Our Cleveland Browns put themselves right back into the AFC North Division championship hunt with a scintillating 12-9 win in OT over the Baltimore Ravens. It was the Browns first victory on a Sunday since 2015.
Move over Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys, Baker Mayfield and his Browns are now America’s Team.
I kid you not. When I was in Denver the previous Sunday following the Rockies 14-0 win over the Nationals in Game 162, my son took me to a sports bar right next to the historic Union Station in the heart of downtown Denver. Since we’d been drinking we of course were ubering the rest of the day. All you young Brownamaniacs…do not drink and drive. It’s not worth it.
The Broncos weren’t playing when we got to the bar, but that bar was full of Cleveland fans wearing Mayfield jerseys and T-shirts which said- ‘We Love Our Cleveland Browns’.
I was wearing my OU football hoodie and those Cleveland fans took notice and treated me like royalty after I told them I was Baker’s uncle there from Texas to watch the Rockies. I told them I had Baker’s cell number just to lead them on and pretended to text him several times during the game.
What a frenzied feel it was in that bar even after the Browns got hosed by the replay official on a fourth down mark and eventually lost to the Raiders in overtime.
So—when Jim Rome and other national scribes now refer to the Browns as America’s Team….don’t laugh. These young Browns have captured the hearts of America much like the Thunder did in those early days with Durant, Westbrook, and Harden. I now have a ‘We Love Our Cleveland Browns’ T-shirt and look to add a Dog Pound fuzzy hat before next weekend’s game against the San Diego Chargers in Cleveland while the entire nation watches to see if ‘our’ Browns can climb to 3-2-1 for the season.
My son called me last night from Denver and told me Mike Stoops was fired on Sunday after the OU defense was absolutely abysmal against a Texas offense which could only score 10 points the previous week against a feeble Kansas State team. Ten points.
I shrugged and asked, “So…who’s taking over the defense?”
He says,”Bob Diaco.”
I say,” What has Bob Diaco ever done with any defense at a Power 5 level?”
My son didn’t know. So I researched Bob Diaco a bit and discovered he was at Nebraska last season and was fired by Scott Frost when Frost was hired to rebuild a moribund Nebraska Cornhusker football program. He also coordinated defenses for Brian Kelly at both Cincy and Notre Dame. Like Bob Stoops, he played his college football at Iowa.
Not exactly a resume which leads me to believe OU’s defense will rise from being the 96th ranked defense in the country when they play against quality opposition.
But I guess at the end of the day Lincoln Riley had no choice in that the Sooner defense was so putrid on Saturday inside the Cotton Bowl he maybe figured he could make Sarah Palin or Mary Fallin his defensive coordinator and it might be an upgrade. OU was that bad on Saturday from a physicality and tackling standpoint. Any freshman high school coach in America would have been embarrassed with that performance.
The good news for Bob Diaco or Ruffin McNeil or both is that OU only has to face one more quality offense this season when they travel to play West Virginia in Morgantown. Texas Tech is always a challenge, but Kyler Murray and Co. should hang close to 70 points on both Texas Tech and O State this season. TCU at Forth Worth in two weeks could be the toughest challenge otherwise.
The new goal for OU is to get into the Big 12 Championship Game and maybe play itself into a top six bowl game. OU is not going to the national football playoff and neither is any other Big 12 team.
Maybe playing Texas in the Big 12 Championship Game would be fun.
Maybe OU would have a chance if they learn how to tackle in the next two months. Maybe the new coordinator could tell them to get more physical and maybe hit someone in the mouth. Football isn’t a contact sport, it’s a collision sport like hockey. Dancing is a contact activity…if you know what I mean.
This is why Bob Stoops should never have brought his brother back. The appearance of nepotism is not what you need at the highest level of DI coaching. You need teaching and motivation.
I wonder what’s going through Brent Venables’ mind this morning. His wife is probably smiling in a knowing manner if you know what I mean.
So….Bob Diaco and Ruffin McNeil will now coach the OU defense.
You know who Ruffin McNeil is, right?
He was the assistant coach at Texas Tech who replaced Mike Leach’s D coordinator the day after O State torched the Red Raiders in Stillwater in that historic game in which after the game Mike Gundy shared with the world the thought he was forty and a man.
“I’m forty, I’m a man…come after me!” Who does this Midwest City dude think he is….Frank Sinatra or something?
While Gundy was doing that in his presser this was what Mike Leach was doing in his presser.
Mike Leach fired his D coordinator the next day.
You think Lincoln Riley was thinking of this at all when he fired Mike Stoops yesterday?
Maybe what Riley should do is hire the K State D coordinator who held Texas to 10 points the previous week
That was nuanced sarcasm….kind of.
Sigh. Mike Gundy was given a $625,000 dollar raise last off season after losing the three games on his schedule which were against quality teams. Tell me what is wrong in America currently…seriously.
It is what it is. That being, like last year OU has a scintillating offense but has a defense which quite frankly can’t tackle anyone at the line of scrimmage or in space down the field.
That’s kind of a critical shortcoming when you play on the defensive side of the football and like in the Georgia game when OU couldn’t get a stop when it needed one, they couldn’t get one in Saturday’s Red River Rivalry which was won by Texas on the last play of the game.
Should Mike Stoops be fired? Would that help or is it just that the culture of defense in the Big 12 is a past tense pipe dream?
I’m not sure. Mike Gundy fired Glenn Spencer as his defensive coordinator last season. If anything, O State is worse. Like OU they can’t tackle or stop anyone. They’re terrible as well. So, I mean, what I’m saying here is that Lincoln Riley could fire Stoops, but that doesn’t mean OU will be able to turn around their defensive woes.
I think it’s more a cultural deal of the high school football which is being played in both Texas and Oklahoma. All these high school programs play the spread and there is no emphasis on the physicality aspect of football. These are the two states which both OU and O State primarily recruit in to fill their rosters.
Why is it you think that when Brent Venables left OU he didn’t stay around in this region of the country to continue his coaching career? Because in the southeast region of the country they still play defense in high school.
And don’t tell me Texas is a great defense. They’re not. They were just torched for 45 points by an OU team which had two key turnovers or else OU would have scored 50 something points in this year’s version of the Red River Rivalry.
TCU’s Gary Patterson is alleged to be a defensive savant. Oh, really. Did you see the Horned Frogs play Ohio State and Texas?
See where I’m coming from?
No one in the Big 12 is very good defensively and that’s primarily why no Big 12 team since Vince Young’s 2005 Longhorn team has won a national championship. And based on Saturday’s results the Big 12 will not have a team in this year’s national championship football playoff.
Do you really think the committee would take West Virginia even if they went undefeated?
So while I love watching Kyler Murray and the OU offense it’s fairly evident the Sooners don’t possess a defense…. and at the end of the day if you want to ne mentioned with Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, and Ohio State you kind of need a defense.
With all my obsession of someday moving to Toronto–that has changed and moved much closer… as in Denver.
I could see myself becoming a Denverite in the last decade of my life or so. I really could. Don’t get me wrong, Toronto is amazing, but Denver is pretty amazing as well.
On my flight home the other night the mayor of Oklahoma City David Holt sat in front of me with his two young children. We talked a bit. He seems like a nice young man, but he didn’t strike me as mayoral per se. He didn’t strike me as a person with a searing vision of what Oklahoma City should be five years from now.
We talked a little bit about the Sam Anderson book. Like me, he enjoyed the book and like me, he learned some new things about the history of Oklahoma City.
I asked him how people in his sphere took the book. He smiled and said, “Some people don’t have a sense of humor.”
I told him I never knew about Operation Bongo until I read the book. He said the same.
As I left that flight– I thought about David Holt and the future of his two children in Oklahoma City as they grow up.
I wonder if the city and the state for that matter can in a sense… grow up.
I know this…I won’t be alive to witness it.
But anyway, the Rockies’ series with the Brewers starts tonight and that’s where my sports heart is at currently. The Thunder aren’t really there. But that will change as we get cooler and deeper into October. Even if we moved to Denver the Thunder would be my basketball team for this reason…I love the audacity Aubrey McClendon and Clay Bennett had about Oklahoma City even if all of it didn’t pan out. Passion is a great thing, it really is. It’s what drives us as humans. The notion these two dudes pulled this off still amazes me given what a culturally and politically regressed city OKC is in some regards.
The notion OKC still has an NBA team still amazes me given that a beer league minor league hockey team called the Blazers, Brad Lund, and Katrina are in a sense what made the Thunder possible to a degree.
Anderson didn’t write this because he didn’t live it firsthand. I lived it.
My son took me to the Colorado Rockies final game of the regular season this past Sunday for an early birthday present. It was a great day of major league baseball in Denver as the Rockies bludgeoned the Washington Nationals by a 14-0 count to tie the LA Dodgers for the regular season divisional title.
It was glorious. Charlie Blackmon hit for the cycle. Nolan Arenado hit two home runs. Kendall Story hit a rocket into the centerfield bleachers and David Dahl hit an opposite field homer down the left field line.
Rookie left hander pitcher Tyler Anderson pitched seven innings of shutout ball. And former 2007 Rockie hero Matt Holiday made a pinch hit appearance.
It was a great day of baseball even with the Rockies eventually losing on Monday to the Dodgers in LA by a 5-2 count.
Didn’t matter though as these Rockies are resilient and advanced into the divisional playoffs late last night with an epic thirteen inning 2-1 win over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley.
Don’t discount this Rockie team. They along with the Milwaukee Brewers were the hottest teams in MLB coming down the stretch run of the season.
So it seems apropos they now meet in the playoffs with the winner most likely paying the LA Dodgers in the National League Championship Series.
Colorado has one of the best players in all of baseball in Nolan Arenado. Period. Nice players around him and a pitching staff which could be dangerous in post season.
It should be a fun baseball post season in Denver.
Donald Trump for some reason went to the UN and tried to either bullshit or troll the rest of the world about his two years as Potus. All I can say is that he can clearly get away with this in places like Oklahoma, West Virginia, Alabama, the entire Solid South, and probably quite a few rural counties throughout the nation. He can say anything in places like these which love his world view that World War II never happened. The Nazis never happened. The Allies winning the war never happened. The Marshall Plan never happened. The Cold War never happened. The world history of the greatest alliance of democracies never happened. You can take this low road in the dimmest and dumbest settings in the U.S. and get away with it.
But not so much with the rest of the world as in much in the pursuant years since 1945 the world has become interconnected. Maybe if Trump and his followers would occasionally read Tom Friedman they might be more tuned in somewhat.
But we know that’s never going to happen in a place like say Oklahoma, so it is what it is.
It’s just so embarrassing. It truly is. I don’t mean this in a snarky way, but it’s just such an embarrassment. I’m genuinely trying to put as little as possible on my blog in relation to Trump, but when the rest of the world is openly laughing at you it probably deserves a mention of sort.
Sigh.
On a more positive note, the Colorado Rockies won their fifth straight game last night and are but one game behind the Dodgers and Cardinals for a playoff spot. My son is taking me to the last game of the regular season on Sunday at Coors Field as the Rockies will host the Washington Nationals. How cool it would be if the last game decides the Rockies’ playoff fate.
The contract of Brian Davis was not extended this summer. Some will say it was because Russell Westbrook exerted pressure over the cotton picking comment which got Davis suspended for the first game of the Utah series. I honestly don’t care if Westbrook did or didn’t ultimately decide the fate of Davis.
You know why I don’t care?
Because he was terrible unless you’re some sort of lost soul who was frigging listening to the Flaming Lips before the Thunder telecasts. Read my lips…he was horrible.
Brian Davis didn’t have to be a cornball homer. That was his call as a professional. Maybe old racist women who watch the Thunder telecasts liked him. Maybe the rural people who love Trump loved Davis. Maybe he had an off the chart connection with Deplorables. I don’t know. I don’t care. This isn’t a riveting thing with me. I would think though given that the Thunder are now the subject of a NY Times bestseller maybe it was the time to put the bullshit cornball homer telecasts on the shelf and start to make the appearance of professional sports franchise with its television broadcasts.
My father while still living would randomly call me after a Thunder game and asked in an agitated state, “How did he get this job?” It was always rhetorical as neither of us could offer an explanation to the other. Although in the back of mind two words were always there…Peter Principle.
I know this though it had gotten to the point where even when I watched Fox it was with the sound muted to avoid the voices of both Davis and Michael Cage. And BTW…Cage has kept his job.
Fisher has been the USC basketball play by play announcer for the past eight years. I’ve never heard him on air. I’ll give him a chance. My mind is open. Anything has to be an improvement over Davis though. I love Pinto. I love Antonio. I once rode in an elevator with Leslie and told her the perfume she was wearing was awesome. She smiled politely. She’s fine. So it’s not like I’m some crank who’s hypercritical of announcers.
Davis has a nice voice. He doesn’t appear to be a clueless dumbshit as far as sports go. Some of his hockey comments were actually decent in realtion to hockey assists. He just opted to be the homer of all homers and my guess is Westbrook didn’t want him back. Which is fine with me. I don’t care.
I hate to sound so callous. Someone losing their job isn’t something I like. But enough already. Maybe Davis and Wayne Coyne could work out some sort of deal and Davis could become the voice of the Flaming Lips promotions. From what I’ve heard of their music they could use a homer. Maybe. Sam Anderson never mentioned Brian Davis in his book. What does that say?
I sure hope this doesn’t become some sort of issue with Jim Traber because he even more than me was more vocal in regards to how pitiful and feeble Davis had become on the telecasts.
Chris Fisher, welcome aboard. Tell it like is every now and again.
With Nick’s retirement…Steven becomes my favorite player on the team. Probably next would be Russ. Then Paul George. There’s a lot I like about Paul George as well. He loves to fish. He’s intrigued by politics. And like Russ–he seems to put a premium on his relationship with his son.
For this week I’m focused on Steven’s new book. I had that great talk with Steven at the 7-11 in Nichols Hills two summers ago and I knew right then and there he would replace Nick as my favorite Thunder player at some point.
This book I’m sure will go into things besides just basketball. I know he talks American politics in the book and from what I read he politely as best he could in an intellectually limited state like Oklahoma called our dipshit prez a douchebag. BTW…I got a call from a Trump fundraiser todays and at some point that ‘conversation’ will be posted on here.
So…time to move on from Sam Anderson. I’m firmly convinced he used the Trekkie reference because of something he read me write over at Daily Thunder, but I have to move on. I would think for sure I would have been in his top three over there given the ‘level’ of competition. I’d love to ask him. I even wonder if he was in the Daily Thunder Western Conference Bracket Contest and was using my brackets as tutorials of such. Surely—he wasn’t copying either Justin or Royce Young’s brackets….just saying.
Anyway—I look forward to reading his book and reviewing it on here.
These other Thunder blogs I guess don’t do book reviews, but in all candor from what I’ve seen from most of these predictable Thunder blogs—I really don’t want to be like them.
Sammy—I’m always here for you on those game nights when the Daily Thunder can’t quite get the fastball over 86 mph. I mean you’re a NY Times guy. I’m a NY Times guy. 99% of the Trekkies who loiter around on Daily Thunder have no idea who Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman are or what they do for a living. Dude… I can do Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman when I really set my mind to it.
I can’t lie. I loved it. Especially the way he ended it with three different epilogues. The last one being were Russell refuses to sign his new contract and announce it until September 29th on Kevin Durant’s birthday.
Absolutely the perfect way to end the book. I told you people…Little Miss Sunshine.
For those of us who in real life are OKC survivors and somehow still walk and speak and are able to still breathe in spite of the things this city seems bent on doing to itself—this will be a book we always treasure.
More than anything this book is complete and utter dysfunction rolled into the history of America’s 29th largest city. And here’s the thing…I think as Sam Anderson stayed here and worked on the book he like me in some ways finds the dysfunction kind of an attractive thing in a weird sort of self destructive way. Hence, the inclusion of Wayne Coyne into this epic yarn.
Why would any person need to live in New York, LA, Chicago or elsewhere when Oklahoma City has captured the title of America’s Most Dysfunctional Medium Sized City?
Tulsa, Wichita, and Omaha aren’t like this—trust me.
Somehow, someway… out of that land run and in a steady stream of historic mentally unstable intervals…Oklahoma City has become the dysfunction mecca of cities with more than 300,000 people.
I don’t mean this in a snarky way…not at all. I wonder to myself if this dysfunction is why Russell Westbrook decided to sign this new contract which will keep him here thru what basically will be the prime of his professional basketball career?
Again, I don’t mean this to be snarky, but Russell plays the most dysfunctional basketball I’ve ever witnessed in my life of watching basketball. He doesn’t seem to know if he’s a point guard, a shooting guard, a small forward, a power forward, or a center. It’s complete and total dysfunction, yet we love him and embrace him now as one of us.
At one point, I wonder if Russell thought to himself…”These people are even crazier than I am? I was born to be here. Thye’ve got it all.”
Harden would never have co-existed in this bullshit for a long period of time and you could tell by Kevin’s facial expressions that he felt uncomfortable coming clean and saying, “You motherfuckers are crazy. I can’t stay here.” Even Collison probably won’t come back to coach.
But amidst the craziness, the obvious political insanity, the absence of sustained reason, despite self induced sonic booms and earthquakes…Russell Westbrook is one of us and he loves it here. And now so does Paul George.
And on this highly human positive note I find myself with some real bounce as we enter the 11th season of Sam Presti’s Process in Oklahoma City.
Even if the Thunder never at this point win an NBA title, Presti has proved one thing, that being, you can talk two NBA stars into staying in Oklahoma City even when they aren’t obliged to by the contractual rules of the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement.
Think about what I just wrote. If ever there was a monumental moral victory—this was it.
THEY’RE ONE OF US AND THEY LOVE US!
See the glass half full.
So…Sam Anderson, thank you for the yarn. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and in the end what difference does it really make that the Thunder lost Game 6 to the Warriors. Think how boring it must be to be a Warriors’ fan already knowing you should threepeat this season unless Kerr and the team show up drunk for every game. I mean, like who cares? Secretly… I bet Steve Kerr wishes he were here. Really, I bet he wishes he were here.
Russell stayed. Paul George is staying with him. Steven Adams is writing wordly books. Andre still won’t be able to make a free throw. And observing Russell and Dennis Schroeder co-exist could be fun. What more could you ask for as an NBA fan?
I actually googled some Flaming Lips songs last night in the hope something resembling a piece of music could be experienced. Jesus fucking Murphy….is Sam Anderson kidding me? I’m a very accepting guy music wise, but this is bullshit.
There are five current Oklahomans in the Country Music Hall of Fame and believe or not Garth Brooks is not one of them. This is a great trivia question. Everyone always thinks Garth Brooks is one of the five. He’s not for some odd reason.
Can you name the five artists?
Vince Gill, Reba, Toby Keith, Blake Shelton, and Carrie Underwood
Isn’t there someway Sam Anderson could have pretended one of these artists lived in Oklahoma City instead of Wayne friggin’ Coyne?
Anyway this got me thinking of my favorite country songs. And my favorite is Amie by Pure Prarie League.
My wife is a United States Air Force brat. The oldest daughter of a bird Colonel. She lived everywhere growing up and Oklahoma was clearly her least favorite place. Her favorite place was Alabama where her father attended the War College in Montgomery. She told me this up front as we started dating. She told me she had every intention of leaving and attending college at Auburn. Which in fact she did. I knew this going in …so you could say I somewhat guarded my heart even though I fell in love with her like on the second date. And, yeah, like me.. she’s a Libra.
So she leaves and my heart is broken, but unlike Wayne Coyne, I survive this and go on with my life pretty much sure I’ll be a lifelong bachelor with a dog like the Diva Lab Pauli filling the void somewhat.
So…somewhere during the end of her first semester she calls me and asks me to visit her in Alabama. I said okay. I then went and bought a ring and two airline tickets to an empty island in the Bahamas. This is so unlike me to be even slightly romantic like this and risk her saying no. But this inner voice in me says to do this.
And she said yes and came back to Oklahoma two weeks later and has endured me and the state of Oklahoma for the last thirty-eight years. The deal is we don’t retire in Oklahoma…either North Carolina or Florida or maybe somewhere in Colorado. Which is fine because I can’t take Oklahoma anymore. I really can’t. I don’t think Oklahoma is racist per se, but I think it clearly is one of the three dumbest states in the Union along with West Virginia and Louisiana.
So–Sam Anderson this is for you, bud. This is my love song I played for myself abut a hundred times on that drive to Montgomery in 1980 with that ring in my pocket and those two airline tickets.