Cotton Bowl Game Book: So much disrespect

Motivated by trash talk from a Florida backup and so much more, the Sooners were driven to prove a point against the Gators in the Cotton Bowl

John E. Hoover | Dec 31, 2020

Cotton Bowl Game Book: So much disrespect /

When James Houston said Oklahoma was not on Florida’s level, he wasn’t wrong.

The Cotton Bowl score of 55-20 suggests that these two teams were indeed on different levels.

“They’re not on our level,” Houston said last week. “They’re not SEC. They’re not the Florida Gators.”

After the game, OU defensive lineman Isaiah Thomas agreed with Houston.

“Florida, they were a good matchup,” Thomas smiled. “But they aren’t the Big 12. They are not the Oklahoma Sooners.”

To be fair, Florida’s backup linebacker might have been still a bit stuck on how close the Gators came just a few days earlier to reaching the standard in all of college football: a 52-46 loss in the SEC Championship Game to unanimous No. 1 Alabama.

And to be fair, eight Gators starters missing Wednesday night probably had more than a little impact on the final score.

But Oklahoma went into the game motivated by Houston’s trash talk.

“Yeah, the disrespect, it is what it is,” said running back Rhamondre Stevenson, who ran for 186 yards. “We have to go out there and just talk with our pads, at the end of the day, and I think we did that well tonight.”

Even understated captain Creed Humphrey described how disrespected the Sooners felt.

“We try not to focus on things outside of what we're doing in our facilities,” Humphrey said. “But when you see something like that, of course it gives you a little extra edge. So we were definitely excited to come out here and show up and show them what we were about.”

Quarterback Spencer Rattler wore his emotion on his sleeve after his rushing touchdown put the Sooners up 31-13 just before halftime. He was clearly cranked up.

“I would be lying if I said we didn't see what our opponent, player, whatever, said,” Rattler said. “But we went out there, did our job, executed, and focused on what we had to do as a group. And we came out on top.”

“Yeah,” said wideout Marvin Mims, “it definitely fueled the fire a little bit. But at the end of the day, we went out there, we did our job, and we executed.”

Published Dec 31, 2020

JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.