Gundy frustrated with BCS title game
BY STEVE WIEBERG Gannett News Service
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
1/10/12 at 3:11 PM
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Original Print Headline: Gundy frustrated with title game
NEW ORLEANS - By halftime, Mike Gundy's frustration was welling.
The Alabama field goals, and most notably the empty LSU possessions, were piling up in the Superdome. The defenses were good, yes - playing fast, physical, big-boy football as LSU coach Les Miles is fond of calling it. But it looked like his offense was in a shell, keeping things conservative, challenging nobody down the field or on the corners.
Not the way Oklahoma State's coach would have played it. Or at least tried.
"We'd have thrown it 500 times," Gundy said from a hotel room more than 500 miles away, taking in Alabama's 21-0 victory in the Bowl Championship Series title game on television.
"I just think we could score. We'd use the vertical game. Use all 52 yards across the (width of the) field. Get people on the edges."
It's what carried OSU and the nation's second-highest scoring offense through a 12-1 season that Gundy and his players felt - and still do - merited them a place in Monday's game. Instead, they finished up a week earlier in the Fiesta Bowl, outgunning Andrew Luck and Stanford 41-38 in overtime.
Six times, the Cowboys piled up more than 50 points. Three times, they hit 60. Brandon Weeden, a 28-year-old senior and former New York Yankees baseball farmhand, was higher-rated than any passer either Alabama or LSU had seen in the more ground-based Southeastern Conference.
Could Weeden have sliced into either of the nation's two best defenses? Could his offensive line have given him the time?
"We'll never know," Gundy said.
Back in December, Gundy reminded his players that a national championship wasn't entirely out of Oklahoma State's reach. Alabama landed in Monday's game by the slimmest of margins, .0086 of a point over the Cowboys, and a Crimson Tide win over unbeaten, top-ranked LSU could open the door to a split title - a final No. 1 ranking in the Associated Press media poll.
That is, if it were ugly. Flukish. Controversial.
'Bama's dominant defensive performance was anything but that. When its offense tacked on the game's only touchdown in the fourth quarter, Gundy conceded, "That lessens our opportunity to sneak in.
"But I will say this," he went on. "I'll bet you there'll be a lot of people wish they'd given us a shot to see a different kind of game."
Associated Images:
OSU coach Mike Gundy says his team would not have had a problem scoring if it were in the BCS title game. MIKE SIMONS / Tulsa World
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