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I thought the best questions as usual came from Berry Tramel. He asked a sequence of questions in regards to why using a two quarterback system like Chris Leak and TimTebow isn’t used more by college coaches nowadays.

Lincoln didn’t absolutely nix the idea, but pretty much made it clear that isn’t the way he wants to head with his quarterback situation. He cited continuity, pace, tempo, and the feel of the game as why he doesn’t embrace a two QB system. Good questions…good answers I thought.

Tramel later asked a question in relation as to why Spencer was put in the game for the two point conversion. Lincoln without hesitation answered he and Spencer were talking throughout the second half and Spencer was completely locked in and the best option for that play.

Somebody asked a question about Kennedy Brooks’ running style and Lincoln compared it to watching someone run with their lab at the park… which I thought was funny.

Lincoln is clearly not going to publicly name his QB starter until Saturday despite how many times the editors from the OU Daily spy on their closed practices. What those knuckleheads have done is cause the beat writers from the Oklahoman, the Tulsa World, the Norman Transcript, excetera to have their access to the program put on hold the rest of the week.

Note to the OU Daily… it would be better if you spy on the opponent rather than your own team so as Joe C doesn’t have to ban his own school’s paper from having access.

Al Eschbach evidently has these guys as students in his journalism class and prasied them as if they were Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward breaking into the Watergate Hotel. That was hilarious.

I would think Lincoln would have answered the QB question simply by the fact he gave Spencer Rattler off on Monday to reset himself mentally.

Anyway…hopefully full access to the program is put back in place after the team gets through this week. You don’t want to diminish access to the program like the Thunder do and create a feel of programmed almost paranoid narratives.

Here’s what surprised me about Lincoln’s presser…no one asked questions about the defense and the fact they’ve given up 65 total points from scrimmage combined versus K State and Texas.

My questions would have been, ‘Lincoln, are you concerned about the defensive performances the past two weeks and do you feel the defense isn’t as good as touted coming into this season?

‘Lincoln, are you concerned that Texas when trailing 48-41 went right down the field to tie the game late in the fourth period? Are you concerned your secondary didn’t have an answer for Xavier Worthy?

Then I’d wink at Lincoln just to lock down our quid pro quo off the record relationship and ask…

‘Lincoln…how did you feel about Tyrese Robinson’s excellent game on the O line and the fact he got a helmet sticker from Mike Jackson over at okcthunderground.com?’

It’s always about off the record…trust me. Berry Tramel will still have access this week for the simple reason Lincoln trusts Berry Tramel…Woodward and Berstein–not so much.

Here’s the thing about Tramel which I love though..I could call him right now on the number he lists on his columns and he’d talk about all this without violating his oath as a journalist.

Anyway…TCU in Norman at 6:30pm on Saturday.

After watching Alex Ovechkin score his 731st and 732nd goals in a Washington Cap win over the New York Rangers…I watched the entire second half of the Thunder’s preseason win over the Denver Nuggets.

Granted it was preseason and Jamal Murray didn’t play… it was still what I thought was a huge improvement from what I saw from the Thunder in their preseason loss to Milwaukee.

Josh Giddy on the offensive end is going to be a player. I’ll feel fairly confident writing that based on his natural offensive instincts and decision making. His comfort on the offensive end seems advanced for such a young guy. You could easily envision a three guard lineup with Giddy, Shai ,and Lu Dort in which their skill sets could work together quite nicely as their chemistry grows.

Some of the other young guys looked good as well. I like JRE’s offensive game and instincts as from I guess the power forward position. He needs to shed some of the baby fat, but his instincts offensively seem to be there to be honed for the NBA game.

Tre Mann had some moments. The Thunder need perimeter shooting from their bench. I would assume this is why Tre was drafted and yet he had a couple of nice drives at the basket.

Aaron Wiggins could be a solid player as well with an overall two way style of play which the Thunder need to evolve as a relevant team at some point in this rebuild process. I like his body…it’s NBA ready unlike the other rookies on this team.

Coming into this season I have mixed feelings in regards to Bazely and Roby… so I would prefer to watch more of them before I write anything about their games.

Same with Poku… his body looks better, but his offensive comfort in his own game doesn’t seem to be there. This isn’t the Greek B League and he looks somewhat confused at times. He should have played in the summer league. The best part of his game is his defensive reach from what I saw tonight as in deflections and blocked shots with that freak wingspan of his.

Poku and the Thunder need to decide what they want from him offensively is the way I see it in pre-season.

The same two teams end their preseasons with a game in Tulsa tomorrow night. I doubt I see much of it with the Dodger-Giant game being played, but on this night the young guys plus Shai and Lu looked somewhat promising. With a couple of heady vets added to the mix with a rim protector included in the team upgrade…they could be fun next season.

Lincoln gave his normal presser on Tuesday following the 55-48 win over Texas. As expected…he deflected as much as he could in regards to naming a starter for this Saturday’s home game versus TCU.

I would expect Caleb Williams will be the starter, but I also think in private Lincoln has told Spencer Rattler to keep his head up and be ready if needed.

OU fans should not forget…less than two weeks ago Spencer was 22 of 25 at Manhattan and arguably the best OU player on the field that day.

Here’s two things Caleb Williams has yet to do at OU:

1 He’s never gone to bed on Friday night knowing he was going to be the starter the next day with The Monster critiquing his every move.

2 To date he’s never played meaningful minutes in a true road game.

I would start Caleb Williams on Saturday just to see if the momentum with the rest of the offense continues to trend as it did on Saturday in the second half. OU outscored Texas 35-10 in the second half and ran the ball at will with Caleb in the game. But Arkansas literally did the same thing.

But I hope the OU fanbase shows some compassion and adult wisdom as this situation continues this season.

I have confidence in Lincoln Riley in this regard. I think he’s a good person as well as a smart coach.

This is one of those crossroad moments for Spencer Rattler as a young man. I think he would be very wise to embrace the advice he’s given by Lincoln.

Virtually every human I know has had a crossroad moment or two or three in their life…including me for certain.

We grow from these moments. We become better humans.

In closing… I’ll quote Hemingway… ‘The world breaks everyone, yet many become stronger in the broken places.’

Hang in there Spencer Rattler and become a stronger person.

Last preseason game for the Thunder on Wednesday night versus the Denver Nuggets. The feeble Thunder were worse than abysmal in their last performance against the defending world champion Milwaukee Bucks.

Again..Giannis 15th pick in his draft, Jrue 17th pick in his draft, Khris Middleton a second round pick.

My serious suggestion to Sam Presti is to start putting serious basketball people around you who can evalute talent beyond Portland taking Greg Oden with the pick in front of the Thunder.

Cole Aldrich, Mitch McGary, Jeremy Lamb (Harden trade), Josh Huestis, Terrance Ferguson, Darius Bazely, possibly the Serb, this last draft class minus possibly Josh Giddy.

Thank goodness Cam Payne and Abdel Nader ended up in Phoenix with Chris Paul along with Monty Williams and Mark Bryant. They escaped Oklahoma City before the death march commenced.

I mean at some point a slew of draft picks mean nothing if you don’t have capable people around you who can monetize those picks into a legitimate NBA team.

The only four players on this current Thunder roster who I can even watch right now were not drafted by the Thunder organization. Those being Shai, Lu Dort, Mike Muscala, Kenrich Williams and maybe Derrick Favors if he’s healthy enough to play.

So what I’m going to do with the Thunder on my blog this season is to attach my Thunder Journal entries to a song I really like so as I’ll have some motivation to write ‘something’ about the circa 2021-22 Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team.

My son is an MBA from OU just like Sam Hinkie from Claremore, Oklahoma. Chris sat with Sam Hinkie at some luncheon or something at the Mike Price College of Business at an MBA function of some sort a couple of years ago.

They talked a little shop on ‘The Process’ in Philadelphia as it was taking place.

So Sam Presti…here’s the thing, buddy—you may be conning the uber passive Oklahoma City media and the zombies at the Daily Thunder who you now have on payroll, but that won’t be happening on my blog.

Some basketball players to go along with the five guys I mentioned above would be a nice start.

LET”S GO THUNDER!

And of course there was Troy Aikman in 1985 on the cusp of morphing the OU wishbone then breaking a leg while Jamelle Holieway led the Sooners to the national championship over Penn State in the Orange Bowl.

What defense that team had. Probably in my view the best set of linebackers on one team in OU history.

Switzer helped Troy Aikman transfer to UCLA the next season and it worked for all parties. What I’m saying is…a little humility and some adversity for Spencer Rattler could be a journey of life silver lining in disguise.

Enough of that. I’m still jacked from handing out seven helmet stickers last Saturday.

Kirk does six…I do twelve. So I want all you O State fans to observe you’d be making my field as of Week 7 pre-Texas.

Even though Kayse Schrum genuinely annnoyed me with her Pollyanna comments about OU heading off to the SEC….I won’t hold that against Gundy’s team on my poll. Maybe she’d like to help with my poll just to make sure it’s fair to O State. I have connections at O State…maybe I should ask her if she’d like to share a poll date with me. Completely platonic, of course. Maybe that way there would be no questions of appropriate transparency and why teams are ranked where they are. Hopefully…Doug Gottlieb would approve as well.

My Top 12 — Week 7

1 Georgia

2 Oklahoma

3 Iowa

4 Cincy

5 Kentucky

6 Alabama

7 Ohio State

8 Penn State

9 Oregon

10 Michigan State

11 Oklahoma State

12 Notre Dame

———– On my bubble—–

13 Ole Miss

14 Wake Forest

15 Arizona State

Damn…I love this scene.

I listened to some various comments today on the Sports Animal in relation to what should happen with the OU quarterback job.

If I were Lincoln Riley I’d make Caleb Williams my starter this week versus TCU at home. But I’d make it clear at this point this is going to be a performance thing. You don’t perform at an acceptable level then I’d give Spencer another look in relation to the score, time, matchup etc.

In anotherwords, as a team we are in this together to be the best team we can be. Period.

Obviously we live in a different college world with the transfer portal, but ultimately as a coach you have to give your football team the best chance to win while at the same time being fair.

If Spencer and his father can’t live with this…then they should leave and go get ready for the NFL combine or start exploring the transfer portal for next season.

I hope for Spencer Rattler’s sake he considers how Jalen Hurts handled himself when he was faced with the same situation several years ago.

Most writers around the Alabama program to this day say Jalen Hurts is much more popular with the Bama fan base than Tua.

It’s called respect.

The fact Lincoln Riley inserted Spencer Rattler for that critical two point conversion would indicate to me he hasn’t given up on Spencer Rattler to the extent the OU fan base has already.

Again..like I wrote a month ago…Chris Leak and Tim Tebow won a national championship picking each other up at Florida back when Urban Meyer wasn’t a sad joke.

Lincoln Riley is a smart dude. We’ll see how this goes at the presser. His parents didn’t raise a dumbass. Just saying.

If you call yourself a real college football fan, this Chris Leak video might be an interesting watch considering what happened in Dallas this past week-end.

I read various comments just last week from Joe C in relation as to how impressed he is with Lincoln Riley’s human relations skill set. I agree with Joe C. Lincoln sees the big picture and I hope he can reach out to Spencer Rattler and if nothing else make a human connection this week which goes beyond football.

Lincoln and Spencer should have something in common…that being, an understanding of how tough it is being the face of the OU football program.

If you want to be a big time college quarterback with aspirations of playing on Sundays it can be a tough cold world out there.

The first things I thought of when Spencer Rattler got benched on Saturday were the benchings of Jalen Hurts at Alabama (2017-18) and Kelly Bryant at Clemson (2018-19).

*Jalen Hurts led Alabama to the natioal championship game a season before as a freshman and lost at the end in a thriller to DeShaun Watson and Clemson. Then was benched his sophmore year at halftime in the national championship game versus Georgia. Tua replaced Hurts and the Tide won the national championship.

Jalen and his father decided he should stay at Alabama and was Tua’s backup for another season before he played his last season of college football at Oklahoma.

The second situation was when Trevor Lawrence as a true freshman replaced Kelly Bryant as the starter at Clemson six games into the season. Clemson went on to win the national championship.

Trevor Lawrence led Clemson to the College Football Playoff the next two seasons and was the No. 1 pick in the past NFL draft class.

Kelly Bryant transferred to Missouri and it didn’t work out for him.

Trevor is now struggling with the 0-5 Jacksonville Jaguars while Jalen Hurts is actually exceeding the expectations of some as the starting QB with the Philadelphia Eagles.

So who was Bobby Reid?

Bobby Reid was one of the best high school quarterbacks in America in 2004. He played in the Houston area and was thought of as a can’t miss college quarterback. A dual threat QB who could be the next Vince Young or maybe even better.

Mike Gundy and Oklahoma State eventually won the Bobby Reid recruiting battle.

Bobby Reid broke his shoulder as a freshman then played at O State in 2005, 2006, and some of 2007 before he was benched before a road loss to Troy State.

This is when the infamous Jenni Carlson story created such a furor with Mike Gundy that it caused him to rant his iconic, “I’m forty, I’m a man…come after me.” What a postgame that was with Mike Leach from Texas Tech basically calling his own defense and offense a group of pussies in the other interview room. Leach actually fired his defensive coordinator the next day. Since he calls his own plays I guess he couldn’t fire himself as offensive coordinator.

I love Leach. He has an undergraduate degree from BYU and is a law school graduate from Pepperdine. Never played football. His Mississippi State Bulldogs host Alabama down the road in a game I have to watch.

After his famous incident of locking the son of ESPN’s Craig James in a an equipment shed at Texas Tech because of bad practice habits….Leach went on to write…Swing Your Sword: Leading the Charge in Football and Life.

Bobby Reid eventually left O State and played one season for Texas Southern.

So there are multiple examples for Spencer Rattler as to how to handle his future…especially in the day of the transfer portal.

I’ll be interested to see if Spencer Rattler takes the Kelly Bryant or Jalen Hurts route.

Archived from Mullet King: The Boone Pickens-Mike Gundy Saga

• Correction from yesterday. Yes…even I do occasionally go back and somewhat proof read. As a freshman Jalen lost at the end in a thriller to DeShaun Watson and Clemson. His junior season was when he sat the bench as Tua’s backup. BTW…Paul Finebaum is in agreement with me that perhaps Lincoln Riley will give Spencer Rattler another look at some point like Auburn did with Bo Nix after his horrific game versus somebody who calls themselves Georgia State.
• Lo and behold Bo Nix was getting a helmet sticker from yours truly in the win at LSU the very next Saturday. Sometimes…if the colt isn’t listening you have sit him for a race or two.

Just saw this on the internet after another Saturday of college football upsets.

Kirk’s Top 6

1 Georgia

2 Oklahoma

3 Cincy (Kirk abbreviates just like I do)

4 Iowa

5 Ohio State

6 Alabama

The only thing I’d change here on my Top 12 is inverting Iowa with Cincy.

I think I’ll do my entire Top 12 on Tuesday morning. Very big Big 12 game next Saturday in Austin with undefeated O State and Texas playing a pivotal conference game.

Kirk has a book out if you enjoy his insights on ESPN. Hopefully, he’ll give my book… Mullet King: The Boone Pickens-Mike Gundy Saga a shout out when that time comes. Can’t wait to do a book tour.

I would say yes and both games were in a sense a mirror of one another.

OU jumped out to 31-14 first half lead, but couldn’t come back in the third period and put Georgia away.

Caleb Kelly had the huge strip late in the game which led to a Stephen Parker TD and the Sooners’ brief lead. Yesterday…Caleb Kelly’s takeaway led to the Sooners’ taking a 48-41 lead.

See what I mean?

Maybe one of our local media will ask Lincoln Tuesday at his weekly presser if he thought of that game when his Sooners were down 28-7 at the end of the first period.

But clearly the game changed when Caleb Williams took the field and stayed on the field.

At some point Lincoln had to make Spencer Rattler accountable for bad turnovers. Both the interception and the fumble were terrible. It’s not like on either play a Texas defender did anything special. Just two very bad plays.

The OU quarterback position is like no other in the country. If you want to play QB at OU…you better perform at a certain standard and have some very thick skin.

It will be interesting to see how this is handled by Lincoln at the Tuesday presser as far as naming the starter for TCU on Saturday.

Long story short…the team responded to Caleb Williams and he saved the Sooners’ season as far as having any aspirations of making the college football playoff.

I tried watching ten minutes of the Thunders’ preseason game vs. the Milwaukee Bucks tonight and lasted about ten minutes before wanting to puke.

Keep in mind the defending world champion Bucks are anchored by Giannis who the 15th player taken in his draft. By Jrue Holiday who was the 17th player taken in his draft. By Khris Middleton from Texas A&M who was a second round pick.

I wonder if any of our local scribes could ever muster enough substance to ask Sam Presti how this could be?

Anyway…that plus yesterday’s instant classic are what got me watching the 2018 OU-Georgia game.

What a day of college football! OU with a comeback for the ages and Alabama fell to unranked Texas A&M.

Let’s get to the OU helmet stickers:

1 Kennedy Brooks with 217 rushing yards and the game winner in the waning seconds. Bijan Robinson wasn’t the best back in this RRR. The best back was Kennedy Brooks.

2 Caleb Williams with an off the bench performance which will go unrivaled in the Sooner history books. Now we know why Spencer Rattlers’ play has been so insecure at times this season. Spencer probably knew from practice what would happen if Caleb Williams got extended playing time in a game.

3 Marvin Mims finally caught a couple of touchdown passes six games into the season. That in itself is a barometer of how much the OU offense had struggled before the Kansas State game.

4 The OU offensive line with a special pat on the shoulder for right tackle Tyrese Robinson who after getting the bad penalty at Manhattan redeemed himself with an excellent performance.

5 Lincoln Riley for not losing his mind when the Sooners got down 28-7, made the QB change, and kept running the football. Note to Mike Gundy: OU finshed with 339 rushing yards exactly six more yards than Arkansas had against the Horns in Fayetville. Is there a chance Lincoln rope a doped Sarkisian’s Horns? Tramel needs to ask this at the Tuesday presser.

6 Caleb Kelly for the great takeaway from Xavier Worthy on the Texas kickoff return. How many remember Caleb’s hit which created a touchdown return in the epic double overtime game to Georgia? Great job, Caleb.

7 Jaden Davis what an irony. He went air on that first play from scrimmage on Worthy’s first touchdown, but made the tackle on the last play of the game when Texas tried to return a kick.

8 The OU Band showed great stamina in that heat in the second half having to play Boomer Sooner after so many clutch scores/plays against the wilting Longhorns.

That’s it. That’s my OU helmet stickers.

They should have a parade in Norman tomorrow.

BOOMER!