Perfect No More-- Oklahoma State Dominates Baylor 49-17

I don't have much to say about this game.  Everything I thought was true from the numbers and charts wasn't.  Oklahoma State out-coached and outplayed the Bears across the field, on both sides of the ball.  After turning it over early at the goal line, the offense never got on track as we expected going in, and the defense couldn't stop Oklahoma State's passing attack.  We turned the ball over three times, twice inside the five.  For OSU, Clint Chelf was simply transcendent, ripping us over and over again for big plays down the field.  When the game was still in doubt in the third quarter, the Cowboys scored 21 points in a row to put it out of reach.  Any characterization of this game as something other than a dominating effort by the Cowboys is just plain wrong.  They were the better team.

Basically every Baylor fan under the age of 40 is feeling an entirely new form of pain tonight: the pain of unmet expectations.  Buoyed by dominant performance after dominant performance, we talked ourselves into the idea of New Baylor: the belief that this time, the other shoe didn't have to drop.  We could, finally, hold our heads high as Baylor Bears.  For some, that's probably gone after losing by 32 in Stillwater.  To be honest, though, if you offered me this, the agony of having your teeth kicked in when you expect to compete, or what we were going through-- never having that expectation to begin with and still getting our teeth kicked in-- I take this.  I take this every single time. Because we have the coach we know can bring us to the mountaintop that we've given every possible resource to succeed.  Should we win out, we still have a chance for the best season in our program's history and a BCS bowl  New Baylor lives on.

How this game developed is something we'll talk about for months, if not years, to come.  All the hype videos in the world couldn't help us when we got on the field with an opponent that wasn't afraid of us in front of a crowd that knew they could have an impact and things didn't go as we expected.  It's incredibly disappointing to lose a game like this.  I am incredibly disappointed.  However, my belief in this program and team is unshaken.  The goal remains to be better a week from now against TCU than we are today, to use this as a learning experience for younger plays pushed into service because of injuries and older players looking for life beyond the Bears.  It's not like it could get much worse.

Oklahoma State deserves all the credit in the world for how this game turned out.  They performed extremely well in every facet of the game, exploiting our weaknesses to great effect and taking advantage of our constant missteps.  It wasn't because of injuries or playing in the cold, a fumble at the goal line or snap shot 30 yards down the field.  They were just better.  It was a horrible night in the midst of a great season.  I'm going to leave it at that.

OSU now holds The Belt.