Author: Mike

OU last won a football national championship in 2000 when it opened the season with a 55-14 win over UTEP. It was Bob Stoops’ second season and the Sooners were coming off a 7-5 season in which the Sooners lost to Ole Miss in the Independence Bowl. I was there with my dad, so I remember that New Years Eve well when a near drunken riot broke out in the stands in that piece of junk Shreveport stadium which would be subpar for the upper tier Texas high school programs. None of us had any inkling whatsoever that the Sooners would be twelve months away from winning the national championship.

Obviously, Lincoln Riley and his Sooners have a Herculean task in front of them against the Buckeyes next week in Columbus, but if you look at this team it kind of has that same feel as the no names from 2000 who went on to beat Florida State 13-2 in the national championship game. Back in the opener, not too many took notice of linebacker Torrance Marshall’s suspension, but as the season wore on–Marshall and fellow linebacker Rocky Calmus became the competitive soul of the team.

I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the 2000 opener against UTEP and remember the names of what was basically a blue collar team which had great chemistry and somehow found a way to win it all.

Any real OU fan gets goose bumps when they watch this Torrance Marshall pick six — which basically saved the season in College Station versus the A&M Aggies. Probably the single most defining play in the Bob Stoops era at OU.

Brent with the call.

He just can’t help himself. It’s always about size with this guy and sometimes it’s even about Little Marco Rubio’s perceived lack of size. He’s just such a hopeless, wretched narcissist–he can’t ever get beyond size.

What can you say? People are dying in Texas. Some are losing every possession they ever had…and Caligula is holding a pep rally in Corpus like he’s in West Virginia.

I guess we should just be glad he didn’t blow his nose on the flag or drop a few Nazi or KKK praises to the Corpusites. That’s where the bar is with this guy. The quintessential Rodney Dangerfield character from Caddy Shack ostensibly running the United States of America. That’s how low the bar is with Caligula.

If you voted for Caligula…please watch. The notion that there is something even slightly Reaganesque about Donald Trump is beyond laughable. If Reagan were still living, I’d already have a video on here of him saying pretty much what John Danforth wrote last week in his Op-Ed piece.

The Caligula-Russia story unraveled even more yesterday, but I’m not in a mood to write about those people right now. It’s hard to watch what’s happening in Texas currently and focus on the impeachment of a sitting U.S. president not even eight months into his first term.

Instead, a nice dog story. Amongst all the tragedy in Texas, there are heart warming and inspirational stories which give hope that the decency of people in America still exists. It’s always existed and always will. There was no need for a con artist huckster with red ball caps — America was already great, but in need of a serious reflective look in the mirror.

As the world watches Hurricane Harvey in relation to Houston, I can’t help but think of Victoria. I spent a Sunday morning there last October on my way back home from a fishing trip in Port O’Connor. The guys who took me on the trip have a ritual to stop at a certain café in downtown Victoria and enjoy a truly great breakfast before getting on with the long haul back to Edmond.

I loved the place. It’s a charming town. It’s a place where the people’s natural friendliness does not go unnoticed or unappreciated.

The café is the hub of the community. I hope it wasn’t totaled in the storm and they can get back to some sense of normalcy even though from what I’m seeing it’s very tough with more heavy rain headed their way and rivers beginning to crest.

Praying for Victoria and all the people in south Texas. This is stunning to watch.

Since most Trump voters don’t or can’t read, I thought putting this up in interview form would be smarter than putting the Op-Ed on here. There’s no need for me to write anything else. Danforth’s words are not ambiguous or vague.

It just never ends. The sheer deplorability of Little Caligula and his merry band of Deplorables never ceases to amaze. This group of humanity makes Lee Atwater seem cuddly. The thing is Trump knows Hillary Clinton was right. Half of these people are genuinely devoid of any human empathy whatsoever. These are the thirty million people we should be deporting and building a wall to keep out. The other thirty million either wanted the tax break, Merritt Garland’s place on the bench, or just have so little going on in their lives they quit caring long ago. But these Deplorables, do they have no shame whatsoever. Does anything their boy Caligula ever does embarrass them to any degree of minimal human guilt?

With the largest hurricane to hit the U.S. in fifty years, the Grand Dolly Deplorable pardoned fellow racist profiler Sherriff Joe. Hillary Clinton was right, she shouldn’t have said it from a political standpoint, but she was absolutely right. It’s worse than Rome burning. Clearly worse than Rome burning because his vapid running mate calls him the new Teddy Roosevelt. Caligula and Nero. Teddy Roosevelt would be on the Texas beaches as I write supporting the cause and aiding the Weather Channel.

Conversely, Caligula will probably be playing golf tomorrow and trying to grope the refreshment cart girl. It just never ends. There is no end to Caligula’s deplorability. None.

Who are these people?

Big night tomorrow night as three time Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw is scheduled to pitch four innings for the OKC Dodgers versus Omaha on a physical rehab assignment. The game is a sellout and further proof Oklahoma City sports fans enjoy the whole Bricktown sports experience.

My son and I have been attending Dodger games this summer and have enjoyed it quite a bit. The affiliation as the top Dodger farm team is a good fit for OKC. Older baseball fans like myself got to see some of the best Houston Astro players come through their system back in the 70’s. Players like Caesar Cedeno, Bob Watson, Larry Dierker, and Don Wilson just to name a few.

The Thunder’s success has given Oklahoma sports fans a real taste for major league sports. If OKC were ever to become a city with two major league sport teams—baseball would be the second sport. The NFL wouldn’t work because of the OU-OSU culture. The NHL wouldn’t work because there’s not enough diehard hockey fans in the city who understand the nuance of the game. But baseball could work here. The stadium could be expanded. Ownership could follow the template of the recent World Series champion Kansas City Royals. The NBA and MLB would be a perfect one-two combination for the city to keep Bricktown vibrant as far as traffic and excitement.

OKC will be rocking in Bricktown tomorrow night and it won’t be for an OU football game or a Thunder basketball game. Instead, it will be standing room only to see Clayton Kershaw pitch in person. Who knows, maybe a spark ignites from this and Oklahoma City, like Kansas City, could become a major league two sport town.

We’ve been sitting behind home plate in games we attended earlier this season. But tomorrow night, the only seats we could get were in the grass sections in the outfield. It’s a tough ticket, but that makes me happy, or more to the point, happy for Oklahoma City.

Since this is a basketball site ‘somewhat’, maybe I should write something on this since there’s nothing else NBA related to write about in late August which compares with Caligula and the Russians.

Kyrie got his wish and was traded away from LeBron on Tuesday. Kyrie will now be a Boston Celtic. In return, Isaiah Thomas and Jae Crowder will now be with LeBron in Cleveland. Additionally, the Cavs get the 2018 New Jersey draft pick which very well could turn out to be the No. 1 pick in the draft.

Is this a game changer for either team? I don’t think so. Cleveland will still be the team to beat in the East this season. Boston will be the second best team in the East. But more importantly, neither team has done anything which will make them good enough to beat the Golden State Warriors.

This isn’t complicated. Golden State’s four best players are Durant, Curry, Thompson, and Green. Cleveland’s best four players are LeBron, Thomas, Kevin Love, and Tristan Thompson. Boston’s four best players are Kyrie, Gordon Hayward, Al Horford, and someone else. Oklahoma City’s four best players are Russell Westbrook, Paul George, Steven Adams, and someone else.

My point being, Cleveland, OKC, and Boston are three of the better teams in the league minus Golden State, but unless one of these three teams adds another difference maker I see Kevin Durant for the second year in row being able to win a ring and subsequently tell Donald Trump to go to hell.

OKC needs another scorer. Boston needs a stud hoss on the boards. Cleveland needs more consistent outside scoring. Maybe if you took the best ten players from Cleveland, OKC, and Boston and put them together you could hang with these Warriors in a best four of seven. Maybe. The best four from that team would be LeBron, Westbrook, Paul George, and I guess Kyrie. You’d fill out the top ten with Horford, Hayward, Sixth man Isaiah Thomas, Westbrook’s UCLA bud Kevin Love, Steven Adams, Tristan Thompson, and I’ll go Jae Crowder because you’d need him against the Warriors. Kawhi Leonard would be nice to have as well. Give me those eleven guys and I’ll go play the Warriors. Give me a best four of LeBron, Westbrook, Leonard, and Paul George and we’d have something worth watching next June.

So in the end, did all that much happen on Tuesday in the NBA?

I don’t think so.