#73 Tulsa

Tulsa, OK

Chapman Stadium

September 14, 2024

Oklahoma St 45 - Tulsa 10 (ESPN Recap)

Seeing two in-state rivals play while one is a Top 15 ranked program with CFP aspirations is a good way to check off a Group of 5 stadium. Stephen and I scheduled this game about ~6 years ago when the home and home was announced, and seriously committed to it 4 years ago.

The game was played in Tulsa, which is the 2nd largest city in Oklahoma (pop 400,000). Oklahoma State is located in Stillwater which is 70 miles west of Tulsa on the 412 turnpike and has a population of 50,000. However, the Pokes turned the quaint Tulsa stadium that holds 30,000 into a Stillwater homecoming,

filling it with 80% orange faithful.

We don’t know if it is an every home game occurrence, but Tulsa had some serious booster money involved in a massive free tailgate of kid activities, free food, free bottled water, and an A-list country music live performer Kylie Morgan.

Stephen further gains separation at the top of the leaderboard of games attended, now at 14. This Turnpike Classic was one-sided with the team everyone was rooting for jumping out to a 28-0 halftime lead and 45-0 overall lead before the 3rd stringers conceded 10 late points. I was excited to see preseason 1st team All-American RB Ollie Gordon, but Tulsa was committed to 7-8 in the box every play, allowing their secondary to get absolutely torched all game (294 yards and 4 TDs through the air in the first half alone for guns up Bowman). The OSU receivers were getting ~15 feet open most plays against man coverage with no safety help.

Okie St easily covered the -10.5 1H and -17 game while showing they have talent on both sides of the ball.

The best play in the game was when Tulsa had the ball on their own 22 with a winding game clock, one timeout left, and was facing 4th and 1. They raced up the ball as if they were going to snap quickly, but then did a bunch of hard counts to try and draw OSU offsides…while also wasting the clock they were giving OSU to work with. The Pokes fans were frantically yelling “Call Timeout Mike!” but Coach Gundy didn’t budge. As the play clock slipped under 5 seconds, the DLine eased up and it looked like Tulsa was going to use their final TO and punt. With 1 second left on the play clock, they did not call timeout but rather snapped the ball from their own 21 and jammed a RB Draw to the left against a very unsuspecting defense, resulting in their best running play of the game for 17 yards. It was incredible.

(#PublicKillers during a time out)

Other highlights from the game included a dangerous close-range t-shirt cannon, a timeout contest where the school mascots were throwing rubber chickens to contestants who were trying to catch them in a basket while dressed as chickens, hearing the Ok St band play “Look Down” from the Les Misérables soundtrack about 25 times, and for the second consecutive week having a video board emphasis on AC/DC’s Thunderstruck song…though in Lincoln it was a lights off hype song between Q3 and Q4, and in Tulsa it was modified so that the beginning whispers of “Thunder” were creepily changed to “Tulsa.” (Unfortunately, I only was able to catch the last of about 10 consecutive insertions in this video).

Friday night, we did a pop-a-shot, cornhole, bowling, pinball, skee-ball grand prix with Sean, and post game on Saturday hit the casino for far too many hours late into the night.