As if last year wasn't heartbreaking enough: this year, all year long, the Sooners' motto was a single word: Finish.

9:03 PM: I don't plan to live-blog the second half. It's not sour grapes (though I'm sure I have several of them); it's just that sitting and typing is not normally how I watch a football game, and over the past two hours I've grown more and more restless about it. I want to be jumping up and down more, so I will in the 2nd half. I'll be on this game through the last play, no matter what. I supported the Sooners in 3-8 seasons, I can support them if they go 13-0 or 12-1.

Boomer Sooner.

9:02 PM: And how did we leave Reggie Bush completely open like that?

9:01 PM: A fourth OU turnover on this slippery field. Are we going to lose the national championship due to a wardrobe malfunction?

8:55 PM: Did he really catch that touchdown pass? I didn't think they caught the last one, but thought I might be using the stricter NFL standards. This is not pleasing me.

8:53 PM: The answer to the AFLAC trivia question was Chuck Long, OU's offensive coordinator, who holds the record for most touchdown passes in a bowl game. I was sure it was some USC quarterback.

8:49 PM: Field goal, OU. Mark Bradley is a great football player who's had a great OU career, but he's sure not having a great first half.

8:46 PM: Another big 3rd down play, but it still looked like a dangerous throw. We usually have the skill to pull those off. I think what Griese is saying about AD in on passing downs is right - as long as they know we're not going to throw to him, they know he's not in on passing plays. That's a big giveaway.

8:43 PM: 34-yard pass play on 3rd-and-10. That's more like what OU fans are used to seeing. If USC is going to stuff AD and the run so much, there have to be passing openings Jason White can pick apart.

Ouch - big sack - but at least Jason took the sack and didn't throw a lame-duck ball again. On replay, Jason looked like he thought he could outrun him. I doubt he makes that particular mistake again tonight.

8:40 PM: I thought that might be AD's first catch of the year, but they say it's his fourth. The announcers are right: USC is up by three touchdowns, created from three uncharacteristic OU turnovers. Without OU's fumbles, and everything else aside (like no imaginary "OU would have scored if they hadn't fumbled" constructs), this is a tie game. Not that mistakes don't count, but the teams are evenly matched right now.

Will OU have to wait until halftime to change cleats so receivers stop falling down? That doesn't seem right.

8:31 PM: Interception USC, back to OU's 10 yard line. Our guys are slipping and falling down, and theirs are not. The Sooners still won't panic, but they're starting to worry. The defense needs to make big plays without feeling panicked, and they're up to that.

I need to eat and root a bit harder, so I'll be back later.

8:23 PM Touchdown USC, again on the long strike on first down, something we should easily have expected. PAT makes it 21-7 USC, but OU has been down by 14 before this year. I guarantee you the Sooners aren't nearly as panicked as the announcers are on their behalf.

8:22 PM: Mmm, tasty microwaves. I wonder if ABC has all the camera positions they want. USC was on the 25 yard line or so, but ABC was shooting from the "B" position on the 50 yard line and not the "A" position on the 20 yard line. They did that in the first quarter, too. USC got a good first down on it.

8:18 PM: As soon as Matt Leinart nearly returns the favor with his own lame-duck pass under pressure, USC goes back to the ground game. OU will eventually adjust to them mixing it up, like on this next play where White only got two yards (instead of 15). I think USC also has to capitalize on this early stuff if they can, and they've done pretty well so far. Time-out OU. I need to nuke some food.

8:16 PM: USC intercepts Jason White's lame-duck pass. As soon as he threw it, I grimaced; he's got to throw those away out of bounds.

8:13 PM: Still at quarter break. I think OU has been behind this season more often than USC has, and isn't nearly as celebratory-emotional about the plays of the game. The energy USC is showing can really work for you, but if you make a few mistakes, that same energy can bring you down in a way that's very hard to overcome. As I write this, OU has scored a first down on the ground, and is just plugging away as they have all season.

I've never tried this before, so we'll see how it goes.

8:09 PM: End of Q1, 14-7 USC. Ooh, wait, 15 yard penalty after the play on USC, ouch. What did they do? Hopefully they'll show a replay in Q2. I'll open a new thread.

8:08 PM: I notice USC players celebrating their big plays a lot more than the OU players are. Hmm.

8:06 PM: Touchdown USC, a foregone conclusion. It's all but impossible to stop a top-five team at the goal line like that after a mistake. 14-7 USC, 0:17 Q1.

8:05 PM: Mark Bradley wouldn't have tried to pick that ball up unless he believed the USC player had touched it, but he was disastrously wrong. D-oh!

8:03 PM: They flipped it back on at the end of the 3rd down play, just as I was looking up a phone number to try to call. I really hope they get better at this stuff.

8:00 PM: Coming back from commercial, KOCO-DT forgot to flip the switch again; they're not broadcasting in HD. Apparently the broadcasters turn off the HD switch for the commercials, and then for some reason, they often forget to flip it back. The picture is of noticeably lower quality.

7:58 PM: Great open field tackle by Travis Wilson on Reggie Bush, and a great kick by Blake Ferguson. I wonder if USC will make the mistake all night long of not pressuring Blake. I hope so.

7:56 PM: Bob Griese is right that USC's defense is "being physical." They really tackled BJ and AD hard on these last two plays. Griese said, "Don't be surprised if some balls start popping out," but that's not been one of OU's weaknesses this season.

7:54 PM: Ouch - over at HDTVOK, one person reports that the HD feed of the local ABC station (KOCO-DT) is out for him. There seem to be lots of problems with HD broadcasts, though I've been mostly lucky. Even with an indoor antenna, I get all of the channels without much difficulty.

7:48 PM: Touchdown USC; penalty on PAT being discussed. I took a few minutes to re-sort this and put the newest stuff at the top, since it seems to make the most sense that way. False start on USC, but won't make much difference on a PAT.

This touchdown shows how dangerous USC can be - if OU only takes away the slant and the running game, the middle gets soft, and we just got burned twice there. USC is the #1 team in the country, and they're going to get good plays like that, just as we are. The trick is to keep them few and far-between. (PAT is good, tie game.)

7:46 PM: Delay of game, USC. When I've been to games in person, the referees are usually right on top of that 25-second game clock. On TV, it seems like the referees don't even notice until 2-3 seconds after it hits :00. Not sure why.

7:42 PM: TV time-out. With the new year and the 2005 BCS games, ABC Sports has implemented a new scoreboard "bug", in the upper left of standard definition pictures and the left center of HDTV pictures. It's wider than the previous one though not as tall, and it lists the scores side-by-side. It's a really bad design, because it's spatial and it doesn't necessarily match what's on the field.

For example, in this first quarter, OU is moving from left to right and USC from right to left, but the scoreboard bug has USC on the left (as the #1 team) and OU on the right. When one team gets a penalty, they'll slide the scores apart to show "FLAG" in the middle with an arrow that points to one team or the other - so if USC gets a penalty now, the arrow will point to the left even as the referee on the field points to the right.

It could work well enough, but if they want it to make any sense, they'll have to swap the team positions to match the line of scrimmage. If USC is on the right side as the camera sees them, USC's score should also be on the right. How can a network with so many insanely talented artists and game runners get that wrong?

7:37 PM: TOUCHDOWN OKLAHOMA! PAT is good. And the game is afoot!

7:36 PM: You bet he was out of bounds at the 7 yard line; he would not have let go of the ball that way otherwise. :-) Jason White threw that pass while jumping in the air, and as great a play as it was, he really shouldn't do that.

7:34 PM: USC will adjust to OU's offense, as their quick shutdown of Adrian "A.D." Petersen showed. If we can move the ball now, it's important that we capitalize on it. That completion across the 50 was a great example of using lots of weapons to keep them off-guard.

7:28 PM: Hmm, 28-yard gain, then 3-and-out (4th and 14). Better than I expected, though our out-of-bounds kickoff puts us behind in field position. I've never live-blogged anything before, so it'll take me a little bit to slow down.

7:26 PM: "28-yard gain on the first play of the game." Well, yeah - OU rarely dominates a good team on the first drive, though I expect some good defensive and offensive plays both. Like catching Reggie Bush behind the line on the second play.

7:22 PM: We won the coin toss, but we always defer if we do. Ooh, they have the Pride miked well, I hear Boomer quite clearly.

7:20 PM: HDTV reminds me that those Orange blazers that the Orange People wear really are that ugly. <shudder>

7:17 PM: Notice that we can't have either The Pride of Oklahoma or the Spirit of Troy playing the National Anthem because we have to leave it to Vacuous Recording Artistette #15b. She milks the ending so long that ABC misses the military fly-over, and she still didn't get up to the fifth on "free" in "land of the free."

7:12 PM: Ah, there they go, they got it after the first commercial break. Everything looks very nice.

7:02 PM: Oops, the first segment of the "Ford Pre-game Show" isn't in HDTV after all, though the canned intro was in HD. I hope they fix this.

O.J. Simpson, who will attend tonight's Orange Bowl game pitting his alma mater (USC) against OU, on OU's freshman running back Adrian Peterson:

He scares me to death.