First off, while the season may not technically be over yet, it is already a huge failure.  From the preseason #1 ranking to the defensive "sharks" the players hyped themselves as, they are nothing more than fool's gold.  Try to digest this little nugget: the Sooners finished behind Baylor in the Big 12 standings.  Yes, the same Baylor team who had never beaten the Sooners in their entire history finished ahead of them in the Big 12.  Not only will they end the season no where near their preseason projections, but they will finish in a humbling 4th place in their own conference which they have dominated over the past decade and didn't even require a conference championship game for the first time this season.

The real kicker?  All the Sooners had to do was beat OSU and they would have lucked into yet another Big 12 title and right into the Fiesta bowl.  Instead, they get slaughtered in Stillwater and drop down to 4th place in the Big 12 and a comfortable spot in the ole Insight.com Bowl.  I half wish Stoops would decline the invite and just take us into the offseason. This season is over and a 100-0 win over Iowa isn't going to make it any better.

So where does the blunt of the blame lie?  Well it's hard to pinpoint one specific place to lay all the blame when so many contributing factors were at play.  Let's break it down piece by piece shall we.

The coaches.  The sooner coaching staff failed this team in so many ways that it's hard to fit them all in one paragraph.  They allowed this team to feel a sense of entitlement and never brought them back down to reality throughout the course of the season.  Venables has failed to make the necessary changes in the secondary, be it different schemes or players, and has allowed them to continually get burned over and over by the same plays.  Heupel has failed to really get a grasp on the play calling and never even attempted to give the run game a chance, especially in Stillwater.  Stoops has failed to do anything about repeated special teams issues and instead of recognizing his assistant coaches failing and doing something about it he has let them get away with murder.

The Secondary.  The defensive unit as whole has not be horrible this season, but there is one glaring weakness.  The secondary.  The secondary unit has cost the Sooners time and time again and after a certain point of blaming the coaches, you have to look at the players and hold them accountable.  What was once thought to be one of the strong points on the team has done a 180 and turned into one of the biggest weaknesses.  OSU has one of the most high powered offenses in the nation.  They are going to score points.  I get that.  What I don't get is how Texas Tech and Baylor were allowed to shred our secondary and then here we are the very last game of the regular season with the exact same problems.  That's just plain unacceptable.

The offense.  After going off and proclaiming that Mr. Jones, for all his faults, has stepped up for the Sooners in big games…he falls flat on his face.  Perhaps one of Landry Jones' worst games to date, he single handedly gave the opposition more points than he earned for his own team.  The wide receivers weren't much help either.  Landry had a pitiful game, but on the rare occasion he did make a good pass, it seemed like the ball was slipping right through the hands of every receiver on the field.  Clearly Ryan Broyles presence was missed, but even a healthy Broyles wouldn't have saved this broken group of receivers.  Going up against one of the worst defenses in not only the Big 12, but the entire nation, and the Sooners could manage only a banked in FG before half and a Belldozer TD during cleanup duty.  That is simply embarrassing.  We knew the defense was broken, but who knew the offense was broken as well?

All this leads to quite a bit of frustration in Sooner land and I, for one, am not nearly as optimistic for next years outlook as I was before.  Landry Jones has done some great things in his career at OU, but I pray every night that he chooses to enter the NFL draft next year.  For all his great qualities, he just doesn't have that "it" factor that gives you supreme confidence in him when the game is on the line.  Sure, he has delivered on a few occasions, but he's also flopped on numerous occasions too and that instability drives me insane.  

Bring on the Blake Bell era.  This is the University of Oklahoma, people.  Why are we still running a gimmicky high paced, spread offense and throwing the ball 100 times a game?  Let's get our big boys in the trenches and take a page from the almighty SEC and run the ball.  The spread has worked against other inferior Big 12 opponents, but it never works against great defenses.  It's time for a change of philosophy in Norman.  It's time to start recruiting defensive players first and focusing on establishing a solid run game.  Let Blake Bell and Dom Whaley pound the rock and let our superior athletes do what they were recruited to do.  Schools with lesser talent run the gimmicky spread offense because they have to.  Oklahoma does not have to.

It's time for a change, Bob.  You can no longer say "Well we won the Big 12."  You didn't win anything this year and you haven't done much more than beat up on the other Big 12 schools in the recent past either.  Get out of your hard headed ways and admit it's time for a change.  Change up the offense.  Change up the defense.  We need some change or we will be stuck with this same good but not great team every single year no matter how many 5 star recruits you bring in.  The Belldozer formation was creative and worked wonders.  We need more thinking outside the box like that if hope for #8 in the near future is to be had.  I am tired of the high preseason hype for the Sooners and the eventual let down at some point during every season.  Bob, I'm pleading with you, make some changes.

From the previous 105 games played between the two teams, the Sooners have come out on top 82 times.  What's that?  No one cares what happened 100 years ago?  OK, how about the last 8 straight the Sooners have won against their in-state little brothers?  You have to go all the way back to 2002 to find the last time the Pokes were able to upset the Sooners.  That's including a very similar Cowboys squad last year that hosted the Sooners in Stillwater with the very same high octane offense yet failed to win a shootout.

So enough about the past, why will the Sooners win this year you ask?  Here are a few reasons:

Offense.  This point is pretty self explanatory and can easily be argued from either side, but I'm sure you know which side I'm on by now.  The Sooners offense is the one thing that has not floundered this season even through the two painful losses.  It is no secret that the Sooner secondary has more than a couple of holes in it, but the offensive unit has surprisingly yet to wilt despite season ending injuries to their top WR and RB.  For all his faults, Landry Jones has continued to deliver when the Sooners needed him most and he has especially stepped up in big games this season.  There is no doubt this game will be a high scoring affair.  The Sooners don't need their defense to win the game, they just need to be the last ones with the ball in their hands.  The Sooners have shown that they are able to adapt and come up with new schemes to get the ball in the end zone, which leads me to my next point…

The Belldozer.  I won't try to hide the man crush I have for Blake Bell and his Tim Tebow-esque knack for getting in the end zone.  The addition of the Belldozer formation was nothing short of pure brilliance from the Sooner coaching staff.  Everyone knew the offense continually sputtered in the red zone.  Everyone knew they had a potential stud QB waiting in the wings, but how could they possibly bench their Heisman candidate QB to resolve their red zone woes?  I won't go all statistician on you, but trust me when I say that Blake Bell's numbers speak for themselves in short yardage situations and has no question been the answer to the Sooners goal line issues of years past.  Iowa State lined up 10 men in the box.  Didn't matter.  Bell is a force to be reckoned with and finds a way to get in the end zone even when opponents know it's coming.  Once he masters the skill of passing the ball, there is no telling his limits.

This is a big game.  There is no question this is a big game, but how does that play into the Sooners favor?  The Sooners have been notorious for getting up for big games, but allowing lesser opponents to jump them while they have their eyes set on the next "big game".  Unquestionably, the Sooners have had their eyes set on OSU for some time now and probably overlooked Texas Tech and Baylor leading up to Bedlam.  The Sooners national championship dreams this season may be over, but a Big 12 title and BCS bowl are still well within their grasp and they fully intend on making sure little brother doesn't mess with those plans.  The Sooners may have overlooked previous opponents, but there is no doubt they will be up for this game and they have proven to succeed in every other big time game this year.

In the end, I fully expect a wild shootout similar to last years Bedlam madness.  While the Cowboys should rightfully be favored going into this game, I just can't see the Pokes breaking the streak this year even though it may be the best chance they've had since that fatefull night in 2002.  If there is one thing that we know to be true, it's that history repeats itself.

They failed to show up against yet another lower tiered opponent and let the Baylor Bears put up the most yards against them of any team in the entire Sooners history.  Yes, the same Baylor Bears who had never beaten the Sooners.  Not once.  The same Baylor squad who only a few weeks ago were blown out in back to back games vs Texas A&M and OSU.  The same Baylor squad that barely squeaked by a Kansas team in overtime who haven't won a game since week 2.  That very same Baylor team lit up the Sooners secondary for 45 points including a last second heave in the back of the end-zone to erase a 14 point 4th quarter Sooner comeback and send the Sooners right back into familiar territory.

The Sooners find themselves once again out of the national title picture and left only to play spoiler now to the Cowboys BCS dreams and hope for another Fiesta bowl appearance.  But lets not get ahead of ourselves.  Does a team loaded with this much talent even deserve to be playing in a BCS game at the end of the year after falling flat twice in the past month?  As embarrassing as the loss to Texas Tech was, this loss may be even more embarrassing.  More embarrassing because a perennial bottom feeder of the Big 12 is able to get their first win ever over Oklahoma just when the BCS was ready to forgive them for their lone loss and praise them for their superb wins.  More embarrassing because Brent Venables had to have seen the holes the Red Raiders sliced through our secondary yet refused to make any adjustments.  Baylor has no business putting up 600+ yards on any team, led alone the #5 ranked team in the nation supposedly fighting for a shot in the National Championship game.

The Bears probably did the Sooners a favor in the end saving them from the possibility of having to face a far superior SEC opponent and being embarrassed on the national stage again.  Now the Sooners may be able to "salvage" the season by knocking off the Cowboys in Stillwater and winning back to back BCS games.  That would have to be considered a success, right?  I'm sure it would be for a school with less tradition, but Oklahoma football comes with high expectations and simply going 10-2 every year is just not going to please the masses.  Is that fair for Stoops and company?  Probably not, but this is Oklahoma football and they know good and well what is expected out of them.

I will be forever grateful to Stoops for the 2000 National Championship, but Sooner Nation is becoming weary if another will come during the Stoops era.  The sad reality is that our defense has let us down year after year and not been the same since Mike Stoops left for Arizona.  If only Bob would welcome his baby brother back into his arms and show Venables the door…oh if only.