Month: November 2021

When pristine Notre Dame the last sacred barrier of DI football left standing loses its coach to LSU that should tell all of us we need to collectively take a step back from the abyss.

This Brian Kelly move occurring less than 24 hours after the Lincoln Riley press conference in LA should make all of us, especially the SEC bound Sooners, consider where the sport is headed.

The sport for the moment looks like it headed towards a massive sewer system is my take.

While I still think looking down the road three years the Sooners made the right move heading to the SEC the manner in which they executed the exit wasn’t first class.

And that’s exactly why I’m cutting Lincoln Riley some slack on his exit to USC.

Lincoln Riley merely mirrored his exit to LA in the same manner OU executed its exit to the SEC… as in not showing any concern for the eight programs they would be leaving behind to fend for themselves.

This is America. We have the freedoms to make choices. No one should be forced to work for an employer they don’t want to work for. That’s what Lincoln Riley did. But in retrospect he should have come clean with OU back in September when this courtship began right after the firing of Clay Helton.

I would hope as we collectively rethink college football we all take the time to rethink what has transpired with the OU move to the SEC, the Lincoln Riley move to USC, and Brian Kelly’s move from Notre Dame to LSU.

What these three moves show without a doubt is this is all about money, has always been about money, and will probably get even worse moving forward in the world of college football. If Lincoln had done the right thing and come clean then…at the least OU wouldn’t be sweating this recruiting class. As far as players leaving on the transfer portal I would think with the right hire OU will do just fine replacing any roster holes on the portal itself.

We live in a completely different age of college football. None of us wearing crimson should be all that judgemental. We just reaped what we sowed and, yeah, karma can be a bitch.

Maybe this was a learning moment for all of us.

Notre Dame a team which could in reality still make the playoff now has no head coach. OU a team which could still be in the playoff hunt if they’d scored on their last possession in Bedlam has no head coach minus interim Bob Stoops.

Is there any place in this equation that the players and their familes who have fought through the challenges of managing Covid away from home were even considered by Lincoln Riley or Brian Kelly?

Did any of the players’ seasons even come into play in all of this? Doesn’t appear to be the case.

Should Georgia’s Kirby Smart’s agent now demand his contract match that of Lincoln Riley’s? Should Nick Saban’s agent do the same?

Really.

Collectively…Lincoln Riley and Brian Kelly have never won a college playoff game and yet both now stand at the top of their profession’s payroll mountain.

And consider this…. LSU still has $19 million in buyout dollars to repay Ed Ogeron. USC has $10 million they owe Clay Helton and another $4.5 million they owe OU for Riley’s buyout.

In a word this is INSANE. This is the new new in college football.

But I’m relatively calm. I learned quite a bit from the Kevin Durant departure to Oakland.

The good news for OU is they have an iconic program with Joe C and Bob Stoops manning the selection process for the next coach.

Okay …so let’s scatch out Brian Kelly from my top five list and I’m going to do this… I’m going to assume Joe C has his list down to three at this point.

I’m going 1 Brent Venables, 2 Dave Aranda, 3 Luke Fickell, 4 Lane Kiffin. So all four on my final four minus Fickell have previous ties to an SEC program assuming as I do that Clemson in football is basically an SEC program. Mark Stoops, Matt Campbell, and Shane Beamer didn’t make my final four.

One wild card I haven’t mentioned is Matt Ruhle with the Carolina Panthers who was the coach who rebuilt Baylor after the Art Briles mess. He would be a great choice, but I don’t know if he could be put in place before the signing day deadline. OU needs to have this done I would think maybe right before the Committee names the Final Four on Sunday. As in winning the week-end news/sports cycle in a positive way.

I haven’t mentioned Brent Venables yet as the next head coach at Oklahoma for one simple reason. That reason being…to date in his coaching career Brent Venables hasn’t shown all that much interest in becoming a head coach.

Otherwise he would be an imminently qualified candidate to fill the position.

Does he want to be a head coach? Does he have any residual angst about the manner in which he was forced out at Oklahoma for Mike Stoops? Is he ready to embrace a professional challenge beyond being Dabo Sweeny’s defensive coordinator?

All good questions.

If he answers those questions….yes, no, and hell, yeah he would soar to the top of my list in my top three.

Brent Venables more than any other coach in America through his experiences at Oklahoma and Clemson knows the physicality talent gap which exists between Alabama, Georgia, and LSU from that of the current talent level at Oklahoma.

He knows exactly what that gap is and would have the best understanding of what Oklahoma has to do to become a ‘realistic’ national championship contender.

He could bring his No. 1 defensive assistant with him to Norman and then go persuade Joe Brady to be the offensive coordinator and that would be a nice core to go along with the OU coaches not going to USC with Lincoln Riley.

Coach Venables in reality has coached in the SEC at the highest level because in essence Clemson is an ACC member playing as an SEC at large team from the Committee’s view in most seasons.

Brent Venables has been a big part of those two national championships at Clemson. It’s a cultural fit with Joe C and the kind of hire he likes to make. It would be another coordinator being elevated to the head position at OU.

What a day in Oklahoma from a football standpoint! Just basically insane that we’re having to write about this instead of the impending O State-Baylor game at Jerry’s World.

Brent Venables just makes so much sense if he and wife want to do this at this point in their lives. In Porter Moser and Brent Venables…Joe C will have gone yard in the last seven months with two of the most important hires during his tenure at OU.

I listened to the Sports Animal today and quite frankly there’s way too much emotion right now. Jim Traber, please settle down a little. I like your show, but we need to settle down a little. This is going to work itself out.

In fact it could be a silver lining in that OU will come out of this with a head coach and set of coordinators much more aligned as to what it takes to be be relevant in the SEC.

Lincoln Riley is right where he should be with his finess Air Raid offense…that being… in the weakest Power 5 conference in the country.

Lincoln Riley has never built a team in his career. Lincoln will be the eighth head coach at USC since Pete Caroll if that says anything. If every single member of this year’s OU team had played in the PAC 12 there’s a reasonable chance OU would have finished 3rd behind Utah and Oregon pretty much like they finished third in the Big 12 for the same reason.

You know what that reason is? I’ll share it with you. The answer is you can’t win a league championship in any Power 5 conference playing like a bunch of entitled, delusional dumbasses and beat anybody that’s relatively any good.

That would be the answer.

So…I’m redoing my top five…1 Brent Venables, 2 Coach Luke from Cincy, 3 Brian Kelly, Notre Dame (don’t laugh), 4 Matt Campbell, Iowa State, 5 Mark Stoops, Kentucky. I’m getting serious now….just like Joe C.

I loved it in the presser when he was ask about the list he keeps in desk. Oh…he has one–trust me.

And remember…Lincoln Riley isn’t a traitor, he’s just a simple guy from some bumblefuck town in Texas who wanted no part of the SEC grind, but instead wanted to find a college coaching job which pays $110 million and provdes a private jet.

Can you really blame him?

I have to give this some serious thought today as OU is holding a presser later today at Gaylord Memorial Stadium to discuss Lincoln Riley’s sketchty exit from one of the iconic programs in the country to basically avoid coaching in the big boy SEC conference.

I never booed Kevin. I never will. His exit to leave the Thunder I can defend to a certain extent because Kevin stayed with the Thunder for a decade, endured Russell Westbrook’s worst inner basketball instincts for that same period of time, and had to come to the final realization Sam Hinkie-Presti was never going to add a shooting guard to the team who could actually shoot a basketball.

So Kevin left to join the Warriors and the rest is basketball history as Kevin with the Splash Brothers won two rings and two MVP Finals trophies.

I defend Kevin’s decision on my blog now although at the beginning I’ll admit I was stung by his decision.

I’m not at all stunned Lincoln is headed to USC. In fact…I actually recommended he take the job several weeks ago after the pathetic performance in Waco after having two weeks to prepare for that game.

Like Dennis Dodd wrote this morning…even in today’s world… hedge fund managers usually at the least give two weeks notice, but not the case with Lincoln Riley. It is what it is. But he’s still not a traitor in the world of college football. Just a survivor.

Here’s another thing….Kevin was a free agent and fulfilled his contract to the extent of what he signed on for in Oklahoma City. His decision was based on the fact he didn’t think Sam Hinkie-Presti had the overall breadth as a general manager to reign in Russell Westbrook and put a championship roster together in Oklahoma City.

Not the case with Lincoln. He just doesn’t want to play Georgia, Alabama, LSU and the rest of the SEC underworld. He and his agent would like to moetize the next twenty years to the max. Lincoln was 1-3 verus the SEC and his only win came against a Florida team coached by Dan Mullen which was missing the heart of its lineup in the Cotton Bowl.

As far as Kevin in basketball historical hindsight …. Kevin was absolutely correct in that Sam Hinkie-Presti appears to still not get it as far as the fact you actually need some players on your team who can shoot a basketball.

Now to Lincoln Riley’s sketchy exit to USC. I think SoCal is a fascinating iconic program with a lit fight song and beautiful cheerleaders. I’m fine with him leaving because in all candor I don’t think Lincoln has the overall mental toughness to coach in the SEC week to week. He’s a young head coach never took a job like Matt Campbell at Iowa State did and then made it respectable.

He never had to do what Shane Beamer just did at South Carolina by turning a 2-8 type program into a bowl eligible 6-6 team in one year.

He never had to do what Mark Stoops has done at Kentucky with a program and culture overall to be a competitive 9-3 team in the SEC.

He never had to do what Bob Stoops did in 1999 when he inherited the OU program from John Blake.

Now here’s what I’m going to do. I have to take my lab Pauli to the vet this morning. I’m going to halt this post right now for the time being.

I’m back.

So what did Lincoln Riley inherit at OU from Bob Stoops and Joe C?

He inherited a program which in 2016 made the College Football Playoff and had Baker Mayfield at QB with Kyler Murray redshirting after his transfer from Texas A&M.

He had the triumvirate of David Boren, Joe C, and Bob Stoops to lead him and at the same time make sure the program was intact.

This is where my word usage is critical. Do I think Lincoln Riley is a traitor?

No.. I do not. I think Lincoln is a calculating coach who inherited a plum job at OU whose teams at OU have played soft for the most part when they’ve played against teams with equal or better talent.

You could say Lincoln is a bit soft and has had a protected coaching environment in Norman, But I’m not calling him a traitor. In this world of college football Bin Laden wouldn’t be a traitor.

This is the critical part in evaluating Lincoln’s exit and eventual legacy. During his time in Norman he’s only been an underdog in two road games. The 2017 game in Columbus and this past Saturday when his team was a 4.5 road underdog in Stillwater.

Keep this in mind as well… Lincoln and Coach Luke at Cincy have the same agent. Surely this agent isn’t going to double down and now bring Coach Luke to Norman? Think about and how dirty college football has become.

Another reason I’m not calling anybody a traitor is OU can’t in any way question someone else’s loyalty after what just happened with the SEC move.

The current world of college football is a dog eat dog business. Survival of the fittest. Coach Luke at Cincy, although not on my list is someone we need to be watching this week as the college football four team bracket is announced. This is better than Al Pacino taking Willie Beamon with him to his new job and basically telling Cameron Diaz to stick it between her legs.

So in reality it’s better Joe C found this out now rather than later. OU needs to have a coach in place by Saturday morning is my take. Maybe schedule the presser right before Gameday before the conference championship games. Control the national narrative to recruits across the country. So right there you have to figure maybe Luke Ficknell at Cincy may not be in play at this juncure and that’s why I haven’t listed him as of yet. I believe every other coach I mentioned save Dave Arvanda at Baylor isn’t playing on Championship Saturday. Plus, Alex Grinch will be announced as the new defensive coordinator at USC later today.

So in the end will I classify Lincoln Riley as a cupcake or a traitor? No. Neither. Of course not. He’s a calculated opportunist…pretty much like everyone else in college football.

But by the same token Lincoln Riley will never be considered an iconic coach at OU. Oklahoma is the one program in the country which has had four different coaches pass the 100-win plateau. Those names being Owens, Wilkinson, Switzer, and Stoops.

Lincoln’s place in OU football history will fall behind Chuck Fairbanks who coached OU to the ’71 Game of the Century vs. Nebraska then followed that with a Big 8 championship in ’72 before taking the New England job in the NFL.

Will this last long with me as far as Lincoln leaving OU?

It won’t affect me at all and like I’ve written on here I think it would be wise to hire someone who at the very least who has been a coordinator in the SEC.

If Joe C and Bob Stoops had just moved to USC with Lincoln…then I’d be in a very concerned state of mind this morning.

Coach Stoops, would you please do something for me? Please call Joe Brady and explain to him how special it is to coach football at OU….even if only as one of the highest paid coordinators in the country.

I’m disappointed Lincoln didn’t give the SEC a chance, but maybe this tells us something about his competitive soul or therein lack of. And if you don’t posess an alpha competitive soul you shouldn’t be coaching in the SEC.

So in closing…no traitors, no cupcakes, just the world we live in.

Life moves on. Que sera.

BOOMER!

The answer to my question is that I don’t think he would leave Arizona. He would be stupid at this point to leave his NFL job. His team is 9-2 and he’s probably headed for NFL Coach of the Year. He has a young quarterback in Kyler Murray who believes in him as a coach. It doesn’t get much better than that.

The Cardinal roster is loaded, but most of all Arizona doesn’t play in the SEC West. Plus, he can redo his contract and leverage OU’s interest in him to get more money from the Cardinals. Pretty much what Lincoln Riley just did with LSU to get his deal with USC.

In Kliff Kingsbury’s six years as the head coach at Texas Tech he wasn’t very successful coaching in the Big 12. What would make anyone think Kliff Kingsbury woud be the guy to lead the Sooners charge in the SEC?

It makes no sense to me from the perspective of either party.

Joe Brady makes more sense to me. Is it risky? Well, yeah I guess. He’s never been a head coach. But Switzer was never a head coach previous to OU. Bob Stoops was never a head coach previous to OU. Nor was the East Carolina miracle Lincoln Riley a head coach previous to OU. Nor was Mike Gundy a head coach previous to Oklahoma State.

You turn Joe Brady loose at a presser with a highlight screen of Joe Burrow’s 2019 highlights playing in the background and what you’ll have is called ‘Winning a Press Conference.”

Cut a deal to keep Bob around the first two years as the associate head coach and give it a roll.

Kliff Kingsbury….no. Joe Brady… possibly.

Here’s Joe Brady again before the 2019 season at LSU. Joe Brady is from the Sean Payton tree with the Saints, ran perhaps the most prolific offense in college football history, and now finds himself going nowhere with the NFL Panthers with an aging Cam Newton as his quarterback. Tell me these stars don’t align in harmony.

Tell me Caleb Williams, his father, and Joe Brady weren’t made for one another. Tell me that and I’ll stop this, Joe C.

I would answer yes. At the minimum the next Sooner coach should be at home with what it takes to be a consistent winner in the toughest football conference in the country.

And quite frankly…I think that’s one of the reasons Lincoln Riley is leaving the Sooners so as to avoid the weekly physical grind of the SEC.

So if we agree on this let’s start making a list:

1 Mark Stoops current head coach at Kentucky. 2 Lane Kiffin current head coach at Ole Miss. 3 Joe Brady 2019 offensive coordinator LSU-current offensive coordinator Carolina Panthers. 4 Mike Leach—current head coach Miss State. 5 Shane Beamer-former assistant OU-current head coach South Carolina. 6 Sam Pittman-former assistant Georgia-current head coach Arkansas. 7 Josh Huepel- current head coach Tennessee-former OU QB and offensive coordinator.

Take your pick. Joe Brady is thirty-five and the next Lincoln Riley hire only with a better resume than Lincoln Riley had when he landed the OU job.

Sam Pittman…a grizzled SEC veteran coach who has turned the Hogs into a respectable group with an emphasis on toughness and physicality. Both qualities so clearly lacking from this year’s Oklahoma team.

Lane Kiffin… the once assistant to Saban who has done an excellent job at Ole Miss.

Shane Beamer… the current Gamecock head coach who dazzled at OU as an up and comer as the special teams coach. Does anybody doubt his past value at that post after witnessing OU’s special team play last night.

Mike Leach—the mad scientist of the Air Raid offense who started his college career at Kentucky as an assistant and is the current Miss State Bulldog head coach.

Mark Stoops…younger brother of Bob who has turned Kentucky into a respectable SEC football program.

And the irony hire…Josh Heupel…who was dismissed as offensive coordinator at OU to accomodate Lincoln Riley’s ascension to the Sooner throne.

There you go…there’s seven current coaches with viable SEC coaching experience who I think at the least would be interested in talking to Joe C about how they would envision the future of the Sooners if they were the head coach in Norman.

Let’s skip the presser from last night and move back five years ago when Lincoln Riley took the OU job.

I would guess OU didn’t want to match the USC offer or the LSU offer and I’d also guess that Lincoln knew it was going to be much tougher being the OU coach in the SEC than the Big 12 or the PAC-12.

From his own financial standpoint this was the time to do this with his value still high as he was the fifth highest paid coach in the country heading into this season.

Here’s what I wonder though because I heard Bob Stoops doing an interview last week on Lincoln possibly leaving for another job. Bob said he was convinced Lincoln Riley would be the coach taking the Sooners into the SEC.

And on this video here’s Lincoln crying just in appreciation of his relationship with Bob Stoops as his mentor.

I’ll be interested to hear from Bob Stoops at his presser if Lincoln confided in him as he contemplated taking the USC job.

Lincoln was a cryer back then that’s for certain. I may have to put my William Hurts Broadcast News fake crying scene back up on here.

You know…Mike Gundy for all his faults except when he was trying to leverage Boone with the Tennessee and Arkansas jobs stayed the course with his school. Which is kind of cool when you think about it.

Chris Jackson asked me a great OU trivia football question the other day. That being, Dad, in your lifetime has an OU football head coach quit the OU job to take another head coaching job at another school?

And the answer is no. Gomer Jones was fired. Jim McKinzie died of a heart attack. Chuck Fairbanks left in 1972, but that was to become the head coach of the New England Patriots. Barry Switzer after sixteen glorious seasons was forced to step down. Gary Gibbs was fired. Howard Snellenberger and his party animal wife Beverly were fired after one year. John Blake lasted four years before being fired. Bob Stoops after eighteen great seasons gracefully passed the torch to a then 34 year-old Lincoln Riley who was so moved by this he had to halt his press conference due to crying.

I’m not stunned he’s leaving, but I am a little stunned he wasn’t more accomodating to both Joe C and Bob Stoops. Boren was the president then…so I don’t blame Lincoln Riley there, but still these guys went out on a huge limb for a young Lincoln Riley. They in essense had to reassign Josh Huepel to make this work at OU for Lincoln. And as I recall Boren’s niece was married to Josh Heupel.

And now what we’ll probably see is OU’s roster and recruiting class of 2022 assaulted by the departure of Riley to USC.

That’s why there has to be a hire fairly quickly. And a splash hire which shows OU is still a top six job….which it is for the right coach.

I even wonder at this point if Matt Ruhle with the Carolina Panthers would have any interest in leaving the pros and coming back to the college game like Nick Saban did before taking the Alabama job.

I wonder if Matt Ruhle and Joe Brady if in any way could be persuaded to take a look at the OU job as a package deal.

That would be a splash hire. That would be what is called winning the press conference cycle and making a statement.

2019…Joe Brady at Frank Broyles Award Show. This is the coach who turned LSU’s vanilla offense into a national championship monster with only an average defense per LSU standards.

As usual…none of the Oklahoma writers ever mentioned USC and were fixated with Lincoln going to Baton Rouge.

Lincoln can be the college version of Bill Walsh out there and not have to feed the OU monster in the SEC.

Interesting stuff in Norman.

Well, this doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact… I mentioned it as a possibility three weeks ago on my little blog here when all this LSU bullshit started surfacing. Why would a young guy like Lincoln Riley put his coaching career in a coaching career meat grinder when the USC job hadn’t been filled all this time since the dismissal of Clay Helton.

I like Lincoln. I think for the most part he did an excellent job minus this season. And now it all makes sense why the team looked so ill-prepared for both Baylor and Oklahoma State with so many penalties and mental errors. Lincoln had his mind elsewhere.

I’m excited for Lincoln and I’m excited to see who the longterm replacement is Joe C is going to hire at OU. Maybe Bob will coach a year or two and hire Joe Brady as his coordinator with the thought Joe could be a head coach at some point. Kind of like the process went with Lincoln.

If I understand this correctly Bob Stoops will immediately become the interim coach and I think that’s awesome because Bob is too young to be retired from my perspective. Maybe Bob at some point will replace Joe C as the athletic director.

It was Joe C and Bob who actually together made the Lincoln Riley hire and in a sense forced Sooner favorite son Josh Heupel to become a head coach elsewhere.

If you study the history of OU head football coaches they usually come from coordinators making their first splash as a head coach.

Bud Wilkinson came here as an assistant. Chuck Fairbanks came here as an assistant. Same with Barry Switzer. Gary Gibbs was Switzer’s defensive coordinator. Bob Stoops came to OU after being defensive coordinator at both K State and Florida. Lincoln was Bob’s last offensive coordinator.

OU is heading to the SEC in two years and they just lost their quarterback coach, offensive coordinator, and head coach. Not a good look for recruits.

But the not the end of the world either for a program like OU.

Here’s a name which could possibly make sense…Joe Brady. Beyond my list of Dave Aranda, Matt Campbell, and Shane Beamer let’s add Joe Brady to out list. Coach Brady is the former LSU offensive coordinator for the Joe Burrow national championship team which destroyed OU two years ago in the national semi-finals.

He’s now the offensive coordinator for former Baylor coach Matt Ruhle with the Carolina Panthers. Very interesting..

That’s a thought which needs a little more research.

This is why I didn’t post Lincoln’s presser last night. It didn’t seem right when Kerry Murdoch asked Lincoln that sequence of questions related to Lincoln leaving for the LSU job.

I’m not saying Lincoln just openly purjured himelf, but you could tell there was something there…just not at LSU.

Kind of like when Inspector Clouseau asked the innkeeper if his dog bites and the owner said no.

Then of course Clouseau tried to pet the dog and the dog mauled Clouseau’s hand.

Clouseau screamed, “I thought you said your dog doesn’t bite?”

Then the owner cooly replied, “He’s not my dog.”

That’s what Lincoln Riley just did.

It’ll be interesting to see at Lincoln’s presser if Willie Beamon is heading to USC with him.

I never booed Kevin Durant and I certainly will never talk down about Lincoln. If I had two young kids and made that kind of money…Southern California wouldn’t be a bad place to coach.

It was a memorable day of college football. On Rivalry Saturday… Ohio State, Oklahoma, and almost Alabama were eliminated from College Football’s Four Team Playoff.

If you include Clemson’s demise this season and the thought Georgia will eliminate Alabama next Saturday in Atlanta—then what the world of college football will have is a four team playoff minus the Big Four of college ball for the first time since the Playoff was created.

That .5 of the 4.5 Vegas spread proved to be prescient for those of us who held out to the last minute as Oklahoma State survived a wobbly almost surreal third period and beat the Sooners 37-33 to advance to their first ever Big 12 Championship Game at Jerry’s World.

The first half ended in a 24-24 tie as OU showed the college football world this O State defense shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath with the one in Georgia, but in the end this Sooner team which never once in this twelve game season showed they could play sixty minutes of football without dismantling itself with an erray of penalties, miscues, and self inflicted wounds… finally killed itself with an Eric Gray muffed punt near its own goaline to hand the Cowboys their first Bedlam win in Stillwater since 2011.

Almost like Alabama did earlier at Auburn in the final minute of regulation—Caleb Williams almost had another miracle to save the Sooners’ season. But in the end it wasn’t to be as the Cowboys held on and the fans stormed the field at Boone Pickens’ Stadium.

To the Cowboys’ credit they didn’t quit after they basically tried to hand the game to OU in the opening minutes of the second half with two fumbles on their own goalline which led to a safety and then a touchdown from former John Marshall Bear Justin Broiles.

The fact OU didn’t fall on both of those fumbles for 14 points versus 9 points in reality was probably key to O State ending the Sooners’ six year run as conference champs.

Some will say O State’s defense stiffled the Sooners’ offense in the second half. I didn’t really see it at that way though. It was the same array of Sooner dysfunction we witnessed all season long beginning with Tulane in Norman and ending with Mike Gundy’s overacheiving Cowboys finally slaying the hated Sooners in the house that Boone built..

I thought the most clever comment of the night came from me to my son Chris on the phone after the game when I asked, “You really think those idiots at LSU are willing to pay $12 million a year for this bullshit?”

Chris didn’t dignify that with a reply instead taking the high ground and ignoring the comment.

Then I amazed myself by adding former OU assistant and current South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer to Joe C’s list while scratching the unstable Mike Leach from our coach search list.

For Mike Gundy the former part-time Boone Pickens tormentor and Mullet King of college football it was a night of human redemption which probably hasn’t been rivaled since Norman Dale played by Gene Hackman in Hoosiers won the Indiana state high school championship.

Word has it a book and then maybe a subsequent Netflix movie could be in the works documenting this magical season for Oklahoma State.

Up next will be Dave Aranda’s Baylor Bears at Jerry’s World. I’d say Vegas will probably have O State as a 6.5 favorite to win their first ever Big 12 Championship since the game was put in place.

As far as me…I’ll be at a watch party with two of my nephews who live in Stillwater. The older one was the one who played with Gavin Gundy. Noah hopefully will keep me somewhat grounded as I redo the final two chapters.

Somewhere up in college football heaven both Boone Pickens and my old friend Dan Jenkins surely have a smile on their faces.

Mike Gundy finally rang the bell.

I love these kids. I never knew it started with American Idol.

Let’s go. I’ve got to hurry to beat the 11:00am first kickoff.

Just had my customary Gameday breakfast steak and eggs. I wanted to wait as long as possible to see if the Bedlam spread would move some more and it did. Holy shit…the Sooners are getting 4.5. This spread has literally moved six points since last Sunday on this game. The markets are bullish on the former Mullet King.

Reece Davis compared Gundy to Charlie Brown this morning as far his bleak Bedlam record, but here’s the thing… OU doesn’t have a Heisman finalist under center tonight. But still…4.5 and OU is hard not to take. Last time I can remember the Sooners being this big of a road dog in a regular season game was when the Sooners went up to Columbus and beat Kirk’s Buckeyes by dougle digits and Baker planted the flag.

I wouldn’t advise anyone planting any flags tonight though. In my younger days under the influnce of a few beers I might have pissed on that poser ‘1945 National Championship’ banner they have hung in the east endzone in the post game revelry. I’m way too old for that now.

Unless there’s an injury I’m unaware of beyond DJ Graham… I have to take the Sooners and the points.

I’m also taking Tulsa on the road versus SMU and the 7 points.

At the end last week I took the Buckeyes versus Michigan’s State’s putrid pass defense, gave the 19 and salavaged my week.

I’m taking the Buckeyes again today -6 on my two point bonus game. I now stand 14-16 versus the spread this topsy turvy season….still five points behind the streaking Chris Jackson who also took the Buckeyes in his bonus game last week.

You’ll notice I don’t have Auburn listed as any kind of upset special. I wanted to just for the sake of competitive drama, but I just can’t push that War Eagle button after the last two weeks. I’ve actually started to like Saban and quite frankly I’ll rooting for the Tide today…but in no way would I give 20 points on the road in this storied rivalry. Day I …Saban would give us more credibility as a democracy than Trump ever did ….not even close….plus, I like Saban’s wife—she’d make a great First Lady.

Gundy is a 4.5 favorite in Bedlam… I bet he’s shitting in his pants right now. That’s a lot for 1-19 Mike Gundy to be digesting internally right now. Gonna be lots of really angry Cowboys if Gundy can’t win as a 4.5 home favorite in the biggest game of his coaching career.

BOOMER!

No more communication for me with the outside world until these three games today have concluded.