A personal anecdote, if you’ll indulge me.

I didn’t have a senior year of college; I had a senior semester. I was a December grad. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t rushed through college and finished a semester early, but at the time, my focus was minimizing the expense of my education. And as I entered my senior semester, I actually had some decent clout. A good deal of my work had already been recognized locally and nationally, and with all the members of the latest graduating class off to the real world, I was something of a big man on campus — at least in the J-school.

Now mind you, I knew this status was only going to last four months, and that I should probably make the most of it while I could. So I did what any 21-year-old guy in that position would do: I slid into the DM’s of the most attractive girl I knew.

This girl was not only gorgeous, but she was also a scholarship athlete. I knew I was probably shooting way beyond my range, but hey, it was worth a shot, right?

Somehow, the shot found the bottom of the net, all nylon, as if I was prime Jimmer Fredette. She responded, we went out a couple of times, and we clicked pretty immediately. I got serious about this girl. For the next couple months, I would buy her flowers, wake up at 5am to text her before her team’s morning workouts, and generally make a concerted effort to make her feel special. I was just enthused to have what I felt was such a genuine connection with someone. My previous girlfriend had been toxic, psychotic, potentially the literal spawn of Abaddon, etc. Insert your preferred pejorative here. Many of us have been there. If you haven’t, consider yourself unusually blessed. I was very, very glad that this new pseudo-relationship appeared to bear no resemblances whatsoever to that fiasco.

You’ll note, though, that I said pseudo-relationship. That’s because this girl started to get really dodgy at a certain point. She would tiptoe around the “relationship” label. I wouldn’t hear from her for two or three days, but when she’d finally respond, she would say something sweet or give a rational explanation as to why it had been so long. When we did see each other, she’d give me a big hug and act flirtatious. And of course, I only saw the green in the mixed signals, not the red. I rebuffed my friends’ very reasonable suggestions that perhaps she wanted to keep me at arm’s length for a reason. I couldn’t make myself believe such a thing could be true, assuredly because I didn’t want it to be true. You can eventually rationalize anything in your own head if you want a given reality badly enough.

But finally, after about six months (!) of this very confusing dynamic, I logged into social media to see that she had posted a video with another guy, calling him her new boyfriend. And that was that. Some quick social media detective work revealed that the guy in question was from her out-of-state hometown.

She ended up transferring to another school to finish out her athletic career, and I didn’t hear from her again until well over a year later. She texted me out of the blue, offered an apology for the way everything had transpired between us, and seemed to indicate that she was interested in re-kindling our connection. I was skeptical, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt one last time and talked back and forth with her for a couple of days.

Suddenly, the conversation just… died. She quit responding. And this time, I saw the writing on the wall, the existence of which I had denied throughout the six-month “situationship.” To this day, I don’t know what I was to her, but I was certainly never a priority.

Not too terribly long thereafter, I started dating my wife, and quickly experienced the overwhelming joy of being with someone who adores you and always craves your presence. But I’ll admit, as hopefully we all can, that every relationship prior to marriage does leave some sort of lasting imprint upon you. That is undeniably the case for me. One of my ex-girlfriends introduced me to my favorite clothing line, whose products I have purchased en masse over the years. Another bought me my first pair of Nike Phantom Flyknit shoes, which I believe to be the finest kicks known to mankind (I now own several pairs).

But this girl that gave me the run-around for six months didn’t leave her mark in the form of something tangible. The takeaway from that experience was (and is) that no matter how badly you want to paint your own picture of reality, you can’t deny the actual reality, the one that’s staring you in the face. If you don’t reconcile with it at the outset, it’s eventually going to hit you over the head, at which point you have no choice but to acknowledge it.

You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?

Here are several realities, both of the encouraging and calamitous variety, following Oklahoma’s appalling 16-12 win over Houston on Saturday night.

1) Oklahoma played dismal offensive football.

2) All things considered, the Sooner defense did a hell of a job.

3) There is no singular player or person responsible for the atrocities that occurred last night.

4) This team’s ceiling is considerably limited by its general health (or lack thereof).

5) All of the on-field issues are fixable.

6) There is no guarantee that said issues will be fixed.

7) If said issues ARE fixed, Oklahoma is still more than capable of beating any team on its schedule.

8) Playtime is over.

If you choose to assent to the validity of these realities, I commend you. If you do not choose to assent, the remainder of this column will be dedicated to shedding additional light upon those realities. My hope is that by the end of your scrolling adventure, you will come to concede that they are true.

— Is Seth Littrell a troll? He has to be trolling. The first play of his opening script has been the same play in back-to-back weeks. But that’s not even the fun part. The fun part is that the play in question is the same play to which Jeff Lebby’s name will always be inextricably linked. It is the very same play that Lebby continually dialed up with obstinacy until the day the OU metaverse mean-tweeted him right off to the ashes of the Confederacy. I am referring, of course, to the JET SWEEP. And the particular jet sweep in question here — the first play from scrimmage for Oklahoma last night — went for a loss of six yards, which effectively served as a microcosm of the evening for the Sooners. They got behind the chains like Tyreek Hill procreates: with obscene frequency and wanton carelessness. Oklahoma’s offense was truly putrid last night, and to understand why, let’s recall Julie Andrews’ observation that the very beginning is a very good place to start. The Sooners had one true scoring drive of the night (the one-play, 10-yard possession following the muffed punt doesn’t count), and it came at the beginning of the second quarter. After that drive, here’s a look at the yardage tally on the Sooners’ first play of each possession for the remainder of the game:

4 yards

14 yards!!!

0 yards

2 yards

6 yards

1 yard

2 yards

2 yards

Okay, I take it back; they weren’t technically behind the chains. But they sure as hell weren’t doing anything on first-and-10 that screamed WE WOULD LIKE TO SUSTAIN A DRIVE. I like Seth Littrell. He is a man’s man and a good football coach, and I respect his willingness to call a spade a spade last night in postgame. He didn’t shy away from the fact that his offense sucked. But the fact remains: his offense sucked. And he will be the one held responsible if they continue to suck, whether it truly and justifiably falls on him or not. One bad game doesn’t mean all is lost or that Littrell is in over his head; the man has had plenty of success as a playcaller. Let’s not disregard that fact. But he’s given plenty of early fodder to the folks that dismissed his hiring as conservative and unsexy.

— Jackson Arnold could not put a deep ball anywhere remotely near his receiver’s catch radius last night. I’m not sure where that came from, nor why it occurred. Drops did not help his cause, but Arnold was stunningly inaccurate on downfield throws. He didn’t look confident in the slightest. He looked like he had the yips. And at risk of stating the obvious, you do not want your quarterback to have the yips. What I wrote about Littrell holds true for Arnold: one bad performance does not mean he’s destined for mediocrity or that Oklahoma is doomed. But the level of play that we saw last night from the Sooners’ QB1 is a level of play that’ll get them beat by 30 in SEC play. Arnold’s QBR last night was 37.5. I did not make that number up; that is the real number. It’s okay if Arnold just played a crappy game and this is the lowlight of his 2024 season. No one is immune to a dud. If this is anything but the lowlight for Arnold, though… there will be a reckoning.

— I love Josh Bates’ competitive nature and his willingness to literally go to war for his teammates. But there’s a time and a place to pick a fight, and the time isn’t 40-odd seconds to the game’s conclusion while the opponent has no timeouts. After Arnold took a delayed knee and got hit by a Houston defender on the way down, Bates accosted said defender and got flagged for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that stopped the clock. Sans the penalty, the Sooners would have lined up for a punt with about seven or eight seconds remaining in the game; instead, Bates gave Houston a full 35 seconds with which to operate. In the end, it was all for naught and Oklahoma preserved the win, but it was still a thoroughly stupid foul, especially given that Arnold had basically waited for a Houston defender to come and bring him to the ground. He’d more or less invited the contact. And moreover, Bates’ penalty wasn’t the only unsportsmanlike call that gave Houston second life. Earlier in the game, Kendel Dolby drew a flag for excessive celebration after the Sooners forced what would have been a fourth-and-forever, and Houston got a free set of downs. Unforced errors will prove costly at some point. They didn’t on Saturday, but they will.