No. 7 Okla. St. rallies to beat No. 8 A&M 30-29

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Oklahoma State running back Joseph Randle said his Cowboys knew at halftime they were going to win Saturday — which is, of course, not true, but is the kind of thing athletes love to say.

There is a flaw in that narrative, and it is that Texas A&M knew it was going to win, too. The Aggies even had supporting evidence in the form of a 20-3 lead, which included advantages in yards running, yards passing, yards by penalty and third-down conversions.

Yet afterward, not only did Randle insist his teammates knew they were going to win, the look on his face when he was asked how they knew was the same one he might use if somebody asked how he knew he was human. His head actually jerked backward.

"You're in the wrong business if you think you aren't gonna win the game," the sophomore said.

Which is, of course, completely true.

No. 7 Oklahoma State (4-0, 1-0 Big 12) did beat No. 8 Texas A&M (2-1, 0-1) 30-29 at Kyle Field, effectively floating the keg at the Aggies' Big 12 going-away party.

In the final seconds, after the 87,000 Aggies in the stands had gone quiet for the first time all day, tucked away in a the farthest little corner of Kyle Field, a bunch of people in bright orange rather uncreatively chanted "Big 12," and watched the Cowboys run out the clock.

What, exactly, this all meant to those directly involved sort of depended on who you asked. Implicit in the Aggies' intended departure for the SEC next season is a message of superiority.

The thinking goes that the Aggies think the SEC is better than the Big 12, and therefore Texas A&M is better than Oklahoma State (and everybody else in the Big 12) for joining it. Or at least that's how you see it if you are (a) a member of a Big 12 school or (b) a rational person.

Oklahoma State resented that, and Cowboys coach Mike Gundy was glad to hear the chant.

"I mean," Gundy said, "you saw two teams playing in this league, and I didn't see anything wrong with either one of them."

It was the only game in the country this week involving two top-10 teams, a distinction that also made it one of the biggest games ever played at Kyle Field, if Top 25 polls are a measure of such things.

At the midnight yell practice the night before, former Aggies great Terrence Murphy took the microphone and reminded the 12th Man (the student section) what a difference it could make. He told a story about a play against Notre Dame, when he was a decoy running a deep pattern. They never threw him the ball on that play, and he wasn't looking for it. Until he heard the crowd gasp and turned around to make the catch. It was a momentous play in a big Aggies win. The point was that the crowd mattered.

The 12th Man knows this, and the 12th Man showed up Saturday.

"They helped us more than anything else," Aggies coach Mike Sherman said.

It was a crowd of 87,358 in a building that supposedly holds 83,002. It helped mostly in the first half, when Texas A&M was faster and … hotter.

For Oklahoma State, every snap was like pulling open a 500-degree oven. You think you're ready, and then the heat smacks you in the face. Against the furnace, the Cowboys had 32 rushing yards on 14 attempts. Quarterback Brandon Weeden was sacked twice. The Cowboys were 2-for-7 on third down.

Meanwhile, Texas A&M was doing everything it wanted. Quarterback Ryan Tannehill, who scored the Aggies' first touchdown on a 65-yard run, made all the right moves. Several times he sidestepped rushers and calmly completed passes. In the press box, NFL scouts scribbled in their notebooks. There were 13 of them there.

A 15-play, six-minute drive set up the Aggies for a 35-yard field goal with 1:51 left in the half, and everything seemed so clear. Texas A&M was better and, sorry Pokes, but Jerrod Johnson is not walking through that door.

This is what was so different about these Aggies. These were the Aggies of Tannehill, the Aggies of the end of last season, not the Aggies of Johnson, whose turnovers helped blow the game last year in Stillwater.

See, in the Aggies locker room, they knew they were going to win, too. So much so that defensive coordinator Tim DeRuyter thought they relaxed.

"I think possibly what our guys did was start to look at the scoreboard seeing we had a lead," he said. "I think subconsciously we weren't playing fanatically."

Gundy had a different theory.

"I thought we had a lot left in the fourth quarter," he said. "What this came down to was, I thought our team was in better physical condition by a long shot."

The Cowboys like to play fast anyway, and they got back to that in the second half, which A&M players admitted was problematic. Several started cramping.

By the fourth quarter, Tannehill had thrown two interceptions that Oklahoma State converted into touchdowns. The Cowboys took a 24-20 lead with 3:33 left in the third, and that was even after receiver Justin Blackmon fumbled what would have been a touchdown catch out of the end zone for a Texas A&M touchback.

A disastrous third quarter had swung the last meeting too.

"You definitely had a déjà vu feeling about how it turned out," DeRuyter said.

So maybe that's where Randle got it. There is no better predictor of the future, after all, than the past. So he knew.

"All we gotta do is get rollin'," he said. "For real."