MIAMI — All losses are not created equal. For all the consternation now gripping the Sooner Nation, at least that much should be understood.

The team that took the field Thursday night at Dolphin Stadium with the national championship on the line was not the same team that sleepwalked through the first two quarters of OU’s recent trips Fiesta Bowl trips. Nor was it the team the failed to stop Southern Cal’s snowball from rolling down the hill, even amongst Miami's palm trees, four years ago.

It may not mean much to many, but OU didn’t blow it or fail to bring it. This time around, the Sooners only failed to win. It’s cold comfort when added to a staggering record of January failure, but set aside it has to be easier to stomach.

A year ago, “why?” was still a very useful question. OU was a program in dire need of self evaluation. And as it turned out, it went well beyond Bob Stoops as the players took up the cause themselves.

The road woes were cured just as soon as they went on it, all the way to Washington and, later, points closer. That was one of two things the players swore to take care of themselves.

The other revealed itself in a list of letters — WTLG — Win The Last Game. They failed, but only on the field, which is far better than the alternative when you apply that old coach's axiom about how you win Monday through Friday and only prove it on Saturday.

All indications are the Sooners got the Monday through Friday part, or the Friday through Wednesday part, absolutely right. Yet the proof failed to materialize.

Bob Stoops may shoot straightest after losing, which is odd and interesting, but there you go. And afterward Thursday he had no problem speaking well of his players.

“They’re great kids, young men,” he said. “I told the seniors in there that I’m just incredibly proud of them. I thought they did a fabulous job the entire year (with) the attitude of the team, the way we took the field. The attitude throughout the whole season could not have been much better.”

Indeed, this was the team he appeared to think he had last season, when he would go on about the “robotic” way it went about its business. Maybe there’s a lesson there, because that team broke down a couple of times and then again against West Virginia.

Maybe the lesson is you’ve got to feel it, that there must be some emotion fueling the taking-care-of-business mentality. And this team seemed to have it.

A lot of good it did OU Thursday night and yet still there’s a gulf of difference between losing and not being prepared to win and the Sooners merely lost.

So Stoops need not go back to the drawing board when OU again finds itself in another BCS tussle. On the other hand, boy do the Sooners need to win the next one and the one after that.

Maybe the SEC really is the best conference and maybe not nearly as much defense was played in the Big 12 as most of us thought, choosing to give the conference’s offenses, and the quarterbacks who ran them, all the credit in the world.

Maybe a lot of things but it matters little now.