MITCHELL BLATT

Oklahoma has been rewarded for allowing 452 yards to Oklahoma State by moving ahead of Texas in the BCS–by a scant 0.0128 points–and into the Big 12 Championship for a matchup against Missouri which could project them into the National Championship game.

Texas beat them 45-35 earlier this season, but they didn’t get the nod for the Big 12 Championship because Texas Tech was also tied for first in the conference, so that threw out the possibility of head-to-head matchups as the tiebreaker. Indeed, Texas Tech beat Texas, but Oklahoma beat Texas Tech, so it would be impossible to use head-to-head as the decider.

During Oklahoma’s victory of Ok. State last night, Kirk Herbstreit was talking up Oklahoma’s offense, which piled up 557 yards in their 61-41 victory. It was their sixth straight game with over 500 yards of offense. That’s pretty impressive, but what isn’t impressive is that they need 500 yards to win games.

Commentators like Herbstreit have been pondering who can beat Oklahoma when Oklahoma has such a tough offense–(Well, Texas #1, since they already beat Oklahoma.)–but anyone who has a championship worthy defense and offense can beat them.

What it’s going to come down to is that either Florida or Alabama will beat them.

Florida already beat Alabama 38-7 and gained 514 yards on them. They average 449 yards per game. Oklahoma averages 557 yards per game.

The big difference is that Florida allows 12 points per game. Oklahoma allows 25. If you get blinded by the lights on the scoreboard, sometimes you might forget that football involves offense AND defense, and only one of these two teams has both.

Sometimes you ignore the defense and think a great offense can score on anyone. (And it’s certainly true that Florida can score on Oklahoma.)

Florida hasn’t played any offenses as good as Oklahoma’s or Texas’s yet, but they did hold Tennessee to 6 and five of their opponents under ten (oddly, that didn’t include Citadel, but with a 70-19 victory, you have to imagine there were lots of possessions).

Oklahoma did hold Chattanooga to 2–I’ll give them credit there–but all of their other opponents have reached double digits, and eight scored over 20.

Oklahoma is just a blaze burning down a gas station, but they’re going to run out of fuel soon.