Final home games
Fans get ready to say goodbye to seniors when OU, OSU play their final regular-season game.
BNORMAN — aker Mayfield’s name will be called Saturday during Senior Day introductions, and the roar will be like none other ever heard in the old stadium on Jenkins Avenue. The cheers for Mayfield were going to be deafening anyway. Now they will rival jet cars at the dragstrip.
A fan base half disappointed in Mayfield and half angered at the treatment Mayfield endured in Lawrence, Kansas, is wholly devoted to the quarterback straight out of a Mark Twain novel. And they will let Tom Sawyer know it, even on a day when another Sooner will take OU’s first snap.
“Even without all this,” Mayfield said of the firestorm that resulted from Lawrence, “it was gonna be an emotional one and hard to handle. It being my last one here — ever — it means a lot more. It's gonna be tough.”
Thus the Mayfield dilemma. The most emotional quarterback God ever made is in temporary shackles because he got overemotional at KU, and now he faces his most emotional game ever, saying goodbye to Owen Field.
Mayfield won’t start and won’t be the OU captain Saturday when the Sooners host West Virginia. Kyler Murray will start, and if he plays more than a series or two, Murray and the Sooners can show the College Football Playoff committee that a team doesn’t have to melt just because it plays part of a game without its quarterback.
But when Mayfield trots out to join the OU offense — my money is on the second possession of the game, to another thunderous ovation — hopefully he’ll be the same quarterback as always. Still wired tight. Just a little less combustible. “I want him to be himself and I told him that,” Lincoln Riley said after announcing Mayfield’s
penalties for obscene gestures directed toward the Jayhawks after an OU touchdown last week. “The best thing about him is that he is himself. We’ve all got to stay true to ourselves. If we’re not that, we’re not anything, but we’ve all got to try to make ourselves better, and I think there’s a big difference between the two.”
Baker Being Baker is nothing new around Soonerland. When he talks trash in pregame or plants a flag at Ohio State or doesn’t run out of bounds when the game’s been decided against TCU, you just shrug and know that’s how Mayfield rolls. But what happened at Kansas was out of bounds, and Mayfield knows it.
“I can only move forward and show people that’s not what I want to be like and it’s not what I aspire to be,” Mayfield said this week. “The tricky part is I’m a competitive, emotional guy and I don’t want to not be that person. But there’s a better way to handle everything. What I did crossed the line.
“There’s a fine line with having acceptable actions and what I did on Saturday. It’s tricky ... It’s really not that hard, but it’s tricky because I do want to get my guys going and be that leader for them. I know they thrive off the energy and the passion. There’s a fine line. From here going forward, it’s hard for me to say that I’m going to be that same guy. But I have to be the leader they need and I have been for them. I let them down with my actions, but I have to be there for them.”
Kansas provided a blueprint for how to get in Mayfield’s head. From the pregame handshake snub to Hasan Defense’s cheap shot, the Jayhawks sent Mayfield beyond the pale. The Sooners didn’t have one of their better offensive games, and opponents now know that had Kansas pushed just
a little more, they might have gotten Mayfield to do something that could have got him ejected.
And Mayfield knows all this. He’s mentally prepared himself for the next time a game goes from chippy to absurd. He just knows that he can’t let that preparation inhibit the quarterbacking style that has made him one of the all-time greats.
“Like I said, I can always handle myself better,” Mayfield said. “I obviously know that it’s all eyes on me and so, I’ll handle myself better. Whenever I get my chance to play, I’ll be ready.”
Odds are strong that Mayfield will play well — when has he not? — and that the Sooners remain on track for the College Football Playoff. And then something arrives tougher than Baker Being Baker in the wake of KU. Leaving Owen Field in shoulder pads for the final time.
“I’m going to miss it,” said the man of emotions.