OU's Offense Misses Point In Crunch Time

During the regular season, the Oklahoma Sooners rolled up 97 touchdowns. Points, points, points - 702 of them, a record in modern college football.

But when it mattered most, during Thursday night's BCS Championship Game at Dolphin Stadium, the Sooners managed just two scores. By Oklahoma standards, practically pointless.

The Florida offense, led by resourceful Tim Tebow, will get credit for closing out a 24-14 win.

But the Sooners offense played a major role also - for what it failed to accomplish.

"As ironic as it seems, as efficient as we've been, we came up short in the red zone," Sooners coach Bob Stoops said.

Even as the nation's best red-zone team - scoring points a remarkable 95 percent of the time when penetrating an opponent's 20-yard line - the Sooners sputtered.

Oklahoma's second-quarter performance was particularly brutal. In a 7-7 tie, the Sooners reached Florida's 1-yard line. Third-and-goal, Chris Brown for no gain. Field goal? No, this game wasn't about field goals. On fourth down, Brown was dumped for a 2-yard loss by Torrey Davis.

One more shot.

Sooners quarterback Sam Bradford, the Heisman Trophy winner, took Oklahoma on a 74-yard drive, reaching the Florida 6. Ten seconds remained before halftime. One shot to the end zone, perhaps, then probably a field-goal attempt, if it came to that.

Instead, Bradford tried to force in a throw, short of the goal line, and it was tipped, once, twice, three times, before safety Major Wright came up with a crushing interception.

"It was in slow motion," Wright said. "I was like, 'Oh my God, when is it going to come down?'"

Bradford wondered the same thing.

"Obviously, I wasn't trying to throw an interception," Bradford said. "We called it. It wasn't the coverage we were expecting to run that play. I tried to force one in there. In all reality, I should've thrown it out of the end zone and taken three points."

But it didn't happen.

A lot of things didn't happen.

In the first quarter, Oklahoma drove to UF's 10 with a 31-yard completion to tight end Jermaine Gresham. The play was negated by a holding penalty, though, and the Sooners wound up punting.

Crusher.

In the fourth quarter, trailing by three, Bradford seemed to complete a pass to Juaquin Iglesias deep into Gators territory. But Ahmad Black took it away for an interception. The Gators then drove for the clinching touchdown and a 24-14 lead.

"We're not going to place blame on our offense," Sooners safety Nic Harris said.

"We win and lose as a team," Stoops said.

Let's give credit to the Florida defense, which held together nicely. But UF's defense, ranked ninth nationally, was supposed to be good. OU's offense was supposed to be off the charts. And it was far from that.

"You lose the game through the whole process of the game," Stoops said. "But two drives inside the 5, and you don't get it in? That's tough. It doesn't take much to lose a tight game. We didn't have problems at the line of scrimmage. We were moving the ball. Moving the ball to the 1-yard line, there wasn't anything bothering us with the way we were playing and I didn't notice anything with the crowd affecting us. We just bogged down."

At the worst possible time.

Ultimately, Oklahoma created a statistical frenzy, but it won't be remembered as one of the best offenses of all time. For that designation, you must come through in the biggest game. The Sooners met all challenges - except the one that mattered most.

Points, points, points.

Then, suddenly, it was all pointless.