O State at Texas

Big, big, big game this evening in the Big 12. The winner should emerge as the team to challenge OU for the Big 12 championship both in the regular season and conference championship game.

An enormous challenge for redshirt freshman Spencer Sanders to take on Sam Ehlinger’s Horns in Austin in his first real road start against a ranked Power 5 team.

Texas simply cannot lose another game if they aspire to make college football’s Final Four. The Horns will have to run the table if they want to make college football’s playoff for the first time.

The field to make the Final Four will be tough to crack. Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, LSU and Ohio State just to name six. We should have an eight team playoff, but it is what it is.

In the Boone Pickens/Mike Gundy era O State is 7-2 versus the Horns this decade. That’s a stunning stat. The Cowboys have won five straight in Austin. The Cowboys have owned the Horns there’s no question of it.

Neither of these teams have shown much defense in their first three games. Both defenses are typical Big 12 defenses. One would think this will be a shootout….48-42 or so.

Vegas has Texas floating around as a five to six point favorite.

A great test to see where Spencer Sanders is with his passing game in his fourth game as college player.

It’s a good slate of games this week-end….Notre Dame at Georgia, Michigan at Wisconsin, Auburn at Texas A&M. USC knocked Utah from the ranks of the unbeaten last night at the Coliseum.

It’s hard for me to even take the time to think about the Oklahoma City Thunder right now. But I will at some point. It might be December 15th, but I’ll get there. There’s no hurry. This is going to require patience.

I saved this interview for today. I like Mike Gundy actually. I think he’s a very solid offensive coach. His offenses over the years clearly speak for themselves. I’ve by chance talked to him a time or two. I like him. He has a sense of humor.

So while I clearly call this the Boone Pickens Era at O State it’s not meant as a diss towards Gundy. If my kid was an offensive player heading off to play DI ball he would be a guy I’d want my son to play for.

If Les Miles had stayed at O State to kick off the Boone Picken’s era I’m not so sure he would have done any better than Mike Gundy. Maybe. You have to figure his defenses would have been better, but would Miles have been able to score with the ping pong offenses of the Big 12 conference?

Miles was 2-2 versus OU and those wins came against OU in 2001 and 2002 when the Sooners were coming off a national championship and the Sooners had NFL caliber players on the defensive side of the ball.

But in the end, Boone would have been very demanding with any head coach he had leading his college football franchise….including Les Miles or Larry Fedora or Todd Monken.

A very big game for both teams tonight in Austin from a Big 12 Championship Game standpoint.

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