Reddit’s OU Fan Base Is Confused About What To Be Mad About

It's been a few days since the OU Sooners fell to the Baylor Bears, and while it's been fairly quiet amongst the loudest fans, there's a trickle of traditional bandwagoning starting to breach the gates.

In the modern football era, Baylor has always sort of been just football fodder for the better teams in the Big 12 conference. When they and the other three big Texas teams were added to the Big 8 back in the mid-90s, Baylor was looking at it from a standpoint of "Sure, we'll take loss after loss for a cut of that broadcast money" and that's why losing to them makes for a very sore subject, especially in Norman.

If you're keeping count, of the 31 times OU has played Baylor, the Sooners have been victorious in 28 games. It wasn't until Baylor decided to break bad with the rules in the last decade to put together a real football team. 2011 was the year Baylor first found victory over OU, lead from the front with future NFL flame-out Robert Griffin III. Baylor has now found that victory twice more since then.

OU fans never take a Baylor loss very well. Even when OU was terrible in the late-80s and pretty much all of the 90s, regardless of the swinging door that was new coach after new coach, they still beat Baylor every year. After twenty years of winning, perhaps OU fans have just forgotten how to lose.

Sure, there are fans out there speaking about how this is a "down" year for the Sooners... but it's a hard pill to swallow with two so-called 5-Star quarterbacks and a handful of top-tier starters on the roster. Sadly, there are fans who straight up blame these young men.

Some fans continue the oldest OU tradition in the modern era, blame the coaches - which is perfectly acceptable, they're ultimately responsible - but there is a call for current coach Riley to kick rocks. This trend is a sore subject with the fan base too.

Some question those calling for coaches to be fired. So-called "true" OU fans are convinced those calling for a chopping block are fake fans and imposters looking to just ruffle feathers and perhaps pull OU off their game... but this is a trend that started long before the web connected the fan base to internet trolls.

From 1895 to 1988, while Sooner fans did have to endure the occasional loss and a season or two where they weren't playing at peak performance, OU was pretty much a powerhouse from the start. When Barry Switzer gave OU a handful of national championships they up and left for the NFL, the team fell into obscurity. They had trouble attracting good coaches... after all, who wants to be the guy that can't live up to Switzer?

In the 90's the Sooners were absolutely terrible. Poor coaching, mediocre recruiting, it all lent itself to an inevitable date with destiny. In a program that saw four head coaches in 31 years, OU hired their fourth coach in a decade in 1998 and we all know the story of Bob Stoops. Even still, as Stoops restored OU to the pinnacle of college football, fans still called for his resignation after every single loss throughout his 17 years with the program.

I don't think this nasty habit of shotgunning pink slips is due to a "poor" or "toxic" fan base. While I've probably said differently in the past, I now think this is often the opinion of the fans that endured the dumpster fire seasons in the 90s. Kill the coach, protect the team type of thing.

There's a smaller set of fans that are saying things like "OU just wasn't in it" and "How can you expect a stellar performance against a mediocre opponent?"

For those that remember, that's the exact same sentiment Alabama fans had after OU destroyed the Crimson Tide in the 2014 Sugar Bowl.

I don't think fans saying things like this have a leg to stand on.

There's a small subset of fans saying "Things will be different in the SEC when we finally have opponents worth getting hyped up to play..." I don't even know how to process something like that.

The best advice anyone will tell you is this... The sooner you understand OU will become the SEC's Baylor, at least for the first few years, the better off you'll be. It's time to lower those expectations.

You can't expect greatness to happen against some of the most physical and best teams in the league if you're continually nearly handed bad losses from unranked and underwhelming teams like Tulane, Kansas, Nebraska, and West Virginia.

This just isn't going to be OU's best year, especially considering the remaining schedule. Iowa State is always unpredictable. They're never really good, but they have this talent for wrecking good teams. A loss to them might cost OU a berth in the Big 12 conference championship game. Add in the Bedlam game with what looks to be a better OSU this year, Sooner fans might have to start prepping to buy their tickets to a very small and insignificant bowl game in December.

While we all have our own teams, I like to see Oklahoma teams do well. I sincerely wish OU the best of luck in repairing their season... but above all, Go Pokes!