Month: June 2017

I’m not really shocked. Being the head football coach at OU is a meat grinder. Bob Stoops came to OU when the program was absolutely horrible after the 1998 season. OU under Gary Gibbs, Howard, and John Blake suffered the worst ten year streak of OU football in my lifetime. When Stoops took the job, OU had gone through five straight losing seasons and ten straight seasons without playing in a major bowl.

My dad and I went to that first Independence Bowl in Stoops’ first season on a New Years’ Eve night. OU lost to Ole Miss on a late field goal. In season two OU won the national championship by beating heavily favored Florida State in the Orange Bowl. Year Three — a Cotton Bowl win over Arkansas. Year 4 — a Rose Bowl win over Washington State. We were there. Pretty much a Bucket List trip. We made the coastal drive from San Diego to Pasadena in a convertible. It’s a day I’ll never forget. Then a national championship game in New Orleans against LSU. Then another trip to the Orange Bowl to play USC in another national championship game. Great memories. Other than the Rose Bowl win, the bowl trip which forever stays with me though was the incredible ending against Boise in the Fiesta Bowl. We were there for what many call the zaniest ending of a major bowl game in college football history. My father and I hugged on two separate times thinking we’d won, but not to be.

All told, Bob Stoops won 190 football games and exits as the winningest coach in OU football history. He won one national championship, had his team in four national championships game, won ten Big 12 titles, qualified for a Final Four berth, won a Rose Bowl, won two Sugar Bowls, won a Fiesta Bowl, won a Cotton Bowl, and won an Orange Bowl.

But most of all, he restored OU football to its place as one of the premier programs in the country, and he did it with class. Under Stoops, the Sooners never had a losing season, went to a bowl game every season, and never were sanctioned by the NCAA during Stoops eighteen years at the helm. Add to the fact, the College Football Coaches Association voted Bob Stoops as the coach they’d most want their sons to play for.

This last season with the Joe Mixon issues was the only time in eighteen years I seriously questioned a decision by Bob Stoops. I still disagree with what he did. But he took the heat. Hopefully, Joe Mixon grows from all of this and makes all of us realize redemption is a very big deal in the journey of life.

I like what Stoops did today. The program is in good shape and he’s leaving with two straight Big 12 titles and a Sugar Bowl win over Auburn. He’s leaving on a high note with the stadium newly renovated.

In closing, the thing which impresses me the most about Stoops is how he won ten conference titles with a multitude of quarterbacks. It makes for a great trivia question. The answer is …Josh Huepel, Nate Hbyl, Jason White, Paul Thompson, Sam Bradford, Landry Jones, and Baker Mayfield.

White and Bradford won Heismans. Huepel and Mayfield were Heisman finalists. And Paul Thompson’s season of redemption was one of my favorite OU football seasons. Paul Thompson’s season just made you feel good as a fan of the game.

It was a glorious run. Some of my best memories with my father were at OU games during the Stoops Era.

Thanks for the very special memories, Bob Stoops.

The most fun ever in a loss. You just kind of sat there in the stadium awed by what happened.

Chuck said basically what I’ve been saying, the NBA Playoffs really aren’t all that much unless you’re either Kevin Durant or his mother. Glad to see Chuck making Game 4 in Nashville in what was a fairly easy Pred win. We seem to have a series where neither road goalie can bring his game to the rink.

Just another Monday of our dumbass Prez. In less than a day, he basically undermined his own travel ban case before it got to the United States Supreme Court and then deftly threw Jeff Sessions and his own Justice Department under the bus three days before Comey’s public hearing. Unless you’re just a complete dumbass this is pretty much a day to day replay of Caligula’s presidency. It’s who he is.

Anyway, sometimes it’s good to do the Trump karaoke to release the stress and get thru the day. I’m so thrilled sixty million of you made the decision to put this person in the White House. Feel free to sing along, it might help.

What a complete fucking idiot.

And…if you’re one of the religious right who voted for Calig, this is an extra one for you. Make sure and read Corinthians before you watch it though.

Another easy double digit win for the Warriors in Game 2 inside Oracle. I was even able to watch most of Anthony Bourdain’s new episode from Anarctica. Beautiful episode by the way.

Cleveland may or may not win a game, we’ll see. But the math is overwhelmingly against the Cavs and this is why. When you add Durant to the Warriors nucleus mix–Curry, Durant, Thompson, and Green pretty much will give their team somewhere around a combined 84 points a game. This means if the rest of the Warriors roster can score say a combined 38 points then the West Coast Nike All Stars are going to be sitting around 122 points.

Tough to beat 122 points because the Warriors are actually a pretty decent defensive team.

This championship was decided in the Hamptons back in July of 2016. Whoever it was that made the closing sale to Kevin Durant is basically the Finals MVP. So, if it ultimately was Jerry West then Jerry West should get the Finals MVP award.

I feel a sadness for Sam Presti, Billy Donovan, Russell Westbrook, and Nick Collison. This should have been their moment. Just pause and reflect where we as Thunder fans might be tonight if not for those horrific last six minutes of Game 6 in last year’s Western Conference Finals. Durant and Westbrook would be lauded for being one of the game’s greatest twosomes, but instead the historical references will now go to Curry and Durant.

It’s so ironic how those six minutes not only forever changed the Thunder, but more importantly changed the entire NBA and perhaps NBA history.

Durant will get his ring and probably the Finals MVP trophy while Westbrook will get his regular season MVP on June 26th. But for the time being, Westbrook is on a team with no competitive chance of winning a title while Durant could win multiple titles if he stays in Oakland with Curry if they make the dollars work.

I will say this for Durant though, he’s turned himself into a wonderful all around player. His defense is worlds apart from what we saw in those first Durant years in Oklahoma City. He’s a complete, well rounded player worthy of a ring.

Maybe it’s karma for the fans of Seattle. Maybe it was never meant to be for Oklahoma City to win a championship. But from someone who watched all of it from Day 1 it was a glorious ride just with an ending none of us in Oklahoma were hoping for in the end.

Will Westbrook stay? I have no idea. I hope he does, but again the NBA is an agent driven league for the superstar elites in the game. If Durant stays in Oakland you could literally pick the next best ten players from the other twenty-nine teams and they’d still be a solid Vegas underdog to lose to these Warriors.

One of my favorite players in the NHL even though he terrorized my Boston Bruins when he was a Montreal Canadian. Very offensively skilled defenseman. Nashville has an excellent assortment of defensemen and has a marked advantage over Pittsburgh in this regard. If you don’t know who PK Subban is then you need to know for more informed viewing for the rest of this series.

Great comments after Game 2 loss in Pittsburgh.

When a goaltender makes saves the team in front of him plays with confidence and swag. Such was the case on Saturday night as the Nashville Preds climbed back into the Stanley Cup Finals with an impressive 5-1 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Pecca Rinne looked nothing like the sieve we saw in the first two games in this series. On the night, he stopped 27 of the 28 shots he faced and made every stop after allowing an early goal to of course rookie Jake Guentzel. In these playoffs, Rinne is 8-1 at home and has a .949 save percentage at home.

The Nashville crowd was incredible. Maybe the best hockey crowd I’ve ever seen as they were part of the game. It kind of reminded me of the Oklahoma City crowds in 2012 when the Thunder made their run to the NBA Finals. The city of Nashville has gone ga ga over their hockey team and it’s clear this team feeds off the energy of the crowd.

Pens goalie Matt Murray had a tough game only stopping 28 of 33 shots, but in all candor he was left out to dry on numerous occasions.

I think we’ve got us a hockey series, but this shouldn’t come as a surprise because as the 8th seed in the West the Preds beat Chicago, St. Louis, and Anaheim to get here. A very impressive run and of course they have their crowd.

Game 4 on Monday night in Nashville. Can’t wait.

Both coaches in this series are excellent. Both Pete Laviolette and Mike Sullivan have won a Stanley Cup championship as a coach. Here’s Pete Laviolette in his Game 3 post game presser. He doesn’t mince words. Hockey coaches generally don’t mince words.

Sigh.

We would have been better off with Dennis Rodman as Prez–of this I’m certain.

I watched about five live minutes of Game 1 of the much awaited NBA Finals then became bored and changed channels to the more intriguing tale of money laundering in a Cypriot bank starring Russians and New York real estate guys. Game 1 was as I feared it might be with the Nike West Coast All Stars having just too much offensive firepower for pretty much any team on the universe currently. This is just very simple…Curry, Durant, Green, and Thompson are too much on one roster in this age of salary cap pro sports.

Maybe Cleveland can make a game or two competitive or maybe Draymond Green will kick LeBron in the balls again to get him worked into some sort of hyper state, but I just don’t see it happening.

I mean, even before Durant exited Oklahoma City to join the team he couldn’t finish off last season in the Western Conference Finals — this was a Warriors nucleus that won 73 games last season and was one game away from finishing the Cavs in five games for a repeat. Just think, if Green hadn’t kicked LeBron in the balls we’d be seeing a threepeat with this nucleus plus Durant.

Make this clear, Durant didn’t put Golden State over the top, he puts them out of mathematical reach for any other team in the NBA. The Nike All Stars are 13-0 in these playoffs with an average victory margin of around 17 points a game. Yawn.

There is one silver lining in all of this, we pretty much know this Warriors group won’t visit the White House and waste their time with Caligula. The thought of Caligula and Cupcake in a photo op embrace might put me over the top.

Maybe in all of this there will be some closure for Kevin and his mother. Maybe now that he’s finally won an NBA ring he can move on to another team in the league and the NBA can have some degree of competitive legitimacy again. Kevin himself said he was very intrigued with the Celtics last July in the Hamptons. My advice to Kevin Durant would be get your ring then maybe opt out to some other team in a big market like Boston, LA, or even Washington D.C. Dude, your mother won’t say this, but I will…you’ve ruined the NBA.

Consider this—if some GM could put Westbrook, Harden, Kawhi, and Lebron together on the same roster they might be able to beat the West Coast All Stars, but even then that wouldn’t be a given.

If only Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, and Wilt could have joined the Celtics—who knows how many rings they would have won.

This is what to date we’ve never seen from Durant in the NBA. That being, a super star taking ownership of his team and leading them to multiple titles, or in Durant’s case just one. The NBA Finals start tonight. I’m completely over Durant leaving Oklahoma City. But as an overall fan of basketball, I must admit I’m curious to see if Durant can get past his LeBron mental block as a member of the Warriors. If you take away Westbrook breaking Oscar’s record, this has been a season of nothingness. I’m hopeful the Finals give us something worth watching.