Why OSU overtime win over Arkansas embodies college football's imperfect perfection
Regardless of the sport's flaws, Saturdays during the fall are a gem.
STILLWATER — Kendal Daniels strutted across the Boone Pickens Stadium turf. Collin Clay pumped his arms. Nick Martin raised his fist.
Yes, Oklahoma State players celebrated after they stopped Arkansas one last time Saturday afternoon.
But Iman Oates?
The Cowboys’ beefy nose tackle took off, sprinting around the field, pumping his arms, lifting his knees.
He was joyous.
Lots of us knew how that felt. Watching OSU best Arkansas 39-31 in double overtime Saturday afternoon was a thrill. A blast.
A joy.
College football never seems to disappoint. At a time when many Negative Nellies want to talk about everything wrong with the sport — the transfer portal, name/image/likeness, conference realignment, the revenue sharing that’s soon to come — Saturdays during college football season remain a gem. They are unlike anything else in sports.
It’s because of games like OSU-Arkansas.
Imperfectly perfect.
“I mean, you guys watching probably think it’s exciting,” Cowboy receiver Brennan Presley said, “but I hate it.”
Oh, I’m guessing lots of Cowboy and Razorback fans had moments where they hated Saturday’s game, too. They despised the mistakes that their team was making. They lamented the shortcomings and deficiencies, the failings and faults.
But unlike great games in the NFL which are most often products of precision and execution, the great games in college football regularly have another ingredient — mistakes.
Look at OSU.
The Cowboys played like doo-dee in the first half. The defense was a little better than the offense, but that’s not exactly high praise. The OSU offense, after all, had 77 yards at halftime, and that enabled Arkansas to build a 21-7 lead that could’ve — and probably should’ve been — a touchdown or two higher.
But that first half, flawed both ways, was the setup for OSU’s comeback.
After the Cowboy defense forced a punt on the Razorbacks’ opening possession of the second half, OSU drove methodically down the field. A 2-yard run. A 19-yard pass. A 1-yard run. A 10-yard pass. A 5-yard draw.
On and on the Cowboys went like a well-oiled machine — until the 13th play of the drive when Alan Bowman’s 8-yard fade found Presley in the end zone but a block-below-the-waist penalty negated the touchdown.
And suddenly, it was like the wheels fell off. False start. Incompletion. Incompletion.
The Cowboys ultimately kicked a field goal, but that good-bad, yin-yang, Jekyll-Hyde back and forth continued for the rest of the game.
Bad tackling was soon followed by a forced turnover on a fumble recovery.
A dropped pass came before a muffed-punt recovery.
“The thing is, they’re kids,” Cowboy coach Mike Gundy said. “They’re just kids.”
Now, I don’t think Gundy was trying to offer excuses. If anything, he was critical of just about everything his team did Saturday. The start wasn’t good enough. The coaching and the playing weren’t either.
No, when Gundy mentioned the age of the players, it was more an acknowledgment that the root of college football’s imperfection is inherent.
The players, even though they are dedicated and detailed, are still young. Kids? I’d push back against that — kids often don’t know better, and college football players know what they’re supposed to do — but they are absolutely young adults. And young adults do foolish things sometimes.
“You would like to think this doesn’t happen and this shouldn’t happen, but they’re kids, they go so many other things on their mind,” Gundy said. “That’s why if you can ever get them zoomed in and focused, you got a chance. Because they got a lot of stuff going on in their minds, they’re just scattered.”
The result is a sport in which the unexpected happens.
The uncharacteristic, too.
On the Cowboys’ final possession of regulation, for example, Bowman made a superb third-down throw to Presley that took OSU to the Arkansas 6-yard line. With only a couple of minutes remaining, it looked like the Cowboys would milk the clock, punch the ball into the end zone and walk away with a late victory.
But as he ran downfield, the normally measured Bowman turned toward the Arkansas sideline and shot finger guns in its direction.
He was taunting the Hogs, and officials flagged him for it.
Unsportsmanlike conduct.
"He got exactly what he deserved," Gundy said. "What he should’ve done is ran down the field and played the next play, because in that situation he made an unbelievable throw, we made a great catch, we made a big play.
"You knew it, I knew it, his mom and dad knew it, his girlfriend knew it, his wife knew it, the fans knew it, the other team knew it, everybody knew it. You don’t have to tell them. Everybody knows you made a good play, so he needs to play the next play."
Instead, the Cowboys went from first-and-goal at the 6 to first-and-10 at the 21.
And four plays later, after a clock reset that put several extra seconds on the clock that shouldn't have been there and a false-start penalty that actually should've gone the other way against the Arkansas defense, OSU settled for a 38-yard field goal.
But the repercussions of Bowman's mistake didn't stop there. Arkansas got the ball with 55 seconds left, and even though it had no timeouts, it managed to get to the OSU 27.
With two seconds left — remember that incorrect clock reset? — the Razorbacks tied the game with a 45-yard field goal, sending the game to overtime and adding to the madness.
The thing is, while there was all sorts of drama in Stillwater, it was hardly the only place where blunders spawned grand games on Saturday.
Northern Illinois beating Notre Dame?
Iowa State coming back against Iowa?
Kansas State surviving Tulane?
None of those were perfectly played games, but man, they were fun to watch. They kept us flipping channels and checking scores and hunting highlights. And they were just among the games that kicked off early.
I'm telling you, the splendor of college football Saturdays makes the mess of the other six days fade away.
"No doubt," Gundy said. "I mean, people love that stuff."
We love it like Iman Oates sprinted around the Boone Pickens Stadium turf Saturday afternoon — with unbridled joy.
Great article JC.
Fortunately for the Cowboys the doo-dee turned out to be a Baby Ruth.