Oklahoma avenged its Red River Rivalry loss to Texas by beating the Horns in Saturday’s Big 12 Championship, 39-27. The Sooners won their fourth conference title in a row and probably locked up a spot in the College Football Playoff.
Oklahoma finally hit Texas with a big ol’ HORNS DOWN after the Big 12 Championship
The Sooners and Longhorns had been jawing pregame.
Immediately afterward, the HORNS DOWNS began flying. A lineman was doing it before the clock had even run out, when the game was already decided:
Then cornerback Tre Brown:
Sooners fans all across the world were HORNS DOWNSing, too. Many of them posted quickly on social media, like here:
And here:
And here:
Even Oklahoma recruits, playing in high school games in Texas, were doing it:
Amazing.
Oklahoma and its fans had been angling to hit Texas with some vicious sets of HORNS DOWN, but didn’t during the game for fear of penalties.
The Big 12, which appears to not care for its most powerful school getting lightly made fun of, has recently started calling the inverted Hook’em Horns hand sign a penalty. That’s despite there being nothing in the NCAA rulebook that requires it to be flagged.
Despite that, Herman’s public posture has been that Texas is a victim here.
“We’ve been disrespected for as long as that hand signal has been around,” he told reporters before the title game. “We’re kinda used to it.”
“We handled ourselves with class, many, many, many times when we were faced with opportunities when other teams weren’t handling themselves with class,” he added.
(It’s not clear if Herman was talking about the time he mocked Missouri’s QB on the sideline during last year’s bowl game, in response to that QB’s non-taunting celebrations earlier.)
Oklahoma fans wanted to see the Horns Down badly. They were putting it on T-shirts ...
... and hell yeah, they were putting it on billboards:
Actual Sooners players, obviously, would have loved to throw their own Horns Down during the game. But amid indications from the Big 12 that it would continue to penalize this harmless gesture, Riley said he’d told his team not to throw the Horns Down.
Meanwhile, Texas had road signage hype of its own, again referencing Herman’s response to fired Ohio State assistant Zach Smith trying to get Herman in trouble with his wife:
That wasn’t the only trash-talking going on pregame. Basically Oklahoma’s whole roster had beef with Texas’ QB.
In March, after former Oklahoma offensive tackle Orlando Brown had an awful NFL Combine that included just 14 bench reps, Horns QB Sam Ehlinger made fun of him on Twitter:
Baker Mayfield, who at this point was in his own draft-prep process, was asked about Ehlinger’s dig at Brown. Mayfield played high school ball at Texas powerhouse Lake Travis, a rival of Ehlinger’s Westlake, though the two QBs were a few years apart.
“He’s never beaten Lake Travis, and he also hasn’t beaten OU,” Mayfield replied. “I’ll leave it at that.”
A bunch of other Sooners took exception to Ehlinger’s dig, too.
That’s just a tiny sampling.
Days before the title game, a reporter asked Kyler Murray, “How much do you respect Sam’s game?” It was supposed to be an easy question for Murray to give a non-answer to ahead of a big game, but instead Murray laughed and said, “I got no comment on that.”
Murray might just not care for Ehlinger’s style of play. He might be mad about the dig at his former teammate Brown. He might still be mad about Ehlinger running up to him to shake his hand after the teams’ October game at the Cotton Bowl. I don’t know.
Ehlinger, pretty certainly replying to Murray, tweeted Texas’ 2018 rallying cry:
Speaking to reporters later, Ehlinger added:
One of Ehlinger’s teammates had multiple instances of beef with Murray.
“I guess ol’ boy don’t like losing,” Horns defensive end Charles Omenihu told reporters of Murray, referencing whatever the end-of-game episode with Ehlinger was in October. “His comment yesterday, I’m not surprised that he said that. If you know him or you know how he is, it’s not surprising. To be honest with you, I really don’t care. It’s funny to me, actually. I saw it and started laughing.”
Murray is an Oakland A’s draft pick who’ll go play baseball after this season. When Omenihu sacked him back at the Cotton Bowl, this is how he celebrated:
One of Texas’ senior captains had gotten himself a public reprimand from the Big 12 for saying Oklahoma a) sucked and b) had a bad defense (which was true).
These two Breckyn Hager remarks came after UT moved closer to an OU rematch by beating Iowa State back in Week 12:
1. “OU has no defense.”
A fair statement about a team that recently fired its defensive coordinator and has now followed that by giving up 524 yards and 40 points at home to Kansas.
2. “What time is it? It’s 11:12 ... and OU still sucks.”
A statement of opinion, but one that any good Texas student or fan would wholeheartedly believe. The two fanbases regularly tell each other “OU STILL SUCKS” and “TEXAS STILL SUCKS.” “It’s [some time] and [Oklahoma/Texas] still sucks!” is common phrasing.
The Big 12, which has strict rules barring anyone in the Big 12 from saying anything mean about anyone else in the Big 12 in public, issued a PUBLIC REPRIMAND. That’s what conferences do to players when they can’t fine them, because they don’t pay them despite generating millions in TV revenue. The league also made Hager apologize.
And Texas brought on Kansas’ fired coach as a pregame consultant, shortly after his Jayhawks hung 40 on the Sooners in Norman. This did not please Lincoln Riley.
Kansas fired David Beaty before it went to play Oklahoma. But Beaty was coaching out the string as part of his agreement with KU, and his team put up a shockingly good offensive performance against the Sooners. (Shocking because it’s Kansas, not because it’s Oklahoma.) So, Tom Herman wanted Beaty to pay the Longhorns a visit.
”Coach Beaty can do what he wants to do,” Riley said while the Beaty move was in the works. “I don’t like the precedent of it, of being able to bring in somebody from the league in the same year. I don’t think it’s good for the conference. But it’s not against the rules, so if they want to do it, that’s fine.”
Travel issues prevented Beaty from making the trip, so he helped by phone, ESPN reported. Beaty’s tight ends/fullbacks coach at KU was Garrett Riley, Lincoln’s younger brother.
Whatever Beaty offered must not have been that valuable.
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