As Bedlam finale looms, November will be about saying goodbye

November will be about saying goodbye, bidding farewell to historic rivalries that will go by the wayside when realignment takes hold next year.

Bedlam, the Civil War, the Apple Cup – each will be no more, at least for the foreseeable future, once the age of super conferences fully blooms. 

Oklahoma–Oklahoma State first played Bedlam in 1904. Oregon–Oregon State, who will play on Nov. 24, first staged the Civil War in 1894. And Washington-Washington State, who will play on Nov. 25, first played in 1900.

Well, more than 300 years of historic rivalries soon coming to a close – with OU and Oklahoma State staging the first of the finales Saturday in Stillwater.

In the wake of Oklahoma’s loss to Kansas, the final edition of Bedlam won’t have the national stage in terms of College Football Playoff implications. And OU-Oklahoma State on ABC will go head to head with a matchup of larger national championship importance, No. 14 Missouri at No. 1 Georgia, at 3:30 p.m. ET on CBS.

Lament realignment if you’d like. It won’t change it. So, it’s worth checking out the last installment of Bedlam, a unique slice of the college football tapestry, to savor the memories for posterity. 

You can bet Andrew Coats will. He is the 88-year-old Oklahoma attorney who four decades ago represented Oklahoma and Georgia in the landmark Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma v. NCAA case.

The NCAA had monopolized the TV market, limiting schools’ appearances on TV. But Coats was the legal mind behind the 7-2 U.S. Supreme Court victory in June 1984.

He played an integral role in unlocking the door leading to escalating TV media rights revenue for schools and leagues and, in turn, incessant conference realignment. Now the longtime Sooners fan is watching one of the sport’s great rivalries, Bedlam, go up in flames – knowing he lit the fuse.

“I’ve probably screwed up college football so much you can hardly fix it,” Coats recently told On3. “When we released the TV money, it released the tiger. It has changed things ever so much.”

Bedlam one of football’s best rivalries

Whether the rivalry is simmering quite as hot as it was decades ago is debatable. Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy on Monday recalled the level of vitriol between the two teams when he played in the 1980s. 

“It was a rivalry then,” Gundy said at his news conference. “Like, [Brian] Bosworth spit in my face. I spit in his face. It was actually a rivalry.”

If emotions have been tamped down, it’s a matter of degree.

“I don’t like them,” Oklahoma defensive tackle Isaiah Coe said Monday. “I’m pretty sure they don’t like us.”

As for the Civil War and Apple Cup, the door has been left ajar for both series to continue at some point, even if not annually. But there are plenty of complications in play in terms of scheduling future non-league games for new Big Ten members Oregon and Washington.

The future conference affiliations of Oregon State and Washington State, of course, remain uncertain as the schools engage in a legal battle with the 10 departing members over control of Pac-12 governance.

But for Bedlam, the future is all but crystalized: Saturday is the last dance, at least in the regular season.

“We’ll eventually play them again,” Gundy said. “I think it’ll be in a bowl … the SEC and Big 12 have a lot of bowl matchups, and I think that’ll be the next time. Regular season is, in my opinion, history.”

And with that, the first century-old chapter will close in November.

No college game reached 6 million viewers

Game 2 of the World Series was the least-watched Fall Classic game on record, drawing 8.15 million viewers on college football Saturday night, according to Sports Media Watch. That audience still eclipsed that of any college football game during a soft Saturday of matchups.

This marked the first time since Week Zero that no game reached the 7 million viewer threshold. The high water mark Saturday was 5.95 million for Georgia-Florida on CBS. Ohio State–Wisconsin was the second most-watched game with 4.87 million on NBC, followed by UCLA–Colorado with 4.66 million.

Flora Kelly, ESPN’s vice president of research, tweeted that the sport remains on pace to be the most-watched season ever. To date, more than 100 billion minutes of live college football games have been watched across all networks, up 13% year over year.

What was of note over the weekend? With an NFL lead-in on Sunday, regional volleyball averaged 1.66 million viewers on FOX. It was the largest college volleyball audience ever. It also surpassed the previous regular season record, which was achieved a week earlier when 612,000 watched Wisconsin–Nebraska on the Big Ten Network.