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Amid all the challenges of playing a college football schedule in the year of a COVID pandemic—the Big 12 got it right heading into Saturday’s championship game at Jerry’s World.

Iowa State should be the No. 1A seed and OU should be the No.1B seed. What none of us know is whether with Ronnie Perkins, Rhamondre Stevenson, and a more experienced Spencer Rattler at QB is if that’s enough for the Sooners to beat the Cyclones in a rematch.

Two best coaches in the conference in Lincoln Riley and Matt Campbell. Two best QBs in the conference in Brock Purdy and Spencer Rattler. Two best defenses in the conferences since Ronnie Perkins’ return to the Sooners’ front seven.

The two best teams on paper and on the field

A tough game to handicap from a betting standpoint. But like most games pitting two even teams it should come down to who doesn’t turn the football over at a critical time. Who doesn’t take a really stupid penalty to extend an important possession.

You would have to give Iowa State the edge at QB, the edge at running back with Breece Hall, the edge with an alpha receiver in 6’6″ tight end Charlie Kolar, and a defense which was statisticly better than OU’s for the duration of the season.

There will be no home field advantage and the weather will not be a factor.

Mojo and swagger will not be a big deal. Iowa State under Matt Campbell has beaten the Sooners twice since 2016 and almost did it a third time. OU players won’t be able to look across the field and see Mike Gundy with that deer in a headlight look on his face with a neon 1-15 tag hanging around his neck. This is a different deal. Iowa State players know it and OU players know it. This is an Iowa State team which thinks it’s going to win the football game.

Here’s the one place where I give the Sooners an edge…place kicker. I think the Sooners might have an edge here. So for that reason I’m taking OU 31 – Iowa State 28 at Jerry’s World tomorrow in what should be a good football game and a proper ending to the Big 12 football season.

Diana Krall – Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (2005) – YouTube

I may just hang out with my diva black lab Pauli and play it safe in self quarantine this Christmas. We got her nails done at the Lucky Dog Salon while we were in Denver and she looks remarkable. A pampered lab is a happy lab. Plus…I don’t have to talk to her about Donald Trump. I’ve made it this far without getting COVID…which is completely remarkable for someone like me. So I’m thinking a lot of Christmas music, no conversations whatsoever with family members regarding the human junk bond grifter Trump, just me and the lab out here in the forest of Deer Creek with the deer, wild turkeys and other assorted wildlife.

It’s lovely actually being away from other humans at certain times.

I have no desire whatsover at my age to get COVID. None. So I think I’m going to see if I have the inner discipline to do this.

Lots of Christmas music though.

This is the remarkable Diana Krall getting Mike’s Christmas Music Gala underway.

Be safe and enjoy Christmas in your own unique way this year.

Evan Mobley Is The Real Deal | USC Debut Full Highlights vs CBU 11.25.20 | 21 Pts, 9 Rebs & 3 Ast! – YouTube

Getting my game face on for Kansas at Texas Tech tonight. I love both Bill Self and Chris Beard as college coaches. I’m very exited to see what Tech throws at the Jayhawks tonight. Lest we forget Texas Tech is still the defending national runner-up as virtue of their close national final loss to Virginia almost two seasons ago.

When you watch a Chris Beard team what you should see is tenacious, tough team defense. Given Beard shaped his coaching style under Bobby Knight. When you watch Tech play you should see some of prime Bobby Knight as a coach in what Texas Tech is trying to do out there.

Chris B is 100-45 as a head coach entering tonight’s game in Lubbock.

Up above I have a video of Evan Mobley from USC. He’s currently at No. 2 on my list for the upcoming NBA draft. I wish we could see Evan Mobley this season in a tougher league like say the Big 12 or Big 10 where we could get a better gauge on his TSN. Because then we’d have a better feel of his physicality and ability to create space against better defenders.

When we have seen Cade Cunningham play eighteen Big 12 games we’re going to have a pretty good feel if he can adapt his game if Coach Boynton will morph his lineup with more of Rondel Walker, Bryce Williams and the Favors kid who can score the ball and open the lane for Cade.

Let’s go, Coach Boynton…I’ve been talking you up on my blog for two years. Let’s make sure we always have two guys on the floor with Cade who can shoot the trey and lessen lane congestion. Simple game. Gotta be adaptible. Take what they give you.

It was an interesting night in Stillwater on several fronts. Mike Holder allowed approximately 3,500 inside Gallagher Iba Arena even with Payne County at the top of Oklahoma’s COVID-19 rates. The fact this many people were allowed inside kind of surprised me given we’re headed into the toughest two months of the pandemic.

O State entered the game over Jaime Dixon’s Horned Frogs as a Vegas five point favorite which I thought was about right.

But for the second game in a row Cade Cunningham came out of the gates slow and in fact O State’s best ball in the first half was played with Cade on the bench.

In this season of empty or mostly empty arenas the energy is going to have to come from within the players themselves. O State is going to have to start coming out of the gate with more focus if they want to win Big 12 games.

This is a brutally tough, tough league. TCU filled my No. 8 preseason slot in the conference and you can’t lose games like this if you aspire to finish in the top half of the league standings come March. O State isn’t eligible to play in the Big Dance because of the LaMont Evans penalty, but still you want your ball club to get better every night out and reach their potential.

It doesn’t shock me TCU won the game, but it does concern me for the sake of O State’s season they’re coming out of the gates so slowly to start games. They did the same thing in Milwaukee in the road win over Marquette…. their best win to date. Somebody needs to rev the gas pedal on this young basketball team coming off the opening tip.

In the second half Mike Boynton called several timeouts to design PATs (play after timeout) to get Cade in better spots to score the ball, but Boynton’s ball club needs to be doing this more instinctively if they want to be relevant in Big 12 play and help Cade win NPOTY honors.

Cade went for 17 points, 8 rebounds, and 3 assists. Need to see more.

Cade had a chance for his second straight game winner, but his jump shot from the left corner came up a little short at the buzzer.

You want to see the brutal stretch O State has in their next six games? Try this on for size… at Texas, at Texas Tech, West Virginia, at Kansas St which should challenge Iowa State for the conference basement, Kansas, OU, and at West Virginia. I would only have O State as a Vegas favorite in the Bedlam home game versus OU if that.

You don’t bring your ‘A’ game mentality for those games and O State could be 1-6 league-wise coming out of this stretch of games.

This is where Mike Boynton is going to have to morph his team’s offense and create space for Cade on the floor.

Just like in hockey…the two most important words which should be coming out of a coach’s mouth…space and time. It alway’s about space and time on both sides of the ball. Creating it and denying it. This isn’t rocket science.

I watched some of the Thunder’s pre-season game as well. I could very well see Oklahoma City going something like 9-63. They appear to be truly on the cusp of being a very bad basketball team if they can dump Big Al Horford for a first round pick before winning some games.

Losing games enmasse and having to listen to Michael Cage trying to explain it seem to me more than cruel and unusual punishment for the Thunder fanbase. It’s going to be a cruel winter in Oklahoma City, but when you vote for the racist Birther Trump by a 70% margin … at some point the basketball gods will wreak retribution and come find you in the middle of the night.

Kansas at Texas Tech tonight. I’m ready to roll. Plus, I think I might follow Steven with the New Orleans Pelicans and see how their season goes.

(53) My Favorite Things (w/ lyrics) – The Supremes – YouTube

I became a grandfather for the second time last night as Aubrey was born in Denver. It is a wonderful feeling to be a grandfather. It truly is.

Every child should have their own song to sing on as they go through life. Kind of a pick me up when needed. I gave Little Robert… Journey of Life by Jake Owens.

For Aubrey I’d like to give her Favorite Things using the Diana Ross version.

I can’t wait to see Little Robert and Aubrey play together with Perk and Tucker in the park just out the door to where Chris and Elaine live in Bonnie Brae. It is the coolest little park you’d want your kids to be able to play in every day.

What a wonderful Christmas present to have Aubrey come into the world ten days before Christmas.

I am at peace.

This is Little Robert’s song.

(53) Journey of your life by Jake Owen #journey #of #your #life #video – YouTube

And this is the video they share when they both need a shoulder to lean on.

The Journey of Your Life Jake Owens – YouTube

37 Lines From “Seinfeld” That Prove We’re All George Costanza – YouTube

I would think the video speaks for itself. If you have any questions please feel free to ask questions on my Smerconish Saturday think tanks.

Pretty much the Trump Doctrine if you will.

Cade Cunningham Film vs Wichita State – 12/12/20 – YouTube

A big night of Big 12 hoops in Oklahoma tonight. I’m jacked. With the snow and cold a perfect opportunity to watch both O State and OU on the same night in a time overlap with both games going somewhat at the same times this evening.

Perfect setup for a junkie like me. I live for basketball nights like this, plus I need a break from observing the the dubious Trump rabble attempting a coup de ta in broad daylight. That whole schitck is becoming tiresome….a bore of great magnitude. Ship them back to Europe if they can’t assimilate to a rapidly ever evolving interconnected world economic system. See if the Germans will take them off our hands. I doubt the Germans would be all that interested in that most of the Trump base aren’t exactly our best and brightest. We’re not building any walls though.

O State hosts TCU this evening in what I would guess will be a Gallagher Iba Arena where they might allow around eight hundred or so fans to be sprinkled throughout the arena to satisfy COVID spacing common sense.

O State comes in at 6-0 fresh off a thrilling 67-64 road win at Wichita State last Saturday afternoon.

It was a very entertaining game to watch with the game tight throughtout and eventually being decided by Cade’s game winner on a three on O State’s last possession of the game.

Cade had a tough game scoring the ball with only ten points and two shot attempts in the second half, but this kid just oozes leadership and TSN from every pore of his body. His BBIQ is off the charts.

He wasn’t making shots, but he didn’t allow it to effect his overall game. He did other things and his teammates followed his lead and pulled their collective links on the team chain. When you have a star who will bleed, scratch, and claw with the role players you might just have yourself a ball team, Mike Boynton.

I could scout these guys at this point—you can see the evolving team building in process all around Cade. A group of young hungry role players who believe in the star while the star believesenough in them to share the ball. Interior size and defensive rebounding is what would concern me the most if were Mike Boynton moving into conference play.

This a game O State has to win if they want to finish in the top four of the Big 12 regular season standings. I have TCU, Iowa State, and Kansas State as the bottom three in the Big 12 as we get going with what should be an awesome season if the COVID challenges can be met by the league as we head into winter.

I’m ready to kick back and see some Big 12 hoops on a cold wintry mid-December night.

Have a wonderful December 16th.

(53) Ronald Reagan On Patriotism And His Message To America (January 11, 1989) – YouTube

This is Ronald Reagan in 1989 before leaving office after serving two terms. Of course…Reagan had his own issues with Iran Contra, but we never to this imagineable extent saw the the human element we witness today with the Trump base.

This illustrates how far the party of Lincoln,Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Reagan has fallen in thirty years.

It’s like a junk bond offering which has been hollowed out and bundled to attract the biggest losers and suckers regardless of the long term good of the country.

Two years after this speech by Reagan…the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War as we knew it began to melt.

It is is diificult to fathom how far and with a such a precipitous crash America has fallen into the cultural abyss of nothingness after four years of Donald Trump.

Steve Schmidt: Trump ‘Has Been Fired By The American People’ | Deadline | MSNBC – YouTube

Steve Schmidt was one of John McCain’s campaign managers in 2008. A lifetime Republican until Donald Trump leveraged the Republican Party….these were his thoughts on yesterday and the situation with GOP congressmen and attorney generals attempting a political coup de tat.

In short…in plain view of everyone… stealing an American presidential election with no evidence whatsoever from a legitimized conservative court the election results were problematic.

These were his thoughts.

I couldn’t have conveyed these thoughts into writing any better.

This is precisely why Oklahoma’s highest ranking law official in attorney general Mike Hunter should be ashamed of himself for taking part in this type of nonsense in order to curry some political favor from the wingnut crazies on the outer fringes of his own party. He should be ashamed of himself and maybe revisit why he went to law school in the first place.

It is within this realm of the Republican Party where the intertwined remnant sewage sludge of Donald Trump, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, et al mixed with the political DNA imagery of Hugo Chavez in which every person who can read and somewhat values American democracy should all take great care moving forward.

Inside the Night President Obama Took On Donald Trump | The Choice 2016 | FRONTLINE – YouTube

Historically what we’ll never know is if Trump would have run for president if President Barack Obama hadn’t humiliated him in front of the world during the D.C. Correspondents Dinner.

At some point…Obama had no choice. Trump kept going nonstop with the Birther bullshit. It’s embarrassing these people who call themselves the Trump base operate at such a low level, but at some point you have to draw a line in the sand.

Barack Obama drew a line in the sand and did the unthinkable to older, white America…he as a black man stood up in public in front of the world and spoke his mind. You don’t do that to that to the portions of white America who still live with the Jim Crow mentality. You just don’t do it.

I thought it was fine. I thought Obama should have gone even further. This is what should have happened to Donald Trump back when he was in high school…instead of being completely spoiled by his father. We all have to be put in our place at some time. Humility isn’t a bad thing.

So yesterday Attorney General Bill Barr finally decided he’d disgraced himself enough working for this piece of trash to a point he clouldn’t go any further and quit. Do any of you Trump supporters at this point acknowledge a repeat pattern here or is this just more fake news and deep state?

McConnell and some other GOP senators finally admitted Trump lost the election fair and square. In places like Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana…I’m not sure it will never be admitted Barack Obama is a legal citizen and that Trump lost this election.

This is the America we live in and have lived in for over 240 years.

Nothing has really changed in America in this regard.