“We’re a team that doesn’t really pay attention to too much outside stuff,” said Creed Humphrey, an offensive lineman for Oklahoma. “Of course, it’s hard — everybody’s got social media and stuff, and they see stuff all the time — but our main focus always has to be on the next opponent.”

With Oklahoma’s most menacing regular-season opponent now defeated, and the buzz around the Sooners certain to grow, the team’s ability to adhere to the philosophy Fields and Humphrey espoused will be tested.

Few programs are as eager for a big breakthrough. Oklahoma, which started this season at No. 4, has reached three semifinal games and lost all of them. It has not played for a national championship since the 2008 season, and it has not won one since the 2000 season. (More broadly, the Big 12 has not had a team win a national title since Texas did it to end the 2005 season.)

This year, Oklahoma’s defense is a far more suffocating unit than its recent predecessors, and it recorded nine sacks on Saturday. The offense, which leads the country at 622 yards per game, is built around Jalen Hurts, the graduate transfer quarterback who played at Alabama and is in contention to become the third straight Sooner to win the Heisman Trophy.

“That’s an extremely talented and well-coached team, led by an exceptional quarterback that had a heck of a day,” Tom Herman, the Texas coach, said, his demeanor mostly downtrodden but maybe also a little awed. “They’re really, really good.”

Up until Saturday afternoon, though, Oklahoma’s résumé looked like that of a formidable team that was also open to castigation for not having faced a serious test. Not one of Oklahoma’s first five opponents was ranked.

For the Sooners, it was just an added bonus that Georgia happened to crumble around the same moment that time expired in Dallas. Fields, the safety, appeared stunned as he learned that the Bulldogs had lost, and he fleetingly weighed how it could change the course of Oklahoma’s season.