Let me get one thing out of the way: I thought it was questionable, at best, for Bob stoops to have Sam Bradford in during OU’s final scoring drive of the Big 12 championship game Saturday. OU led 55-21 and any reasonable voter that held doubts about OU either already had them resolved, or wouldn’t have been swayed by five touchdowns in the final minute (despite Brent Musberger and Kirk Herbstreit claiming OU’s second-half performance wasn’t impressive after OU had the audacity to score only 10 points on its opening two possessions). Plus, Bradford played with an injury, albeit one that is presumed to be relatively minor. OU ran the ball, save for one play, and Joey Halzle could have handed off.

It was questionable, instead of simple bad taste, for two reasons: OU was trying to set a record (only team in modern era to score more than 60 points in five straight games). I think everybody, Gary Pinkel included, understood that it wasn’t all about style points.

Secondly, Sam’s trying to clam the Heisman Trophy. Despite stats that blow away everyone else’s, it seems likely that he’ll be overlooked next weekend. The debate on College Football Final was between Tebow and Colt McCoy. Seriously.

So, those two things were still on the table. Still, I’m not at all convinced that those things were worth keeping Bradford in and risking further injury to his hand, or some other fluky injury.

That, though leads me to address the perception that OU hs been running up the score to impress folks. Prior to the Mizzou and OSU games, OU had scored 48 fourth-quarter points. Now, I’ve addressed OU running up the score against Mizzou and, any reasonable person who watched Bedlam this year would agree that OU needed at least 17 of those 24 fourth-quarter points to seal the win. The last TD came on a halfback dive play, when OU was trying to run the clock, but a seam just opened. So I feel justified in leaving those two games out of the discussion for the moment.

So, OU had 48 fourth-quarter points in its first 11 games. 4.36 fourth-quarter points per game. That’s hardly the resume bullet point of a run-up-the-score expert.