Bedlam served with leftovers
The 2019 football schedules for Oklahoma and Oklahoma State were released Thursday and next year the Bedlam game will be moving back to the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Bedlam football will return to its end-of-season slot in 2019, the Big 12 announced Thursday with the release of the conference’s schedule for next season.
The move — the teams will play Nov. 30 in Stillwater —had been discussed for months, after the game last year was moved off what had become its usual slot on the Saturday after Thanksgiving or the first Saturday in December.
The idea at the time had been to avoid the teams playing back-to-back games against each other, meeting for a second time in the Big 12 Championship Game.
But over the offseason the conference’s coaches pushed to play the “best” schedule possible instead of worrying about such a rematch.
“If we want our league to be good and competitive, the odds of a repeat matchup are going to go up,” Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione told The Oklahoman this summer. “What we are aspiring is to make a stronger conference overall.”
And that led to Bedlam moving back to one of the spots where it was played every season from 20052016 and in all but two seasons from 1999 to last year.
This season, Oklahoma plays at West Virginia on Nov. 23, and Oklahoma State plays at TCU the next day.
Last season’s Bedlam game was played Nov. 4 in Stillwater, and this year’s game is scheduled Nov. 10 in Norman.