the Sooners 35-7 at Arrowhead Stadium.
Oklahoma did still qualify for the Sugar Bowl, but lost again, 21-14 to Nick Saban and LSU.
So what happened? How did a team that seemed like it might be the greatest collection of talent in college football history end up with zero championships to show for it?
Well, it’s complicated. There was intense media coverage that probably seeped into the players’ heads. Despite OU crushing all opponents going into the Big 12 title game, Kansas State wasn’t intimidated. There was Mike Stoops’ ill-timed departure to become Arizona’s coach — a fact that seems ironic in 2018, when current Sooners coach Lincoln Riley fired Stoops because he thought that would boost OU’s national title chances.
In short, there are a lot of reasons. But they’re not necessarily any the players want to hear.
“It haunts me to this day,” Lehman said. “I still think about it all the time. Time does not heal all wounds, I’ll tell you that.”
This is the story of the 2003 Oklahoma football team, told through interviews with more than 20 people who played or coached for or against the Sooners that season.
Kevin Wilson recalls being really frustrated in the spring of 2003. He was Oklahoma’s co-offensive coordinator, and his players couldn’t do anything against the Sooners’ defense that spring. It’s a little crazy to think Oklahoma’s offense had so much trouble when that offense would go on to break records behind a Heisman-winning quarterback, but OU’s defense was filled with standouts who also had starred the previous season.
Wilson (now Ohio State’s co-offensive coordinator): That spring, we had not scored a touchdown against our defense on any legitimate scrimmage drive. I remember one day after practice, I just had this frustrated look on my face. Coach (Bob) Stoops kind of cracked a joke, like, “You know, you’re not going to play many defenses as good as we’re playing in practice.”
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Brent Venables, Oklahoma co-defensive coordinator (now Clemson’s defensive coordinator): We often kicked their rear. That was a great, great collection of talent. And not just talent — they were also great competitors. At all three levels, we didn’t have good players, we had special players.
Vince Carter, Oklahoma center: Our defense was head and shoulders above the rest. And so it was a real struggle, man. It was frustrating to a lot of us. To this day, people will ask me, “Who was the toughest guy that you had to block?” Well, shoot, pick one! Tommie Harris or Dusty Dvoracek? I didn’t face a greater challenge in a game than I faced every Monday through Thursday in practice. But I think that spring kind of set the tone for us going into the ’03 season.
Bob Stoops, Oklahoma coach: A lot of that was also about the development of our quarterbacks at that time. Jason was still injured. All the offensive pieces weren’t quite there yet. But I knew defensively we had everybody back.
Ah, the quarterbacks. A quick recap: White was a top recruit from Tuttle, Okla., whose 2001 and ’02 seasons ended with ACL tears, one in each knee. Previously a mobile quarterback, White was forced to reinvent himself as a pocket passer in the offseason leading into the 2003 season. But there was no guarantee that White would be the starter. Sophomore Brent Rawls also had been a highly recruited player and was competing for the job, and sophomore Paul Thompson was in the mix, too.
Thompson: Jason had two knee injuries, so it was open. You’ve got a guy that obviously — had he not had the injury — would be the unanimous decision when it comes to the starter. But with that being the situation, it was open. It was kind of like, “OK, who’s going to take it?” I think we flipped a coin to determine who was going to take the first No. 1 rep each practice and scrimmage and everything.
White: I had made up my mind, like, “Let’s go ahead and have the surgery, work as hard as I can and do everything possible to get back on the field.” That way, at the end of the day, I can look back and say I gave it my all. Whether that was holding the clipboard, getting some mop-up time, I just wanted to be able to finish my career and say I did everything possible. So going through that offseason, that’s the mindset I had. As I went through spring ball, I didn’t participate much because I wasn’t totally done with rehab.
Bob Stoops: I think it’s fair to say we all wondered. I don’t know if doubt is the right word, but we were all maybe skeptical, or wondering if he’d be able to do it. I will say that even though you’re wondering, the medical community and our trainers are so good at not only the repair but the rehabilitation that you did have a good feeling overall that he would be able to get back to some measure of himself.
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J.D. Runnels, Oklahoma fullback: I can’t speak for everyone else, but I honestly can’t remember a time where I didn’t feel that Jason was the starting quarterback.
In the spring game, White was 7-of-13 for 70 yards with two interceptions. One of those interceptions was returned for a touchdown. Tulsa World columnist Dave Sittler wrote that Rawls received the loudest ovation from the fans when he entered the game.
Sittler: I still wrote a column in that next day’s paper predicting that Jason White would be the starter. (Oklahoman columnist) Berry Tramel wrote a column saying Brent Rawls was in the lead. I love telling Berry that.
Thompson: Jason’s strength were his legs. He had to totally reinvent himself. So anybody who says they expected him to reinvent himself into the efficient passer that he became, they’d be lying. For him to do what he ended up doing that year is unbelievable.
Stoops seemed intent on letting the competition rage on throughout the summer and fall, but on June 19 — White’s birthday — co-offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Chuck Long met White outside the football facility and told him he would be the starter. On the depth chart Oklahoma released in the summer, Rawls was listed fourth, and he transferred to Louisiana Tech before the season began.
White: Coach Long told me they had faith in me, that I’d come a long way and that they were going to announce me as the starter then so I could take full leadership of the team. That really surprised me, but from that moment forward, I was like, “They have confidence in me, and I’m going to take it and run with it.”
Oklahoma was ranked No. 1 in the preseason, with Ohio State a close second, and the Sooners easily disposed of North Texas 37-3 in the 2003 opener. White was 23-of-35 for 248 yards, three touchdowns and one interception in the win. It was a relatively ho-hum outing for OU, but in Week 2, Oklahoma would travel to Tuscaloosa, Ala., to face Alabama. The Crimson Tide that season weren’t close to what they are today — that team was on probation and finished 4-9 — but still had some talent and lots of tradition.
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Wes Sims, Oklahoma guard: It was always great to go play any place that has a lot of tradition. That’s one thing Coach Stoops was really big on. That whole week, we’re watching highlight reels from the ’70s and ’80s. They’d put up all the tradition, all the great players and championships that we had and that they had. They made it about not just who we were playing on Saturday, but just about two great traditional schools coming together. That was pretty cool.
Mike Stoops: I know Alabama wasn’t quite what they are today, but they were still Alabama. When you go into a stadium like that and you’re Oklahoma, you know you’re going to get their best. And we got their best.
White: My two knee injuries came in my second start of each year. So I started against Baylor in 2001, and then my second start was at Nebraska and I tore my left ACL. Then the next year, my first start was against Tulsa, and then my next start was against Alabama and I tore my right ACL. So we played North Texas, and that was a big confidence-booster, just to know I could still go out there and operate. But the next game was the big game. All week I heard the same stuff. It was the second game; both injuries were in the second quarter of the second game. I got through the second quarter and I just remember thinking at halftime, “I made it. I’m not hurt. I’m still going.” Once that game was over, that’s when I really took a deep breath.
The Sooners had to get through a lot before that game was over. Oklahoma led 6-0 after the first quarter and 13-3 at halftime, but Alabama stole some momentum in the third quarter. The Sooners missed a 31-yard field-goal attempt with 8:21 left in the third, and less than two minutes later, Alabama cut the lead to 13-10 on a 20-yard touchdown pass from Brodie Croyle to Triandos Luke. Oklahoma’s offense then was stymied, and the punt team came on with the Sooners facing fourth-and-10 from their 31-yard line.
Bob Stoops: I felt the entire momentum of the stadium caving in on us. If we didn’t make something happen, we were going to be in trouble.
Venables: So we had studied them in the offseason and summertime. Every time the opponent went gunners over, they brought an all-out blitz. Things weren’t going our way at that point and they had all the momentum. We were losing the field-position battle, and the crowd was all charged up.
Bob Stoops: Brent helped with the punt team. He looked at me at that moment in the game and said, “They’re going to come, Coach. I know it.” So I said, “Put it on.” He said, “Really?” I said, “Put it on.”
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White: I remember coming off the field and being really upset that we didn’t get that first down. I came off the field, took my helmet off and was thinking, “Oh, man.” Then all of a sudden, the crowd went silent and I didn’t have a clue what was going on.
Michael Thompson was a starting defensive back on Oklahoma’s 2000 national championship team, but he was involved in a serious single-car accident on May 3, 2001. Strangers who drove by noticed the wreck and called for help. Thompson suffered numerous injuries, including a fractured thighbone, two broken ankles, some broken ribs, a broken jaw and a fractured clavicle. He lost around 50 pounds, needed a wheelchair to get around and had his jaw wired shut; he missed the 2001 season. When he came back in 2002, it was considered miraculous, but he never was the same player. His main contributions came on special teams.
Thompson: You go through something like that and it changes your life completely. It 180 degrees changed my role on the team. You get in the position where you think maybe you’re not needed on the team and you get that woe-is-me feeling. If you’re not careful, you can get stuck in that. But everyone’s got a role, and Bob always stressed that. Everyone’s got a job to do, big or small, and it all adds up to the goal that we’re after. My role changed, but I was still a Sooner.
Thompson: Bob and the rest of the staff, they always had us prepared for anything and everything. We practiced fake punts and kicks just as regularly as we practiced Cover 3. But we used Cover 3 every game, and we rarely — if ever — used any of our fakes. So it came as a shock to me when he called it, deep in our own territory. But looking back on it, it shouldn’t have come as a shock. That’s when Bob is the most unpredictable, when his back is against the wall.
Just about the only people who knew the fake were coming were the coaches on the headsets and the punt team. Jacob Rice snapped the ball to punter Blake Ferguson, who acted as if he was going to kick it before suddenly standing upright and throwing the ball to Thompson, who slipped out into the open field. He picked up 22 yards and the first down.
Thompson: Their punt-return team reacted just the way we had anticipated. I got that little window to the right, and Blake hit me on a nice lob. I’ve gotten a little ribbing for this throughout the years, but after I caught the ball and took off, I bobbled it. Now, not making any excuses, but I hadn’t caught or ran with the ball since high school. But I made the catch, and they always teach you to switch the ball to your outside hand. And so as I’m doing that, the world seemed to slip through my fingers there for a second. But I was able to get it back and we were able to get the first down.
Cody: I always thought that was really special. Michael and I were living together at the time. He was in a wheelchair, had his jaw wired shut. His mom was coming over and blending his meals for him three times a day. It was miraculous that he came back, and then for him to catch that fake punt. … That’s the most special part about that game to me.
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Thompson: Immediately, I was swarmed by teammates. They’re all slapping me on the helmet and whatnot. It had been a long time since I felt that. Most people who aren’t athletes may not understand what that’s like, when your teammates and your peers are showing you that love. It’s addictive, and when you’ve been used to receiving that and it goes away, that’s a hard pill to swallow. It was nice to be in that position again.
Bob Stoops: I have thought about that often — his journey, the horrible accident that he fought his way back from. For him to make that play always tickles me. It always makes me smile that it was him running down the field with the ball.
What happened next made Thompson’s moment all the more special. On the next snap, White hit Brandon Jones for a 47-yard touchdown that basically sealed the OU victory. The Sooners went on to win 20-13.
White: So, Coach (Cale) Gundy would get the play from Coach Long in the box and I would call it coming off the sideline. But I didn’t even need him to tell me the play. I already knew exactly what play we were running. I knew we were going to go for their throat. It was a post route to Brandon Jones.
Bob Stoops: A fake punt is like a turnover. You go after them right away, and, fortunately, it worked that time. I will never forget just how quiet the stadium became all of a sudden. Two plays before, it was ready to cave in on us, and then it was deathly quiet.
Oklahoma rolled past Fresno State, UCLA and Iowa State over the next three games, winning by a combined 164-59. In the UCLA win, senior Antonio Perkins returned three punts for touchdowns, setting an NCAA single-game record. The Sooners then had the annual Red River game against archrival Texas. Oklahoma had beaten Texas three consecutive times entering the 2003 game. The Longhorns were ranked No. 11 and were playing with two quarterbacks — Chance Mock and a freshman phenom named Vince Young. Cedric Benson was at running back. Roy Williams was at wide receiver. It was an extremely talented Texas team.
Cody: I think the odds start to work with you the more you beat teams like that.
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Venables: We had a bunch of misfits who had that chip and edge on their shoulder. They were overlooked by a lot of people and, certainly, a number of them were from the state of Texas. It’s a great rivalry, but there’s always a bitterness about it. It’s a group of misfits, and then you throw in guys like Tommie Harris and Brandon Everage who took it to new levels.
Mike Stoops: I felt like we had the stronger team, mentally, at the time. We worked hard on that game, man. It was something that we took a lot of pride in. We always wanted to go in there and take their will away from them. That was our mindset.
Lehman: The running joke at OU was that it was a country club in Austin. I can’t remember the strength and conditioning coach’s name (Jeff Madden), but he went by “Mad Dog” or something. We laughed at that. We knew what they did down there; whether it was strength and conditioning or the way we practiced, the toughness was never there. If it ever got hard, they were going to fold like a cheap tent. We knew that every time we played them.
Carter: Here was the thing about Texas. The Texas front — or at least the defensive front — if we pounded them enough, they would eventually fold. In 2002, one guy asked me to stop cutting him because it was the fourth quarter. The guy was like, “Come on, Vince. Please stay off my legs.” And I’m just like, “Are you serious?” So we knew that about them. That was the character they had as a team.
Tommie Harris, defensive tackle: We knew those guys couldn’t hang with us in the fourth quarter. With Jerry Schmidt, one of the best strength coaches ever, we were extremely well-conditioned. They couldn’t run with us.
Oklahoma led 14-7 after the first quarter, helped by three Longhorns turnovers. Then, midway through the second quarter, defensive end Dusty Dvoracek batted a Young pass to fellow end Jonathan Jackson. Jackson returned it for a touchdown that put OU up 27-7. The floodgates opened from there. OU led 37-13 at halftime and won 65-13. Texas finished with six turnovers, and the 52-point margin remains the widest in series history. A quick side note: The No. 1 recruit in the country was on the sideline watching that day. Both schools were recruiting him hard. His name was Adrian Peterson.
Sims: With Texas, if you knocked them down and then step on them, they weren’t going to try to get back up.
White was 17-of-21 for 290 yards and four touchdowns against the Longhorns, and that was the day his Heisman “campaign” began.
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Kenny Mossman, Oklahoma’s sports information director (now OU’s senior associate athletic director): We were walking back up to the press box after the Texas game. Dave Sittler was walking up the steps with me, and he said, “What do you have in mind for White’s Heisman campaign?” The thought had never crossed my mind, and all of a sudden I got really nervous because it hit home that we probably had a Heisman candidate. A lot of times with Heisman campaigns, you do a little bit of planning in the summer months. You start getting your ducks lined up. And on him, we had nothing ready to go, so we really had to scramble, and fortunately he had such a good back story, with his dad being a concrete worker and Jason working with him as a child. There was a great blue-collar work-ethic story there, and it resonated well.
After the Texas beatdown, Oklahoma beat No. 24 Missouri 34-13, then won 34-20 at Colorado. The Colorado game was a little too close for comfort until a 60-yard White-to-Mark Clayton touchdown pass put the game away with just over two minutes left. Then, it was time for the Sooners’ “revenge tour.” Oklahoma had lost to in-state rival Oklahoma State in back-to-back seasons entering the Nov. 1 Bedlam game, and also had lost at Texas A&M — OU’s Nov. 8 opponent — the season before.
Kejuan Jones, Oklahoma running back: I’m going to be honest — we knew exactly what was about to happen. I know it’s a rivalry game, and in rivalry games you’re supposed to take records and throw them out and all that. But we knew we were going to put a whupping on them that day.
Venables: So in 2001, we lost 16-13 to a bad Oklahoma State team. So then we were mad and called it a fluke and everything, and they came back and kicked our butt again in 2002. It took that game for us, as a program, to really respect the rivalry — no matter what the all-time record is — for what it was. Then, I think we developed a real hate in our heart for them. As a competitor, when you have that deep-seated hate, that can fuel you to the level you need to be at.
Lehman: There was so much frustration, so much anger and hatred built up for that football game. It surpassed anything OU-Texas, in my opinion, by a thousand. As a football player, I was fairly reserved. On the sideline. I’m kind of thinking about the next drive or whatever happened on the last drive. But in that game, I don’t know, somebody flipped a switch because I was enraged the entire time on the sideline.
Oklahoma State returned the heroes of the previous two Bedlam wins — quarterback Josh Fields and wide receiver Rashaun Woods — and also had Tatum Bell, who already was a 1,000-yard rusher by that point in the season. ESPN’s “College GameDay” crew was in town for Bedlam. The Cowboys were ranked 14th and then-coach Les Miles was in full Les Miles mode that week. At one point, he told reporters, “Two teams are going to play. One is maybe the best team in college football, and the other one is a darn good football team. We’re going to play to figure out which one is which.” Then just before kickoff, he said, “Let ’er rip” to ABC sideline reporter Lynn Swann and walked away with a swagger.
Mike Stoops: (Les Miles’ smack talk) just irritated all of us. We didn’t need any other motivation, and we took it. Our guys played off that. There aren’t many guarantees in life, but I could’ve guaranteed we weren’t going to lose that game again.
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Sam Mayes, Oklahoma State guard (now a sports radio host on 107.7 The Franchise in Oklahoma City): Les Miles only had one speed. He was running his mouth prior to the game like he ran it the previous two years. He was writing checks that our butts couldn’t necessarily cash. We had a young right tackle, Corey Hilliard, and it was his first time playing OU. I remember Dan Cody met him on the 50-yard line before the game and called him everything but a man. The level of intensity prior to that game is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. If you would have asked me before the game, “Hey, Sam, honestly, what’s the score of this game going to be?”, I would’ve told you 85-0.
Wilson: I remember walking out for warmups, me and (then-tight ends coach) Kevin Sumlin walking out together. I looked at Summy and I said, “Are we going to be all right today?” About that time, you heard those Ruf/Neks (OU’s male cheerleading squad) shoot that cannon. It’s like “Pow! Pow!” The crowd went nuts, and Summy said, “We’re going to be fine today.”
Fowler: Les was a guy who had gotten Oklahoma State to believe. I remember talking to him after one of those games and his voice was hoarse; he could barely speak. He was obsessed with beating Oklahoma, but that was one of those out-for-blood games.
Runnels: Early in the game, we had to settle for a field goal, and Robert Jones — a high school teammate of mine — was playing safety for them. He came up after that and said, “S’up?” to me. You know, usually with somebody I’m going to push back or react. But all I said to him was, “Not today, boss.”
Oklahoma led 24-3 at halftime and never was in any serious danger. Oklahoma State’s offense managed just two first downs and fumbled twice in the first half. Two especially telling moments came after halftime. With Oklahoma leading 31-9 late in the third quarter, the Sooners dialed up a reverse pass from wide receiver Mark Bradley to Mark Clayton. Then, early in the fourth with OU leading 38-9, Oklahoma State drove inside OU’s 5, and the Sooners held the Cowboys out of the end zone in one of the most memorable goal-line stands in OU history. It was first-and-goal at the 5, and the Cowboys ran three consecutive plays from inside the 2 but couldn’t score. On the final play — fourth-and-goal from the 1 — linebacker Gayron Allen burst through the line and stuffed Oklahoma State running back Shawn Willis.
Lehman: Mike Stoops and Brent Venables looked throughout that game like someone had slapped their mom or something. At one point before that goal-line stand there was a timeout, and one of them yelled at us, “There is no fucking way they are getting into the end zone!” (Stoops and Venables remember the sentiment, but while neither remember who says it, each say it was something that he could’ve said.)
Harris: I got a good jump and we caved the pocket. I remember that being the loudest I’ve ever heard that stadium in my life.
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Venables: We were doing our best to try to humiliate them. We needed to get back ahold of that rivalry, and since then, it’s been pretty one-sided. I think that game was a really defining moment in the rivalry.
White: I remember afterward getting that glass trophy they had. That was the one time I actually raised the trophy and showed it to the fans. That meant a lot to the fans, the players — especially the guys from Oklahoma — to win that game and take that trophy back.
Cody: I remember seeing Mike Stoops after the game. “GameDay” was there, and Mike and Kirk Herbstreit were at The Mont (a Norman restaurant/bar) that night. Me and Michael Thompson walked in there, and I’ve never seen him so happy. The guy is usually wound up pretty tight. But I just remember seeing him in The Mont, and he said, “We got ’em, didn’t we, DC? We got ’em!” He was so satisfied. Maybe the happiest I ever saw him as a coach.
The “revenge tour” continued a week later. Oklahoma had been ranked No. 1 and was 8-0 when the Sooners lost 30-26 at Texas A&M on Nov. 9, 2002. So there was plenty of motivation to avoid a similar fate when the Aggies arrived in Norman nearly one year to the date later — on Nov. 8, 2003. And if you think the Texas and Oklahoma State games were lopsided, you ain’t seen nothing yet. On Oklahoma’s first drive, White hit Clayton across the middle, and Clayton slipped out of a tackle for a 40-yard touchdown. That was pretty much that.
White: So, that was the only game in my career that I didn’t throw up before the game. I did it in high school, even. I remember before that A&M game, going through warmups, and I didn’t have the nauseous feeling that I normally did. So we came back in from warmups, and that’s usually when I would throw up. Well, I remember pacing in front of my locker and waiting for that feeling to go throw up, and I never got it. I’m thinking to myself, “Am I ready to play? Why am I not nervous?” And then, when the game started, everything was in slow motion.
Carter: It was a complete shock to me. That’s not something you do in the Big 12, especially not against a traditional program like Texas A&M.
The game started to spiral out of control for A&M in the second quarter, and OU went into halftime with a 49-0 lead. White was 16-of-18 for 263 yards and five touchdowns in the first half. It was 77-0 with 1:58 left in the third quarter after Strait returned a fumble for a touchdown, but OU’s offense basically had stopped trying long before that. OU coaches drew up a fullback belly play because the halfbacks were picking up chunks of yardage on every run. Paul Thompson, the Sooners’ backup quarterback, started kneeling much earlier than normal. At one point in the fourth quarter, Bob Stoops was ordering his players not to score.
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Venables: Nothing we did went wrong (OU outgained A&M 639-54 and had 33 first downs to the Aggies’ three). I remember Coach Stoops asking, “What do we do?” I remember them drawing up that fullback belly play that we kept calling. I’ll be very honest: We started to feel bad for the other coaches. Do you take a knee? You don’t want to do that, but every time we’d call a zone (run) and give it to the halfback, it was going for 20 yards. That’s when we came up with the idea of just handing it off to the fullback.
Runnels: We definitely wanted to score 100. I remember we definitely asked Bob at halftime if we could score 100. He said, “Hell, no.”
Jones: We wanted to score 100 and we knew we could hit it. But Coach Stoops put the brakes on us.
Paul Thompson: At one point late in the fourth, I went to the huddle and told (backup running back Donta Hickson), “Coach said don’t score.” And so I snap the ball, run it back to him. He’s just like pitter-pattering with his feet, obviously trying to go nowhere. Then Johnny Jolly comes barreling toward the line, tackles him for a loss and gets up doing this dance. I’m yelling and cussing at him, like, “Yo, bro, it’s 77-0. Coach is telling us not to score.”
Carter: That was terrible. I remember thinking after that, “See? That’s exactly why we should put 100 on them.”
Bob Stoops: I believe in sportsmanship. You’re just trying to do the right thing, and I don’t know if there ever really is a “right thing.” In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have told the guys not to score. I don’t know. I’ve never been in such an odd position, to be up 77-0 so early in the game. Since then, I’ve always felt like I shouldn’t have said not to score, and just dealt with whatever it ended up being.
The day after the game, New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica was on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters” and accused Bob Stoops of running up the score. He called the 77-0 win “a graceless act” — though he later admitted he hadn’t watched the game. Bob Stoops found himself in a position where he had to defend himself publicly against those accusations. Multiple attempts to reach Lupica for this article were unsuccessful. There were reports of Lupica’s email inbox being inundated with messages from angry Oklahomans, some of whom took to Amazon.com to leave negative reviews on Lupica’s books.
Bob Stoops: He didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. But you’ll love this: So a few months after that season, I’m at the Super Bowl with Toby Keith. He’s part of the entertainment before the game or at halftime. They were taking care of us, working us through the crowds. We get on an elevator to go down to the field level, and the door opens and there were two people in there. One of them is Mike Lupica. So I go, “Hey, how are you? I’m Bob Stoops.” I thought it’d be funny to introduce myself. Toby started laughing. (Lupica) just shook his head like, “Oh, really?” Like after all that, he couldn’t believe that I was there standing in front of him. That was the end of the conversation.
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Sittler: I remember I was at a Final Four a couple years later and Lupica happened to be sitting next to me. He saw where I was from and said, “Am I still hated in Oklahoma?” I said, “Well, I haven’t done a poll, but I imagine you are.” That was a real hatchet job that Bob didn’t deserve.
Mossman: I was stunned, completely stunned, that there would be that kind of reaction. If you watched the game, you knew Bob and the staff had really taken their foot off the throttle. I didn’t feel like there was any overt effort to embarrass the opponent. I didn’t try to reach out to him because I didn’t really need to; everybody who covered the game did that for us. When people are paid to give their opinion, you’re wasting your time making a phone call to them. He got the rise he wanted out of that.
Wilson: I’m telling you, sometimes winning a game big as a coach is more stressful. You’re not trying to be arrogant. You’re not trying to run scores up. You’re not trying to embarrass anybody. You also just want to play good football. It was a heck of an offensive game. Matter of fact, I’ve got a picture of that game and showed it to our GAs at Ohio State. I said, “Look at this score: Seventy-seven to nothing, and that was the third quarter. We were trying not to score!”
Cody: As a team, you don’t ever want to play in games like that because you don’t get any better. It’s just an absurd score that doesn’t make any sense. And I remember thinking that wasn’t the kind of competition that we needed.
Oklahoma never was the same dominant team after that rout. It was after A&M that the “greatest team of all time” talk really started to ramp up. And as much as OU coaches tried to keep the players insulated from it, that talk was impossible to avoid.
Harris: We believed the hype.
Jones: I do think it all got into our heads. The script was already written. You’re watching ESPN, and you hear, “Well, the Sooners can just go in here and flat-out lose and they’re still going to be in the national championship.” As a grown man now, 36 years old, thinking back on it, you would think, “Oh, no, we’re in the heat of the moment. We ain’t worried about what the media says about us.” But you’ve got to understand that’s all anybody was talking about. It was hard not to soak that up.
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A couple of other things happened, too. Oklahoma basically lost Renaldo Works, who teamed with Jones to form a formidable running back duo. Works missed the Texas A&M game and the next week’s outing — a 41-3 win over Baylor — and only recorded 14 carries the rest of the season. It was left to Jones to carry the load in the running game, and the numbers post-Texas A&M were bad. In the Sooners’ first 10 games of the 2003 season, they rushed for 1,785 yards and averaged 4.29 yards per rush. In the last four, including a rout of Texas Tech in the regular-season finale, the Sooners rushed for 269 yards and averaged 2.19 yards per rush.
Wilson: I think down the stretch our running game got hindered. After Renaldo’s injury, we lost a little bit of balance from our offense. I think we got a little one-dimensional. So you’re sitting there reading how great you are, and on top of that, I feel like we lost some of our edge after the A&M game.
Then, Mike Stoops accepted Arizona’s head-coaching job five days before the Big 12 Championship Game against Kansas State. Some, including Bob Stoops, reject the notion that Mike Stoops’ imminent departure made a difference. But many of the players point to that as something that shook up things at the wrong time, even though he was going to stay with the program through the Big 12 title game.
Strait: The captain of our ship was leaving. It just felt weird. He was kind of coaching, but then he also was gone some that week. Everything just felt off.
Harris: NCAA football is a business. You start getting these great accolades, you start getting other colleges that want to get in on what you’ve got, and your coach gets another job offer. Now, you’re just a kid. You don’t know nothing about this; you just hear your coach is leaving and taking another job. That disrupted our flow.
Mike Stoops: I’m sure it was a distraction of some sort. But that’s just how those things go. There is never a good time for that. I always thought it was hard to serve two masters. That was a hard thing to figure out. In hindsight, thinking about it now, maybe I should have waited until even after the national championship game. But, hey, a lot of people do both now. I’ve always gone round and round with that. I don’t have an answer for that other than to say it was conflicting for me.
White: The defensive guys were just comfortable with Mike Stoops. I’ll never forget this. Back then on game days, we would do these tests before we’d leave to go to the stadium. The whole team would gather and each position coach would test his players. Like, “What if they give you a Bear front? What are your checks?” Just kind of a mental test. Before the Big 12 title game, the defensive guys got most of the questions wrong. I remember going up to Teddy Lehman and asking, “What’s going on? That never happens.” Teddy was like, “We’re all just confused.” I think the shock of Mike leaving and that comfort was hard to overcome.
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Lehman: I don’t remember that conversation specifically, but I do remember that meeting and it being strange. That meeting was always our last lock-in moment. You got quizzed by your coach in front of everyone about checks, about the game plan, everything. You’re on the spot and the coaches are making sure you’re prepared. It was just a combination of everything. The fact that everyone said we would make the national championship no matter what, Mike Stoops leaving, ESPN talking about us being one of the greatest of all time — all those things were rolled up into one, and it created the perfect storm of shit.
But there was one more thing to add into that “perfect storm of shit” — the Sooners’ Big 12 title game opponent. Kansas State had lost three consecutive games earlier in the season — to Marshall, Texas and Oklahoma State — but took a six-game winning streak into the conference title game.
Fowler: Oklahoma was like Mike Tyson in his prime. They were going out there and just intimidating people. They were used to bullying people and knocking them out quickly. If you weren’t a strong-willed team, the game was over before it started against that Oklahoma team. If you didn’t fight back or stand up to it and have a lot of grit, you just got overwhelmed. Kansas State finally had those things.
Nick Leckey, Kansas State center: Don’t get me wrong, we were aware that those guys were super dominant. We read all the headlines — this is the greatest team ever assembled, they could beat pro teams, all that stuff. I definitely think that added fuel to the fire. But were we intimidated? Hell, no.
Kansas State’s game plan was surprisingly simple. Offensively, the Wildcats weren’t scared to run right at Oklahoma’s front seven. As it turns out, they had the perfect back to do it — Darren Sproles. Defensively, K-State coaches noticed that Oklahoma didn’t have too many downhill runs in its arsenal. Some of that was Works being limited, but the Sooners did most of their offensive damage that season with perimeter plays and deep passes.
Bret Bielema, then-Kansas State defensive coordinator (now on the New England Patriots’ staff): We knew they were able to score at will on people, but a lot of that came on perimeter stuff and deep shots. So we defended them from the outside in. We took away the outside and the deep ball, and tried to force everything inside. It allowed us to play the way we were comfortable. As defensive coordinator, I wanted to take whatever the opponent did best and make them play left-handed.
Leckey: Nobody wanted to run the ball against them because there was so much respect for that defensive line. Our plan was simple as all get-out: We were going to run the ball up the middle. Straight up. We were going to challenge them. As an offensive line, we took that to heart, and we had a really good offensive line. Jeromey Clary was our right tackle and he played nine years in the NFL. Ryan Lilja was our left guard and he played nine years in the NFL. I played six years in the NFL. Our right guard and left tackle played a couple.
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Kansas State went three-and-out to open the game, and Oklahoma scored a TD on its first possession. It looked like another Sooners rout was imminent when Jones — on the Sooners’ fourth play from scrimmage — took a handoff, broke outside and ran untouched for a 42-yard touchdown.
White: I can remember standing on the sideline looking at the offensive line and thinking that you could see, like, “OK, here we go. It’s going to be another 50 points today.” It was like we relaxed. Then Kansas State turned it on and we could never recover from relaxing. It was almost like sometimes I wish we hadn’t scored on that first drive. Even in the huddle on the next series, it seemed like everyone was super relaxed and not like we normally were.
Bielema: When they scored that quickly, in a way, it did me a favor. That reinforced to the guys, “Do you want to play that way or the way I talked to you about?” That played into our hands totally.
Oklahoma didn’t score again. The 42 yards on Jones’ touchdown run represented almost half of OU’s 83 rushing yards for the game. Bielema’s defense also pounded White and tried to get into his head. White was 27-of-50 for 298 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions. He hadn’t thrown for fewer than two touchdowns in any game that season.
Bielema: The physicality part of getting after the quarterback is just hitting him, but mentally we did a lot of things pre-snap. We’d show pressure, then bring none, or bring pressure when we didn’t show any. There was one point when we hit him pretty hard on a couple of plays in a row, and I’ll never forget this. One of our linebackers, Josh Buhl, yelled at him, “You’re bleeding! You’re bleeding!” That was Josh’s way of saying, “We’re in your head.” He wasn’t bleeding physically. It was just a way to say, “We’ve got you.” When I saw the quarterback look down to see if he was bleeding, I knew we had him.
White: After that game, I had a concussion and also hurt my hand. I don’t think we ever knew exactly what that was, and I don’t know to this day. Everybody thought it was my elbow, but it was my hand. I can still remember that next week, we went to Orlando and New York for the awards stuff, and just shaking peoples’ hands would almost take me to my knees because it hurt so bad. They’d squeeze and it was already hurt, so the squeezing made it so much worse.
On the other side of the ball, Oklahoma had an incredibly difficult time stopping Sproles and K-State quarterback Ell Roberson. The first big spark for K-State’s offense came early in the second quarter, when Sproles took a toss from Roberson. Strait came on a corner blitz and ran right into Sproles, who spun out of Strait’s tackle and picked up 55 yards. Three plays later, Roberson threw a 19-yard touchdown pass to Brian Casey.
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Strait: I read the play perfectly, did everything perfectly … except I missed the tackle. And he spins off me. Then everything started snowballing. Usually, if something bad happened, we would be able to get a play here or a play there and stop it. But we couldn’t stop it.
Leckey: The thing about Sproles is that he’s one of the hardest runners I’ve ever blocked for, college or NFL. He always just wanted it more than anybody. Even watching him play this year in the NFL, he is still such a hard runner, even after all these years.
Sproles, who is in his 14th NFL season, declined to be interviewed for this story. But he was the star that day, without a doubt. He finished with 235 rushing yards on 22 carries — a stunning 10.7-yard average. He also caught three passes for 88 yards and a touchdown. Roberson threw for 227 yards and four touchdowns.
Harris: It felt like somebody threw a flashbang in the building. You just had to sit and take it. It was like somebody took all of our power and zapped it. It was like, “Wow, so this is what humble pie tastes like.”
Lehman: The whole game, I was just looking at the clock, thinking, “We’ll be fine. The offense is going to get it together. We just need a stop here.” It was like I was in denial — “Well, if we get an interception for a touchdown …” I was just in denial the whole time. So when the game was over, it was a shock to the system.
Carter: Shock, confusion, disappointment, disbelief. The whole game, I’m sitting there thinking that at some point, that Sooner magic is going to kick in at any moment and we’ll be right back in it. To me, it was never out of reach until it was out of reach.
Fowler: (“College GameDay” was) there to see a coronation, to be honest with you. We didn’t really expect a battle, but it is one of the most stunning championship game results I had seen. And I think it stands the test of time: I don’t think there have been too many shockers in conference championship games like that.
In the hallways outside of Oklahoma’s postgame locker room, the rumors already were swirling: Despite the 35-7 loss, the Sooners still were likely to make it to the BCS title game in the Sugar Bowl. They were so far ahead in the BCS standings that it didn’t matter that they had just lost a game by four touchdowns. Plus, 2003 was only the second year that the Heisman Trust allowed online voting, so lots of people still voted by mail. Many had cast their Heisman ballots before the Big 12 title game, and White won the Heisman by a narrow margin over Pittsburgh wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald. And the Sooners still dominated the awards circuit the next week.
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Bob Stoops: I think what that game did was take momentum away from us. That was hard to recapture. It’s like you’ve been cruising along in this race car, and all of a sudden you’ve got a ding in it. It took away some of our momentum and maybe a little bit of that confidence.
Paul Thompson: It was a pretty quiet, somber plane ride home, just like after any loss. But then we were back to pumped up a few hours later when the final BCS rankings came out.
Sims: I really, personally, didn’t think that we were going to the national championship game because we’d lost our last game, and they always said if you’re going to lose, it should be early in the year. But then we started hearing the analysts and everything the next day. I went to O’Connell’s (a restaurant in Norman) with a couple teammates to watch the selection show, and I felt like that news completely rejuvenated us. We just had to have a short memory and forget about the Big 12 game.
The next day was bizarre. Oklahoma remained No. 1 in the final BCS standings despite falling to No. 3 in both the AP and coaches’ polls, the two human elements of the rankings. The computer rankings continued to love the Sooners, and to the computers — which, for all their great features, don’t have eyeballs — a one-loss OU team still was ahead of the two teams the human polls wanted to see in the Sugar Bowl, USC and LSU. Interestingly, those two teams flipped in the final BCS rankings. The Trojans didn’t have a Pac-12 championship game, although they did play that final weekend, beating Oregon State 52-28. LSU beat No. 5 Georgia 34-13 in the SEC title game on the same day of the Sooners’ inexplicable loss. USC — with offensive firepower in the form of quarterback Matt Leinart and running back Reggie Bush — was ranked No. 1 in both polls but wouldn’t get a chance to play for the BCS title.
Fowler: That was around the time when the BCS was really starting to become unpopular with people. It began producing championship games that, for a lot of people, didn’t make any sense. The BCS was supposed to stir debate and bring attention to the sport and, well, it accomplished that.
After time on the awards circuit — and it was busy for a lot of Sooners — OU began to prepare for the Sugar Bowl. The game with LSU in New Orleans was just a little more than an hour from the Tigers’ campus in Baton Rouge.
Jones: It didn’t feel like a road game; it was a road game. That’s not taking anything away from their players, but that was a home game for them.
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Bob Stoops: It was worse than a road game. It was an awful week. There’s no other way to say it. The Sugar Bowl people are fabulous. I love the game. You just do not want to be playing LSU when you’re in it. We’ve had great experiences there, but that wasn’t one of them. The constant taunting and foul things people said to us — there was some of that everywhere. The whole week was very challenging and took a lot out of us. There were too many people around. It felt like we were being watched at times. I’m not saying we were, but it felt like that a lot. LSU was supposed to be practicing at a different site, and then all of a sudden they’re practicing where we are. Then, at different times, they started impeding on our time. I got pressure from the Sugar Bowl committee to do so, to accommodate them. I don’t want to sit here and make excuses, but a lot of it just didn’t feel right the entire week. Every time we went after that, I made sure the people of the committee or whoever was hosting us knew, “This is how we’re going to do it. There aren’t going to be any exceptions, or we’re not coming,” basically.
Michael Thompson: I remember Coach Stoops made it very clear that anyone that was not a part of our program was not to be in the Superdome while we were practicing. And he would send different members of the coaching staff up into the stands to talk to people who just happened to pop up. And sometimes it was just fans that slipped through and were able to get there. Or maybe a part of the staff of the stadium. But he was always like, “Hey, check that out just to make sure.” Or we wouldn’t run certain formations or we wouldn’t run certain fakes because we weren’t sure who was in there and who wasn’t.
Mossman: I think anytime you’re practicing indoors in a building that big with that many nooks and crannies, and you’re basically the visiting team … it would be only natural to assume that you were maybe being watched. Now, whether you’re being watched by anybody who matters or not, that’s a different case. I don’t know, but we were definitely on enemy turf.
Cody: I was always convinced they had some people planted around. I don’t know. Maybe some security guard saw something and told somebody something. It was just … maybe it was a paranoid feeling, but it felt like there was constantly somebody there messing with us. I mean, think about it. The Superdome is a pretty big building. It’d be hard to clear everybody out of there.
On the first play from scrimmage of the game, Oklahoma safety Brodney Pool blitzed and the Sooners seemed to have everything played perfectly. But Pool missed LSU running back Justin Vincent in the backfield, and he slipped through for a 64-yard gain. It was the first defensive play call for Brent Venables, who officially took over after Mike Stoops’ departure, although Stoops was there on the sideline.
Lehman: First play of the game, and we basically knew exactly what they were going to do. We have a perfect blitz dialed up. Field angle. It’s the perfect play for the call they were in. And we had a guy miss him in the backfield for what would have been a 4-yard loss. I remember thinking, “What happened?” I knew I was in the right spot and I knew the D-line was in the right spot. I thought, “Oh, this is going to be good! Everyone’s in the right spot.”
Then the Sooners caught a break. On second-and-goal at OU’s 1, LSU quarterback Matt Mauck fumbled, giving the Sooners’ offense its first shot. But Corey Webster intercepted Jason White two plays later, and five plays after that, LSU’s Skyler Green rushed for a 24-yard touchdown.
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White: By the time of the Sugar Bowl, I was practicing well and felt great. I was throwing the ball fine. I know a lot of people try to blame what happened on my injuries, but the fact of the matter is that, for me, LSU’s corners and secondary were the best I’ve ever seen. We were having trouble getting open, and for as bad as we played — because I still think we played bad — for us to even be in that game was good. It didn’t feel like a normal bowl experience because of the crowd split. But at the end of the day, we’d won lots of tough road games before that.
Jones: I remember one play in the first half. I’m getting up off the ground and Jason is tapping me on the helmet. They call the next play and it’s another running play. And I’m trying to yell at Jason, “My hand is cramping! I can’t put my fingers out!” But I don’t think he heard me and I ended up getting the ball again. I had to take the handoff in my left hand on that play.
After a disastrous first few series, Oklahoma’s defense settled in and the game stayed relatively close the rest of the way. Just after halftime, LSU took a 21-7 lead when Marcus Spears intercepted White and returned it 20 yards for a touchdown. But the Sooners started finding some life offensively in the fourth with their running game. White broke his toe in the third quarter, limiting his mobility even further. There is a sizable faction of Oklahoma football fandom that firmly believes — to this day — that if the Sooners had put Paul Thompson in the game, OU would be 2003 national champions.
Paul Thompson: I appreciate those who think that, but I do think Jason should have started the game. I’ll just say I was ready. I’d like to think I would have responded and played well, but I don’t disagree with the coaches’ decisions at the time. Jason White is the reason we were there. He was the Heisman Trophy winner. From a passing standpoint — understanding what the defense was going to do — Jason was by far the best option there. But from a mobility standpoint? Even if it was just a special change-up package kind of thing? I wouldn’t have been against that. I’ll just say that. But I get it all the time. People come up to me and say, “You know what I’ve always said?” And I’m like, “I know exactly what you’ve always said: If I would’ve played against LSU, we would have won the championship.”
White: Oh, yeah, I’ve heard that, too. But here’s the thing: I already wasn’t a runner. Even the toe wasn’t affecting that. I wasn’t at a point where I couldn’t perform.
Jones scored on a 1-yard touchdown run to cut the deficit to seven with 11:35 left in the game. The Sooners then took over with about six minutes to play at their 39-yard line, and over the next seven plays Jones rushed four times for 26 yards as OU moved inside LSU’s 20.
White: I remember at one point, we’d just picked up some yards, and I looked over at the sideline and got the play call. After I got it, I did this (he rolled his index fingers over each other). That means repeat it because they’d called a pass play and I’m thinking, “Why are we passing?” We were running the ball down their throats. They were tired. It was incomplete, and we called another pass play.
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Carter: It bothered us. I remember stepping back from the huddle and looking over at the sideline, like, “For real, man? What’s going on?” But I don’t call the plays. You run the call. And you’re expected to perform your responsibility when that play is called.
Oklahoma had two chances to score with passing plays. On the first, LSU blitzed, allowing Jones to slip out of the backfield uncovered. It was a play Oklahoma had seen Florida run against the Tigers earlier that season with success and it almost worked.
White: The play happened way faster than it was supposed to happen. I didn’t have my feet set right, threw the ball. If you watch it on film, it was like this far over his fingers. He would’ve scored and tied the game.
Jones: I honestly believe if we had kept running the ball, we would have been national champions of 2003. I was ready to take that thing to the promised land. But — but — we did have the right play call on that pass he threw to me. That blitzing safety just got there a little bit early and it made the pass just a little bit over my head. Man, if I’d have been 5-10 instead of being 5-8 ….
Lionel Turner, LSU middle linebacker: We got away with one there. Somebody was supposed to cover the back if he released on a pass route. He faked like he was blocking, then all of a sudden released on a route. But with the pressure we were able to put on him, it threw the timing off with the pass. We definitely got away with that one. Florida did the same thing to us. And that time, it was my fault. I was supposed to have the back if he released on a route up the middle. Florida did it like three or four times in the game and took good advantage of us blitzing. That was the only game we lost that year, to Florida.
White: And then no one mentions that on fourth down, there was a pass to Mark Clayton that got tipped in the end zone. It got tipped by an LSU defender (safety Jack Hunt) and it hit Mark right in the hands, but he dropped it. That would have tied the game. So there are a lot of things people don’t consider.
Bob Stoops: If we had scored on that drive, I was really strongly contemplating going for two. Just because I felt the whole week we had been running uphill. Here we are, they’ve got three-quarters of the stadium. Might as well put it on a 3-yard play. That was definitely going through my head.
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Turner: For us, that definitely felt like a home game. Usually for a road game, you’ve got to get on a plane and travel. We just got on a bus and went 45 minutes down the road. We had the majority of the fans. It helped us a lot, especially when OU had the ball. Toward the end of the game, it made it pretty difficult on them, trying to change plays and audible and whatnot.
Time ran out on the Sooners’ season with OU on the wrong end of the 21-14 final. The “greatest team of all time” finished 12-2, with no championships.
Strait: It was thrilling to have all the awards and all of that stuff, but I’m pretty sure you can ask any of us: We would give all those awards back to win the championship. Without a doubt. We played for the team. It was never about the personal stuff. I’d trade it all back — all of it — to win the national championship.
Venables: That and the ’98 Kansas State team were the two most talented teams I’ve ever coached, and both ended the seasons with two devastating losses. The hurt is still there. I still use that 2003 season and share those memories with my (Clemson) guys.
Lehman: It was awful. It was horrible. I felt bad we didn’t win, just to be a national champion. That would have been an awesome accomplishment. But to this day, I still feel like I let Coach Stoops down by not winning that championship. It was right there. We had the best team in the country. It wasn’t close. And we have nothing to show for it.
