Blatant Homerism: Who cares if OU is lucky?
You could easily spin the Oklahoma Sooners’ upset win over the Alabama Crimson Tide last week in a variety of ways, and all contain some measure of truth.
The more narratively inclined might couch it as a triumph of grit and resilience in hostile territory. You could argue that the Sooners got lucky after Bama outplayed them. Maybe it was a testament to the old adage about defense winning championships.
The reality is that teams rarely win games in the manner that OU won versus the Tide. Nothing in the history of football suggests a squad can rely on defensive touchdowns and timely plays on special teams to deliver Ws week after week. But OU did win this particular game, which is the point of playing in the first place.
Luck and randomness make football compelling. If you want to follow a sport that doesn’t lend itself to screwy results, find a different one. However, the fact that chance can so dramatically influence the outcome of a game gives us unsatisfactory explanations about the significance of what we just witnessed.
The adoption of statistical analysis into our everyday conversations about football has greatly aided our ability to separate those factors that consistently underpin success from those that produce more unlikely results. As someone who talks and writes about college football, I’ve found that this level of nuance tends to steer conversations in two directions. They’re equally frustrating.
On the one hand, some feel as though acknowledging good fortune’s role in a result – the winning team recovering a disproportionate number of fumbles, for example – reduces a victory to a fluke. In the minds of sports fans, this seems to be the utmost sign of disrespect, as though it renders an achievement illegitimate.
On the other, the savvy contrarians who zero in on the improbability of a result strike me as equally delusional about what we’re really doing here. The game was played. The score was kept. One team had more points than the other at the end. No one gets a do-over just because randomness smiled on one squad and not the other.
In fact, these are two separate conversations. One is about what did happen, while the other is about what will happen.
It’s true that OU beat Alabama last weekend with minimal contributions from the Sooners offense. The Sooners put themselves in position to win by virtue of stellar play in the other two phases. Turnovers tend to come more freely to good defenses. It’s a selling point for why playing well on defense is important. (Let’s also not ignore the likelihood that the Tide benefited from turnover luck earlier this season, which then evened out versus OU.)
Looking ahead, though, we should acknowledge that if OU is banking on another pick-six to win either of its last two games against Missouri and LSU, the Sooners will be taking another loss in the next two weeks. OU has sputtered enough on offense lately to assume that it is looking at two dogfights to come.
Win out, and how the Sooners won won’t matter.
Other Games on My Radar
These games all stink.
USC at Oregon
Lincoln Riley seemed pretty stoked last week about the Trojans winning a game they absolutely should have won. Just kinda odd. I don’t believe they will win this one, which might explain his behavior.
BYU at Cincinnati
I’m assuming a fair number of fans are rooting for the Cougars to take an L here and get them out of the playoff mix.
Pittsburgh at Georgia Tech
A thrilling battle for ACC supremacy. The tight line on this game (GT -2.5) suggests somebody knows something.
Arkansas at Texas
For a team that has only won two games this year, the Razorbacks can play. The Longhorns can’t afford a hangover here.