How Oklahoma Players Prepare Newcomers for Red River Rivalry, an Experience Like No Other

Every Oklahoma player who was asked simply struggled to find the words to describe the Red River Rivalry at the Cotton Bowl. 

The Sooners will travel down to Dallas to play Texas at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at the usual spot in the epicenter of The State Fair of Texas. The teams will bus through a state fair crowd, rather than a college campus. One half of the stadium will be as homey as Norman, while the other is as hostile as Austin. 

“Embrace it,” OU linebacker Kobie McKinzie said. “You can’t really explain that. We’ve all been there for that game. From the moment you literally drive in the fairgrounds it’s like no other game. It’s not comparable. But enjoy it at the same time. These are the moments that you’re going to remember for the rest of your life.” 

The Longhorns currently sit at the top of college football, while OU is ranked 18th in the AP Poll. But even during a season in which Texas won the Big 12 title and made the final four-team College Football Playoff, the Sooners still got the best of the Longhorns thanks to a goal line stand. 

“The very end, the fourth-down stop, fourth-and-inches, that was really fun,” OU defensive end Trace Ford remembers a year later. “That was one of the coolest things I got to experience, just how loud that stadium got. Just the whole atmosphere after the game, walking around. The whole experience was nothing like I’ve ever experienced before. It was really fun.”

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Last season was Ford’s first experience in the Red River Rivalry. As an Oklahoma State transfer, he has been on both sides of Bedlam. From nearby Edmond, OK, he grew up watching OU and Texas clash from the comfort of home. But still, nothing prepared him for actually being there – no other rivalry, no amount of viewing from afar. 

Ford understands now, though, but many others throughout OU’s locker room do not. Maybe they also grew up watching the game on TV or played in rivalry games at their old schools, but not like this one. 

The Sooners nearly overhauled their roster with transfers and freshmen for the 2024 season. Michael Hawkins Jr. will become the first true freshman to ever start at QB in the Red River Rivalry for the Sooners. On defense, Ford will be alongside eight guys on the defensive line alone projected to make their Red River debut Saturday, including Miami (OH) transfer Caiden Woullard. 

“He’s been asking, and I didn’t understand the spectrum of the game until last year,” Ford said. “I watched that game growing up my whole life, and I told him the same thing. You got to experience it. It’s incredible. It’s fun, and he’s got to experience it. But you know he’s confident. He’s ready. I know he’s going to do really well this Saturday.”

Said defensive back Robert Spears-Jennings: “This’ll probably be the biggest rivalry you’ll ever play in in your life, but it is just another game, but it is a cool experience. Just soak it all in.”

On a Thursday afternoon, and even most Saturdays, there’s nothing special about the Cotton Bowl. Most of the time, it’s a dormant cement structure in the center of the quietfairgrounds. It makes for a longer walk from the Fletcher’s Corny Dog stand to Big Tex. There’s nothing special enough about the venue itself for regular tours or to even keep hosting its own bowl game. But for one Saturday every October, when the Sooners and Longhorns are visiting for the Red River Rivalry, it’s a spectacle you cannot comprehend until experienced. 

“I like it, to be honest with you,” McKinizie said. “I love it. Because everybody’s right there. There’s nowhere to go, I feel like. It’s all inclusive. Everybody gets the same experience, ’cause it’s only one experience of the Red River, you know?”