With thirteen Big 12 championships over the last twenty years it would take up way too much time to pull a highlight from each one. Besides, some of those championships came at the hands of blowout wins over Colorado and Missouri and others were decided during the hiatus of the championship game. What we’ve done is narrowed down five moments that we believe are key moments in a championship game that will go down in Sooner lore as some of the all-time greatest moments. Are there some that we missed? Of course there are! Tell us about them in the comments section below!
#3 The Drive
The 2006 season wasn’t kind to Oklahoma. The Sooners dismissed starting quarterback Rhett Bomar less than a month before the season started and then during the season star running back Adrian Peterson went down with a broken collarbone in the game against Iowa State. Yet here the Sooners were, in Kansas City, facing longtime rival Nebraska for the shot at a fourth Big 12 championship in seven seasons.
Oklahoma jumped out to an early 14-0 lead over the Huskers in the first quarter. After Nebraska scored a touchdown in the second the game became a defensive stalemate with both offenses struggling heavily. OU set a Big 12 championship record with five forced turnovers and the Huskers stuffed Oklahoma’s running game.
Having lost the field position battle for most of the second half, Paul Thompson and the Oklahoma offense faced the possibility of a momentum swing in Nebraska’s way when they took the field for a fist and ten inside of their own one yard line.
The first two plays nearly ended in disaster for Oklahoma but what happened after that was some good Sooner Magic and what has gone down in Oklahoma Football history as, “The Drive”.
Going 99 yards on 11 plays, and capped by Thompson’s second touchdown pass to Malcolm Kelly in the game, the Sooners used the longest scoring drive in Big 12 championship history to seize momentum back to the Oklahoma bench and secure a 21-7 win.
“That was the drive of the year, without question. It was huge. Paul threw some great balls on that series, and we executed well and pounded it in. That was a big blow to them.”
Bob Stoops
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