Month: September 2019

Even though I’m an OU fan—I’m a fan of Boone Pickens. I found him to be an interesting man who was never boring. I read two of his books and he was a character for sure.

He had a sense of audacity about him almost bigger than life ranging from his boom and bust business life to his giving of money to his favorite charity which was Oklahoma State University.

All told…Pickens donated almost a billion dollars to his alma mater and it didn’t just go to the football team. It went to every facet of the university.

But make no mistake about this…he wanted O State to win a national championship in football. He wanted O State to reach the football heights of both Texas and Oklahoma.

In 2011, ‘his’ team came within one missed field goal in Ames of making the national championship game. That haunted him for sure even though O State went on to beat Stanford in the Fiesta Bowl for O State’s only ever BCS bowl game win.

‘His’ O State team did quite well against Texas and has a current win streak of four games versus the Longhorns. Against OU…not so good as ‘Mike Gundy’s’ team is 2-12 against the Sooners.

This clearly miffed Boone Pickens. He was an extremely competitive guy. This one stat is probably what caused Pickens and Mike Gundy to have several public arguments with Gundy which caused the coach to flirt with Tennessee and Arkansas.

But in the end, they worked it out and their egos co-existed.

Who was more important to O State becoming a Top 25 program?

I would clearly say it was Boone. He gave O State financial viability. He gave them a stage to perform on. Other coaches beyond Mike Gundy would have had success with T Boone as the team owner. In a word—he leveled the playing field for his Cowboys.

O State in my mind just lost its most important alum. But one would think his legacy will live forever

Kevin Durant can’t let it go in regards to his departure from Oklahoma City. In a recently published Wall Street Journal piece he ripped the city for the way they treated him and then ripped Thunder management.

Yawn.

Here’s what I would say…Kevin needs to grow up and Oklahoma City as a city needs to grow up. There—the two parties have something in common.

If I were Durant this is what I would rip the Thunder for:

1 For never securing a REAL two way shooting guard after the Harden trade.

2 The Harden trade itself.

3 For firing Scott Brooks then replacing him with a college coach who was a lateral move.

4 For having a franchise which has gone 4-12 in post season play after his departure to Golden State.

5 For having Kevin Durant, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, and Paul George and not having anything to show for it other than a book by the NY Times’ Sam Anderson and a really good ESPN 30/30 film on the horizon.

If I were Oklahoma City or the Thunder the thing I would rip Durant for was not telling the organization he was going to leave so as they could secure something in personnel as he did with the Warriors.

He was a free agent…free to escape from Oklahoma City. I kind of get that feeling at times myself.

In closing…yawn.

How ironic…both Oklahoma City and Kevin Durant have something in common—they both need to grow up.

There were two great games in college football yesterday which was a good thing because both OU and O State played teams not worthy of mentioning.

Army traveled to the Big House in Ann Arbor and should have won in regulation. But the game somehow got to overtime and Michigan finally prevailed 24-21 in double overtime.

You can’t sleep on Army. They should have beaten OU in Norman in regulation last season and then went on to win eleven games and a bowl game.

Army is a very well coached team and a team worth watching.

In the nightcap national television game—LSU traveled to Austin to play the Texas Longhorns in an early season swing game for both teams. LSU was a Vegas four point road favorite and played through a rowdy Texas crowd to win 45-38 in what was a thrilling game.

LSU quarterback Joe Burrow was superb as he led this new look LSU offense all over the field against a young Texas defense. This is not your typical LSU offense. This is a Big 12-like offense which will score with anybody in the country. You have to think Burrow is now on some Heisman lists after this performance on national television.

Tough loss for the Big 12 because this game would have validated the conference coupled with the Longhorns’ recent win over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.

The Texas offense will give OU fits though. Sam Ehrlinger is a an excellent quarterback and he has plenty of weapons around him.

Once again the Red River Shootout should be a game we see two times this Big 12 football season.

I don’t know if losing to LSU at home rules out Texas for Final Four consideration, but it doesn’t help given now they would have to beat OU twice instead of just once to make the Final Four.

OU routed outmanned South Dakota. The Sooners now travel to play 0-2 UCLA in Los Angeles against a Chip Kelly team which to date has struggled. UCLA’s two losses have come at the hands of Cincy and San Diego State.

I would think the goal for Texas is to get back to the Big 12 Championship Game and see if they can break OU’s stranglehold on dominating the conference since the departure of Colt McCoy.

And then of course—Antonio Brown became another weapon for Tom Brady to throw the football to this coming season. The New England Patriots never cease to amaze.

It just breaks my heart to see the devastation rendered by Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas. The outer Abaco Islands will always hold a special place in my heart.

In 1981 my then girlfriend left to attend Auburn in Alabama. She told me she could never live in Oklahoma. I pretty much thought that was it because I wasn’t moving to Alabama. But she called me during the Christmas break of her freshman year and told me to come visit her at Auburn.

So…I made reservations for four days at a place called Treasure Cay in the outer chain of the Abaco Islands. Back then, there was one hotel and only one restaurant. It was literally like having your own island.

We walked the beaches. We talked…and she came back to live in Oklahoma and almost forty years later we’re still together with one son, six dogs thru the years, the diva Pauli, and a grandson three weeks away from being born in Denver.

Auburn since that trip has been my second favorite school and just this past week-end… I was screaming at the flat screen when they made their improbable comeback against Oregon to kick off the college football season. I was Auburn’s biggest fan in Oklahoma when they made their magical run in March Madness to the Final Four.

That trip in1981 changed my life in the most profound possible way. During the years—we’ve probably been back to the Bahamas maybe six times or so. The people are kind and wonderful and the devastation this storm wreaked upon them is tragic.

I hope the American people do all they can to help the people in the Bahamas.

This video is nothing like what we visited in 1981 back when Treasure Cay was the imagination of the developers.

As far as fan interest goes this sports season in Oklahoma the Oklahoma City Thunder will drop below both of the OU and O State quarterback stories.

The Jalen Hurts and Spencer Sanders stories will replace the Russell Westbrook and Paul George narratives. The Thunder will be somewhat anecdotal this season as they try to reshape themselves into something beyond the Charlotte Hornets. BTW…the ‘new Daily Hornet’ used a Little Nick Gallo bolt just this morning so I don’t see any real change there. It must be a millennial thing. Sigh.

Lincoln Riley has become the quarterback guru of football. His offense is the rage and he is arguably the Bill Walsh of this football generation. In case you forgot—Bill Walsh was of San Francisco 49’er fame with his West Coast offense.

OU will never be without a marquee QB as long as Lincoln Riley is the head coach. Spencer Rattler is redshirting behind Jalen Hurts as we move through this football season.

As I move forward with my blog I will try and cover ‘our’ Charlotte Hornets through this season of tanking and reshaping, but as of yet I’m not sure exactly how that should be done. But I’m almost certain it shouldn’t be done by quoting Nick Gallo. I think a certain combination of compassion and honesty will be required. In a word—fairness.

But for right now it’s Lincoln Riley and Jalen Hurts as the Sooners try to make it back to college football’s playoff for the third straight season.

This doesn’t really shock me that the once preeminent Oklahoma City Thunder blog of Royce Young has been sold. I mean…when you go an entire NBA season with one of the league’s highest payrolls and decide to use Little Nick Gallo as your go to guy you should be bought by someone else. I hate to sound cold, but in the name of blogging and writing when you sell out to that degree you should be bought by someone who gives a shit about the content of their blog.

Whether you have a thousand readers or a million readers you should have SOME PASSION FOR YOUR BLOG. Some pride in what you write. A blog is a place where one writes from one’s heart and not where you monetize ads. A blog should be personal…. as in personal to your heart.

Daily Thunder at one time was the place to be and it may well still be, but those who were around in its better days know how far the content of the blog has fallen.

To me, the thing which made Daily Thunder somewhat different was that it had an edge defined by its message board and commenters from all over the globe who became Thunder fans during the golden years of Kevin Durant and Company.

I hope the new owners have some ideas which goes into having some content and having some edge to that content.

Daily Thunder clearly has the most prominent brand of any Thunder blog and that coupled with the affiliation to ESPN should be enough to keep it as such. But again—content would be nice. Having someone with no financial ties to the Thunder would be nice. Telling it like it is would be nice.

Kevin Durant isn’t around any longer. Nor are Harden or Westbrook or Paul George. It will interesting to see how these guys do having a strictly Thunder concept. It will be interesting to see Oklahoma City’s interest in a team which will be tanking this basketball season once a destination for Chris Paul is determined.

I wish the new owners well. There should be a Daily Thunder and I hope they help DT find its way back.

General James Mattis has written a book. Who hasn’t at this point concerning the people who have served in the Trump administration?

I’ve ordered the book, but won’t read it until this winter. So this isn’t a book review.

I actually like Mattis because he’s a voracious reader and is someone I’d love to talk to about his place in contemporary history. How odd an empty vessel like Donald Trump ever had James Mattis as his Secretary of Defense. Mattis has a library of over 7,000 books. Donald Trump reads the National Enquirer and watches Fox Network. I think right there you have why this didn’t work out with these two men.

Since I haven’t read the book just yet, I’ll stop here and revisit this in a couple of months on my blog.

We can be sure of one person who won’t read the book…Donald Trump. He doesn’t read books. He watches cable news shows. Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon steer his course. He follows his polls to make sure his racist base still has his back. He envies Obama. If only Trump could become Obama.

Obama reads books and writes book. Michelle wrote a NY Times bestseller. Trump doesn’t read books on the NY Times list. If only Donald Trump could read and attain an approval rating of 97% it would be the presidency he thought it would be. Maybe more than just David Duke and the fringe right groups would wear his ball caps. If only his followers could read and explore their own views on the world.

The Obamas are adored world wide and are now making films. Donald Trump dreams of being urinated on in the Obama’s Moscow hotel room bed and hanging with women named Stormy and Pascha.

The empty vessel Trump like his followers in Oklahoma, Mississippi, West Virginia and those in the twenty-one states in our country’s bottom half don’t read books. They attend Trump rallies and rely on Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to tell them what to think.

This is why James Mattis resigned. He was a thinking man’s general who was working for a non- reading non-thinking president.

There—I said it for him and since I’m not in the military I didn’t violate the code of duty, honor… country.

For the third straight season a transfer quarterback at OU is a Heisman contender and will have a legitimate chance to win the Heisman Trophy while leading his new team to the Final Four Playoff.

We all know the Jalen Hurts story. He was 26-2 at Alabama. He was a starter as a freshman on a Alabama team which won a national championship team and was then yanked at halftime the next season as his team went on to win another national championship.

Hurts was then the backup quarterback and stayed as the backup quarterback at Alabama as he saved the Tides’ post season last year with his second half heroics against Georgia.

As a graduate transfer he decided to take his final season of college eligibility and go play for quarterback guru Lincoln Riley at OU.

And here we are after OU’s 49-31 season opening win over Houston realizing once again Lincoln Riley has a quarterback with something to prove and the ability to prove it on the Heisman stage.

Jalen Hurts was simply stunning in his OU debut with 508 total yards hitting 20 of his 23 passes and rushing for over 170 yards. He passed for three touchdowns and ran for three touchdowns.

To be frank, he made Baker Mayfield look a little pedestrian in comparison. No human alive makes Kyler Murray look pedestrian so I won’t go there.

But after watching this college football season’s first real week-end of games—I would think Hurts put himself on most voters top three Heisman watch list with his OU debut against Houston.

I’m not ready to say anything about OU’s defense yet, though they do appear to at least be better than last season’s train wreck which couldn’t get off the field except when the other team scored a touchdown.

I’m not ready to say OU with Hurts with this defense could beat Clemson or Alabama, but by the same token I wouldn’t say they couldn’t beat either of those teams if this defense continues to get better every week of this college football season.

OU versus Texas for the second straight season should be special… especially if Texas gets by LSU next week-end in Austin. I would guess every Sooner set of eyes will be glued to a flat screen watching the Horns host LSU.

But regardless of that outcome… OU for the third straight season is in the hunt not only for a Final Four slot, but a Heisman as well.

Jalen Hurts at OU is not only the Heisman story, but in the event OU meets Alabama again it will become college football’s story this season if OU can get past Texas in the Big 12.