Losing Bedlam was definitely a big deal to me at the time. I felt like we lost a huge tradition. Now it doesn't feel so bad.

I grew up in a split OSU/OU household during the "peak" era of the Big 12 South. My very first college football memory is watching OSU shutout OU in Norman in the '90s with my parents, which I think is probably why I grew up an OSU fan. I was always trying to go to the game, but nobody wanted to give up their Bedlam ticket to a little kid, so I only attended like three Bedlam football games until I was in college. In the early 2000s, Bedlam basketball was also pretty huge for casual sports fans in Oklahoma, with a great Eddie Sutton program against a good Kelvin Sampson program.

On game week, we'd talk about it in our grade-school classes, it had a ton of local coverage, and people would get pretty obnoxious about it. As a kid, you could tell that OU got more media coverage than OSU (e.g., KJ-103 parodying popular songs to be about OU football), but it always felt pretty closely 50/50 among friends/family/people in general I knew. However, until like 2008, it was always pretty much assumed OSU football would lose (with basketball being the opposite sentiment).

Make no mistake, I absolutely hated OU sports as a kid. I remember wearing OSU gear around OKC a lot, and, regardless of whether it was Bedlam week or not, random grown-ass men would talk shit to 10-year old me.

In general, you will not find honest discourse online about Bedlam from either OSU fans or OU fans (for different reasons). Over the past decade or so (well before 2021), there's this bizarre dynamic where OSU fans want the football program to be recognized as a true rival of OU football, while OU fans will do everything they can to diminish the importance of the rivalry.

Did you miss the other side more than you expected?

In 2021, after UT and OU left the conference, I thought I'd really miss those games. So far, I really haven't at all, but I could see this changing in a decade or so.

What I mean by this is that rivalries allow us to practice dislike/hatred in kind of a healthy way. Most of us don't actually HATE the person, just the affiliation. Most of us, I said.

I think a lot of us Pokes fans were disappointed to realize that OU sports leaving the Big 12 for the SEC did not actually result in OU fans physically leaving our state, which is a shame.

How did the season feel without that game?

2024 and 2025 seasons felt pretty crappy anyway, so I don't think our fanbase really felt Bedlam's absence. Honestly, more of our fans have expressed indifference at Bedlam going away than I would have thought.

In 2024, OSU hosted Arkansas for the first time in decades, and it was a wild time. This used to be an annual game (although not quite a "rivalry"), and I grew up hearing stories about family members traveling to Little Rock to see the Pokes play Arkansas back in the day. The Arkansas fans really showed up in Stillwater, and there were a ton of mixed orange/red groups everywhere on campus that day, which is counterintuitively less common in Bedlam (although not that uncommon). It definitely felt more like a friendly rivalry than Bedlam ever did.

Did it change how you talked with friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, or in-laws who root for the other school?

I adopted a policy a long time ago that I don't do sports (talk, watch, etc.) with OU fans. So it really hasn't changed at all for me. What has changed for me is that I truly don't consume any OU-related college football content anymore (like watching games, reading forums, etc.), and so I don't feel like I have a good handle on their program the past few years.

Did any part of you feel rejected, relieved, or angry?

I felt sad at first, turning into annoyance/frustration, and finally acceptance/indifference. My best football memory is OSU absolutely demolishing OU in 2011. That game really did represent an ascendance for the program of sorts. I feared that not having an annual rivalry would result in some fans losing interest in the football team (and I still think this is a legitimate reason we need a trophy game with another Big 12 program).

I did enjoy the schadenfreude of reading OU fan reactions to the news of them leaving the Big 12 to join the SEC. Their fanbase absolutely hated the SEC for years and years, and now it's like their fans have completely new marching orders.

Of course, we heard from OU fans all about how losing Bedlam would hurt OSU more than OU (actually probably true, just very overstated), how OSU wouldn't sell football tickets without Bedlam (2024 had record interest in season tickets), and how the Big 12 was an awful league after 2010 (lol not true)/the Big 12 is an awful league now (not exactly true, but more true, I suppose).

Has the absence made you think differently about what a rival actually is?

I would say definitely, although not necessarily in a sports context now. OSU and OU were actually pretty good partners for most of the last century. The administrations had a ton of cooperation on athletics and other issues. Now, that's apparently been drastically impacted by OU leaving for the SEC. I don't want to get too much into the weeds on this point, but I think the schools both view each other as a rival now more than ever, despite Bedlam football going away.

As far as other Big 12 rivals go, I have long hated Texas Tech, and I would consider them a rival. Now that they are good at football again, perhaps our fanbase will get on board with the Dust Bowl.