Texas vs. Oklahoma: Numbers to note, a rivalry like no other

With all of the focus on who will be playing quarterback for the Texas vs. Oklahoma game this Saturday, I think it’s important to remember that whichever team runs the ball the best typically wins this game.

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Last year, Texas allowed a whopping 339 yards on the ground to the Sooners. It wasn’t Lincoln Riley’s aerial assault that clipped Texas, it was OU’s ground game.

By comparison, Texas managed just 128 yards on the ground in the contest.

This year, those stats – at least heading into this game – are flipped. And the disparity between the two teams tells us why the line in Vegas so heavily favors the Horns.

Texas ranks 43rd in the country in run defense, yielding 120 yards per game. The Sooners, meanwhile, rank no. 119, giving up 198 yards per game.

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In the last week, I’ve seen some folks talk about how OU’s offense isn’t all that good, how maybe they’re not clicking like they should, etc.

I dismiss much of that talk as an unrealistic search for perfectionism.

Dillon Gabriel is not Kyler Murray, but he is plenty good.

But the biggest piece of the equation are the guys up front. The Sooners OL has both opened up holes in the ground game and protected its QB.

And the results prove it.

The Sooners have a potent offense. They’re ranked No. 18 in the country in total offense.

Texas, by the way, has been plenty good itself on offense this year. But even the Horns rank just no. 61 in total offense.

Don’t expect anything but the best from the Sooner offense tomorrow, especially if Gabriel can go.

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Will the ability of Quinn Ewers to throw vertically open up the run game for the Horns?

It very well could.

But my bet is that Ewers is going to have to prove that he can do that to Brent Venables before the OU coach allows Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson to eat up yards in chunks.

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Everyone, and I mean everyone, has a favorite memory of this game.

Mine is simple.

My roommate at Texas and I road tripped to the 1989 game. It was our first Texas-OU game.

Texas won on a pass from Peter “The Great” Gardere to Johnny Walker, right in front of the Texas student section end zone, in the game’s final minute.

The aftermath from that play was pure pandemonium. It was the first time I had ever experienced that at any sporting event.

It was so crazy, I literally don’t remember much of the next five minutes. Everybody was jumping on everyone else, high fives everywhere, students falling into other students, I got more than a few hugs from co-eds I didn’t know, etc. Like I said, it was pure pandemonium.

Yet perhaps what I remember more clearly (because it happened outside the fog of war) came on the Friday night before the game. And it’s how I came to understand the true essence of the rivalry even more.

My roommate and I, two 19-year olds, had just checked into a pretty low-rent hotel. It’s all we could afford.

We were wearing Texas gear. I think I had on my t-shirt of the boy in a Texas helmet pissing on the state of Oklahoma that was popular back then among students.

Well, as we go to the elevator bank to go up to our room, one of the elevator doors opens.

An older Sooner fan emerges. Just one guy.

He smells a little like a mix of liquor and booze and it’s only four p.m.

He looks directly at us, waves a small, white hand towel he was carrying right in front of our faces and yells, “I hope you boys brought your crying towels for tomorrow!”

We just looked at him, kind of stunned for the first half-second or so, before we hurled some insult in return.

My roommate and I are best friends to this day. And we still laugh about that moment. A 50- or 60-year old man accosting two students in a Howard Johnson for no other reason than the pure hate and rivalry of college football.

When I think about what I love about this rivalry, it’s moments like that. I’ll never forget that old Okie that drove home crying the next day.

Hook’em!