Sooner Magic

I hope y’all are sitting down, cause I ain’t about to hold no punches. I’m not gonna be subtle about it. I gotta let everybody know right now.

Forget Clemson. Oklahoma is gonna win the national championship.

I wasn’t even mad when Michigan State won the Big Ten and jumped over OU for the No. 3 spot in the College Football Playoff rankings. I was happy. Because I wanted to play Clemson. I wanted revenge for what happened in the bowl game last year.

Listen, I’m a sore winner. When we win, ya’ll are gonna get tired of hearing from me. But I’m also a fair loser. And I’ll admit, last year, we didn’t just lose to Clemson. They took it to us. A 40-6 final in a bowl game? We got beat down. I don’t even know what OU team that was that went down there for that game. That team wasn’t playing Oklahoma football.

But now it’s time for payback.

Every year, in every sport, when a team makes a championship run, there’s always “that team” in the way. The team you got circled on your schedule like, Alright, if we’re gonna do this, we gotta go through them.

After what happened down in Orlando last year, Clemson is that team for us. And they’re gonna be that team we look back on after we win the whole thing and say, We got ‘em, that time.

Brent Venables is the defensive coordinator at Clemson now, but he was my defensive coordinator the whole time I was at Oklahoma. He was a mentor to me, and he always pushed me to go harder. He taught me to always out-prepare the opponent. I remember my first day on campus as a freshman, he came up to me and asked me what one of the defensive calls was. I was like, “What? I literally just got here. I haven’t even seen a play yet. I don’t know what’s going on …”

But he just looked at me and said, “It doesn’t matter. You gotta be ready.”

That’s who he is. That’s how he coaches. He’s so intense. I love Brent Venables.

But he’s got to go down, man.

Here’s how I see it: I don’t think there’s a defense in the nation — not even one coached by Brent Venables — that can hang with the Oklahoma offense for four quarters. We have too many weapons. Samaje Perine is an NFL-caliber running back. Joe Mixon is an NFL-caliber running back. Sterling Shepard is an NFL-caliber wide receiver on the outside.

And then you got Baker Mayfield.

The only thing you need to know about Baker Mayfield you can see on one play in the game against Oklahoma State. Joe Mixon took the handoff and ran into trouble, so he cut it back, and Baker took off upfield as the lead blocker. He literally ran over one DB and then kept running all the way down the field. After the 66-yard TD run, Baker was the first guy to meet Mixon in the end zone to celebrate. It was ridiculous.

When you have a guy playing quarterback who plays that hard — laying guys out and sprinting all the way down the field looking for more — that’s gonna be a tough team to beat.

And on the other side of the ball, I believe our defense is good enough to hold up against the best offenses in the nation.

What’s that? You got a Heisman Trophy finalist at quarterback? You’re the No. 1 team in the nation? You’re undefeated? So what? You still gotta see OU, and we took on three of the top four offenses in the nation this year in Texas Tech, Baylor and TCU, and we came out on top. Yeah, we lost to Texas. But that’s one of the biggest rivalries in college football history, and in those games, anything can happen. We slipped up. But I’m not even worried about that. Like I said, I’m a fair loser. I made a bet on that Texas game, and when we lost, I took my lumps and took it like a man.

But that won’t be the case this time around. Because when it comes to the playoffs, it’s all about who’s playing the best football down the stretch. And we’re coming off a dominating win at Oklahoma State — another rivalry game — and three straight wins over ranked opponents.

Clemson barely even beat South Carolina (who lost to The Citadel!), and they were one terrible offsides call away from probably losing to North Carolina in the ACC Championship Game.

It’s about who’s playing the best ball right now, and that’s OU. With the momentum we have, I just don’t see us losing.

Listen. Clemson put a beating on us last year. But we got something for them. We call it “Sooner Magic,” and we’re gonna ride it all the way to the national championship. I know OU has this stigma of not being able to win in bowl games, but you’ll see. We’re gonna shock everybody.

I’d just like to thank Clemson ahead of time for giving us a live scrimmage before the national championship.