Dave Campbell recaps Baylor's first win over Oklahoma in Norman.

Will wonders never cease?

This was a football game played in Norman, Okla., at the Oklahoma Sooners' Memorial Stadium, with 85,048 football fans, almost all of them avid Sooner fans, in their seats for the game's opening kickoff.

And most of them had come fully expecting a Sooner victory. After all, Oklahoma had never lost a football game to Baylor in Norman — never in history, never in Sooner territory in 11 previous encounters there, never in 20 previous games whether in Norman, never even in Waco going back to 1901 and coming forward to 2011. 

And never, never in that team's football citadel when the professional handicappers — you know, those know-it-alls who tell all of us who is going to win and lose, have they told us the Sooners would win by at least six points, and then get crushed.

No, instead of winning by six the favorites lost by 34. Lost for the first time in football in that part of the world to Baylor. Lost after grabbing a 14-3 lead. Lost after the Bears had replied to that 14-3 Sooner upper hand by scoring a whopping 45 straight points.

Yes, won in such awe-inspiring manner that with 8:18 left in the THIRD quarter, Sooner fans started booing their own favorites. For much of the fourth quarter it got pretty quiet in Oklahoma's Memorial Stadium. Quiet because by then Sooner fans were leaving in droves.

So again, will wonders never cease?

Well, maybe this wasn't such a wonder after all.

Maybe this was a case of Baylor having the better football team and going to Norman to prove it. Maybe Norman and the special circumstances simply brought out the very best in the Bears, the special circumstances being a matter of the Bears having to win or see their chances of successfully defending their Big XII 2013 football championship fly out the nearest window.

And on Saturday afternoon, Nov. 8, their best was a full-blown knockout.

Now the Bears are 8-1 for the season and 5-1 in conference play, and their championship hopes are still very much alive. Now if they win their remaining games against these three opponents (Oklahoma State in Waco, Texas Tech at Arlington in that huge AT&T Stadium, and finally Kansas State in Waco) they will do no worse than tie for the championship.

And the team they would tie would be TCU. And of course you remember how that Oct. 11 Baylor-TCU game turned out. Baylor won with a miracle comeback, 61-58.

So while the season still has a month to go (Baylor's last game is Dec. 6 against K-State) and much could still happen (example: Texas A&M upset heavily-favored Auburn in Auburn's own stadium last Saturday), the Bears' trump card is that victory over TCU in a head-to-head matchup.

The Dallas Morning News sports columnist Tim Cowlishaw wrote this after seeing TCU dust off Kansas State in Fort Worth: "Was there anything TCU could do that would offset Baylor's surprising 48-14 dismantling of the Sooners in Oklahoma Saturday afternoon?" And he goes on to write that it's going to be tough for the (playoff) Committee to look the other way and cite non-conference strength. . ."You have to think head-to-head competition will be considered first and foremost," he wrote.

Yes, and remember this: TCU beat Oklahoma by 4 points (37-33) in Fort Worth. Baylor beat Oklahoma by 44 (48-14) in Norman. 

Well, all that now is history and mostly speculation.

What follows is the unvarnished truth: In the latest AP poll, TCU is rated No. 5, Baylor No. 6, both behind No. 1 Miss. State, No 2. Florida State, No. 3 Oregon and No. 4 Alabama. In the coaches poll, the top 6 are the same except Alabama is No. 3 and Oregon No. 4. Kansas State is No. 13 in both polls. Oklahoma is No. 24 in the coaches poll but is unranked in the AP. That 34-point loss to Baylor in Norman really did sting the Sooners in more ways than one.

There were several story lines to come out of Baylor's victory that should not be overlooked. 

One centers on Baylor's senior middle linebacker Bryce Hager (6-2, 235), a two-time All Big XII selection and an All-America candidate this season. It was Hager who made a huge game-turning play last Saturday, an interception that he returned 36 yards to the OU 1-yard line early in the second quarter and it came at a time when Oklahoma seemed to be safely in control of everything (leading at the time, 14-10, and after the Sooners had scored touchdowns on their two previous possessions).

Devin Chafin scored on Baylor's first play after the interception and OU never came close to recovering. It was as if Hagers' interception had punctured a dam and the water came roaring out.

Hager had a terrific game (10 tackles, 7 of them solo) but it was that interception that turned the game wrong-side-out for the Sooners. And here's the thing: Hager is a terrific linebacker and defensive signal caller, and he is also the son of Britt Hager, a UT All-American (1988) and then a Philadelphia Eagles star. So while UT couldn't beat OU this season in Dallas, the son of one of their great former players could and did do so in Norman.

Another story line: This has not been the best of all seasons for BU quarterback Bryce Petty. The tall (6-3, 230), likeable, outspoken Petty began the season as a Heisman candidate and then in BU's first game he suffered a back injury that sidelined him for the next game. Then came a series of good and not-so-good performances, but highlighted by a brilliant, game-winning, fourth-quarter performance against TCU. Could any college QB have been better in that decisive 15-minutes of play? I doubt it.

But in what all along was going to be Baylor's biggest game of the season (remember, OU and not Baylor was the preseason conference title favorite), Petty's focus was unrestrained. To all questions leading up to the showdown in Norman, Petty had a 4-word reply: "Just ready for OU."

Boy, was he ready. With the scoreboard showing OU ahead, 14-3, Petty completed a whopping 18 straight passes against an OU defense that prides itself on defense. OU had been giving up 383 yards per game. Baylor finished with 544. OU's red zone defense had surrendered a total of 11 touchdowns in the team's eight previous games. Baylor scored six in that one game. That was Petty engineering at its best.

That also was Petty and several other Baylor players who huddled with several Sooner players late in the game after OU quarterback Trevor Knight had been injured while attempting to pass and offered a prayer for his early recovery. I thought it to be a great show of sportsmanship in the heat of battle for all of them to do that.

Still another story line: sophomore Corey Coleman caught a total of 15 passes for 234 yards and one TD, the second biggest game foe a receiver in Baylor history. Apparently he thought he had some lost time to make up since he had zero catches last year in Baylor's victory over OU in Waco.

It was Coleman who scored Baylor's first touchdown on a 33-yard pass from Petty. Later in the game he caught a 48-yarder. It was Coleman who caught so many of those little quick screens and quick outs near the sideline that kept BU scoring drives alive. He also turned ball carrier twice for a net of 7 yards while keeping OU's defense befuddled. 

Simply put, it was a game he will never forget even if he goes on after another two years at BU and has a fabulous career in the NFL.

Finally, it was a super, super performance turned in by both the Baylor offensive line and the entire defense. Petty was sacked only twice in his 42 pass attempts, and it was mainly the offensive line that cleared the way for the Bears to rush for a net 148 yards against a defense that had been surrendering only 118.

And the overall Baylor defense held OU's strike force to its lowest score of the season; indeed, the lowest score since the Bears held them to 12 points last season. And it was the lowest score any opponent has scored on them in a conference game since Texas A&M hung 51 points on them in 1997 and that was before Bob Stoops became the Sooners' head coach and before A&M moved off to the SEC.

Hager was the leader of that defense but Terrell Burt and Taylor Young were both credited with seven sacks, Orion Stewart with 6, and K.J. Smith, Beau Blackshear, Xavion Howard and Grant Campbell all had a hand in throwing Sooners for losses.

Here is what a few Oklahoma sportswriters wrote after the game and on the following Monday:

This was in the Daily Oklahoman: "After the game, Sooner defensive coordinator Mike Stoops said the Sooners should've taken their chances playing closer to receivers. 'Being able to play tight coverage is something you have to be good at and is something we obviously need to look at. We have to give our players better positions and put them in competitive situations.' "

Said the Sooner head coach Bob Stoops: "We were blitzing with playing man and then we sat back and played zone. They just executed it going down the field. We missed some tackles. There weren't any breakdowns. There weren't any missed coverages. And they beat us a few times."

Mike Stoops is Bob's little brother and both are graduates of the University of Iowa and while there, both were star football players for the Hawkeyes. And that was when the Iowa head football coach was Hayden Fry, who once was an all-state quarterback at Odessa and then a quarterback for BU and later an assistant coach at BU for John Bridgers. 

Interesting, isn't it, what small circles the world can sometimes move.

More from an Oklahoma scribe: "You know what the Bears' dismantling of OU looked like? OU's dismantling of the Bears over the first decade of Bob Stoops' tenure," wrote Guerin Emig of the Tulsa World. "It was startling to see Baylor shake off an uneven start, gather itself and just steamroll the Sooners for 45 unanswered points. The ease with which Bryce Petty carve up OU on that first touchdown drive of the second half? The Sooners used to do that to Baylor."

Here are a few of the finer statistical points that have not yet been mentioned.

Baylor led in time of possession by a whopping number, 35:23 to OU's 23:47, and I never thought in my 89 years that I'd ever see that Baylor was 7-for-7 on red zone scoring chances in Norman. More history being made.

Shock Linwood had 87 yards on 23 rushes and was never thrown for a loss.

He also scored two touchdowns. Devin Chafin rushed for 35 yards and also scored twice. Johnny Jefferson rushed but four times and gained 19 yards, and Seth Russell, BU's QB for next year, rushed three times for 14 yards and completed his only pass for nine yards.

BU's Chris Callahan was accurate on two field goals and was true on all six of his TDs — more things for the Bears to remember. And all those Bears whose names I've mentioned will be back next year except Petty and Hager.

So now the Bears get to rest and let their aches, pains and bruises ease or heal up while the team enjoys the open date that comes next on the schedule.

It comes at a good time, offering them ample opportunity to get primed for the remaining trio of opponents left on their schedule (Oklahoma State, spoiler of Baylor's unblemished record last year before the game in Stillwater, on Nov. 22 in Waco); then Texas Tech at AT&T Stadium in Arlington on Nov. 29; and finally Kansas State in Waco on Dec. 6.

With that open date coming up, Briles will not hold his usual Monday press conference next week. And as a result, I will not be reporting to you until after Briles' press conference the following Monday. That will give Baylor fans ample time to fully digest the amazing things that happened in Norman, Okla. last Saturday.