A sluggish first half offense from No. 3 Oklahoma and a scrappy third down offense by Nebraska kept the rekindled rivalry that commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Game of the Century very close.
But in the end, defense ruled the day.
Tom Osborne and Barry Switzer are no doubt happy. Some things don’t change.
Such as an Oklahoma-Nebraska contest that kept everyone on the edge of their seats.
It seems bizarre to imagine a time when college sports did not include Black athletes. In my lifetime, I cannot remember a time when my team, the Oklahoma Sooners, did not have significant football players who were Black.
The first I remember as a young fan was the outstanding nose guard, Granville Liggins, who starred in the 1968 Orange Bowl victory over Tennessee – the first television broadcast of an OU game that I can remember watching.
(At the time Tennessee had not integrated its football team. Their first Black football player came a year after the Vols lost that night to Liggins and the Sooners 26-24. I did not realize OU was playing against an all-white team when I watched the game in our living room. I don’t believe I, at age 9, knew the significance of that).
Before kickoff Sooner fans clapped to the Tulane fight song being played by the Oklahoma band.
And when the Tulane team came onto the field the crowd — in attendance numbers reduced by the last minute moving of the game to Norman because of Hurricane Ida and no doubt also by COVID concerns — gave them a warm ovation.
Not a single boo was heard. Not even from the student section. That is something unheard of in recent memory.
But those fans began to wonder whether their charitable nature was being taken advantage of by the fourth quarter, when the Green Wave had the Sooners backs against the wall and it took a much-needed defensive stand to keep Tulane from upsetting No. 2 Oklahoma.