By Travis Bremner

Staff Writer

I had to work during the Texas-Oklahoma football game on Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t too unhappy with that simply because I signed up ESPN mobile text alerts for my cell phone and I get score updates after each quarter.

My brother, Adam, texts me at about 11:30 a.m. and says ‘Bradford is hurt.’ I had one thought come into my head: Sooner fans will have an excuse. Is it legitimate? To a degree. It’d be one thing if Bradford hadn’t gotten hurt against BYU and that was his first injury, but it wasn’t. And it wasn’t Landry Jones’ first appearance in a college football game.

Oklahoma fans are now declaring they would have won the game had quarterback Sam Bradford not been injured. 100% false, no one will know how the game would have played out had Bradford played the whole game. It’s a totally different game if he plays, the scores would be completely different and play calls would be different. Everything changes. Could they have won? Yes, but it’s not a foregone conclusion.

It’s interesting how people see things in sports, especially the media and how they make fans think certain things. In the SEC, Florida and LSU play to a 13-3 game in which Florida wins and no one is talking about how Florida didn’t get any style points or how their offense couldn’t put up anymore points. Nope, that’s just a good ole SEC defensive battle.

The Longhorns and Sooners play a 16-13 contest and the media is up in arms saying Texas isn’t good, they got lucky and their dropping in the polls. But why is this? My theory is that since the SEC conference is known for defense so it’s normal to have such low point totals. The Big 12 has made its name with offense, so when both teams account for less than 20 points, everyone automatically assumes there is something wrong with the Texas offense. These were two good defensive teams who played great and owned the offenses, it can happen in the Big 12 too.