It told me what I already knew. That being, America has become too stupid to be governed by reasonable adults. But I already knew that.
I was raised in dysfunction. None of this is new to me.
The Dow dropped 1300 points in two days. Trump assailed the Fed chief he hand picked. A Washington Post reporter was murdered by the Saudis. Hurricane Michael leveled the Florida panhandle. Mueller officials are about to wrap up their investigation.
But what captured the attention of the nation?
Kanye West being granted a personal meeting with Trump was front and center.
Trump isn’t stupid. His brand isn’t much different from that of the Kardashians or a pro wrestler. Trump will be re-elected in 2020 unless the markets tank and that’s pretty much that.
He could literally name Ric Flair Nature Boy as his UN Ambassador and it wouldn’t cause a ripple of concern among his base.
Quite frankly, the smartest thing I saw yesterday was Kevin Stitt refusing the endorsement of Mary Fallin. That was politically smart.
What does it say when Oklahoma looks smart in comparison to the rest of the country if even for just a day?
It’s been a big week for Oklahoma GOP gubernatorial candidate Kevin Stitt. He not only received the endorsement of former GOP mayor of Oklahoma City…Mick Cornett. But he also received the endorsement of two term sitting GOP governor Mary Fallin who is the most unpopular governor in any state currently.
However, Stitt and his campaign while gladly accepting Cornett’s endorsement has refused Fallin’s public support.
This is great stuff—even for Oklahoma.
“We did not seek Fallin’s endorsement, and Kevin Stitt has run a campaign message that he will do things a lot differently,” said Donelle Harden, spokeswoman for the Stitt campaign. “He is focused on changing the structure of state government and cleaning up the mess we are currently in at the Capitol.”
Here’s Mary Fallin endorsing Sarah Palin back in 2008.
My grandmother Maureen used to have a saying, ” Why is it I’m so smart and these other people are so stupid.”
I finished Steven’s book last night. It was awesome and actually exceeded my expectations. I’d give it four and half stars out of five. It was not what I would describe as your average jock biography. It’s a book which I would have enjoyed even if Steven played for a team other than the OKC Thunder.
It especially touched me because a central theme in the book is Steven losing his father Sid to cancer when he was but thirteen years of age and how it affected his life and how he has come to terms with this loss. Don’t think for a second I wasn’t thinking of my father while reading Steven’s truly touching account of his relationship with his father. His story put an enormous lump in my throat several times when he went into his feelings for his father.
The book entails Steven’s determined journey to make it from Roturua, New Zealand to the NBA and how this unique person went about doing it.
If you’re a Thunder fan you’ll love some of Steven’s inside insights into the Thunder organization. You’ll realize assistant coach Mark Bryant has played a pivotal role in Stevens continued progress and development. You’ll learn Steven was shocked and somewhat saddened by the firing of Scott Brooks. You’ll discover he’s glad Reggie Jackson is in Detroit. You’ll learn he loves Nick Collison. You’ll get the impression he thought Kevin going to the Warriors was a bit weak. You’ll learn he holds no malice towards Draymond Green for kicking him in the balls…twice. In fact, you get the feeling Steven would love to recruit Draymond to the Thunder because of Green’s defense and basketball IQ. You’ll learn that every day in practice Steven is working on his Euro step on the baseline and his three point shot. You’ll learn he has a deep respect for Russell Westbrook.
I would think if you’re a Thunder fan this book is an absolute must.
But for me, more than anything, it was a human story which touched me and inspired me at the same time.
I hope I bump into Steven again sometime in the near future again over at that 7-11 and have a chance to tell him how much I enjoyed reading the story of his life to date.
My hope now is that at some point Nick Collison will write a book on his career with the Thunder.
But as I wrote some time ago, with Nick now retired Steven will take his place as my favorite Thunder player and it will be seamless.
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.