That 2004 loss was the lowest I'd ever felt after a TX/OU game. I felt so sick and empty. It was utterly desolate.
If we lose on Saturday, I won't feel as bad as I did in 2004 because I know that this year we will have the opportunity to rematch the fuckers and likely make the playoff anyway. In all likelihood, we will have to play them twice this year regardless. This game is still everything, and our team will treat it as such. But beating them in the cotton bowl is not the end of the story this year, as far as us playing OU is concerned.
I don't know what to think about this game. OU has a good schematic offense, but the defenses that they have played against so far are not in the same stratosphere as what they will see from us on Saturday. So their usual tricks won't find near as much success against us. But they are definitely high on themselves and believing that they are better than we are. I get the sense that they will experience a rude awakening on Saturday... but it's a heated rivalry game so who the fuck really knows at the end of the day.
I view this game as kind of the reverse situation of 2011 or 2012... in both of those seasons we had good starts to the year (eg, some dominant wins and media hype) and we rolled into Dallas against a higher ranked OU team believing that we were going to pull the upset because we were pretty good too. In both years, we got our asses completely handed to us, and our hopes and dreams for the season came quickly crashing down. That could be the fate of this OU team after Saturday. I think they still have a ways to go to being elite status again, but I think that Texas is already there (finally). We lost 55-14 and 63-21, respectively in 2011 and 2012. Let's just say that we "flip the script" this time, to borrow a phrase that Brent Venables has really tried popularizing this week about his team.
Texas 52
OU 21
Texas rushes for 238.