Why the Sooners lost...

Because defensively they performed as well (or as poorly) as they have all season. At least from a scoring standpoint.

Season Avg. PPG Allowed: 24.5

Tonight, Points allowed: 24

Looking at the yardage we see where Oklahoma was much more vulnerable than during the season:

Season Avg. YPG allowed: 359.1

Tonight, Yards allowed: 479

Season Pass YPG: 253.1

Tonight, Pass Yards allowed: 232

Season Rush YPG allowed: 106

Tonight, Rush Yards allowed: 247

Obviously the Gators ran roughshod over the Sooners but it was Tebow (108 yards) and Harvin (121 yards) that did it. Gator running backs accounted for only 20 net rushing yards.

Looking at the Gators, they also had the kind of defensive performance that was indicated by their regular season average:

Season Avg. PPG allowed: 12.8

Tonight, Points allowed: 14

I think we can put the lame excuses for Oklahoma's lousy defensive stats (they blew people out so much that they played the reserves, they scored so fast their defense didn't get chance to rest, the offenses in the Big XII are so much better than those in the SEC) to bed once and for all. The Gators only gave up 1.2 points more than their average for the season against the nation's highest scoring offense.