Tilting at Windmills

Blogging inspirado comes from various sources. Rehashing UT’s litany of arrests and thugs isn’t really news, but when our friends at Barking Carnival feel the need to dig up 20 and 30-year-old OU arrests and thugs, we at TaW feel obligated to respond in kind.

So, in response to BC’s “Oklahoma All-Garbage Team,” we present to you the Texas All-Garbage Team.”

We already posted our retort to the Sooners that BC chose to include. (Actually, Blevins was a nice inclusion, we’ll give you that one. Odds are 90-10 the entire Sooner fanbase will agree with you there.) The only reason it took me a couple of days to come up with the Texas version, instead of a couple of hours, is that there is so much Longhorn asshattery to wade through. It was hard to pare down the list. I mean, really … do I go with Ron McKelvey or Tyrell Gatewood at safety? Does Ricky Williams start ahead of Cedric Benson, or do I say fuck it and run the veer?

One thing you’ll notice about the list is that most of these UT players are from THIS decade. I didn’t have to go back very far, although there were a couple of gems from a ways back that tasted like special, delicious sauce and were too good to pass up. What we ended up with was almost enough players for UT to hold an intra-squad scrimmage. Unfortunately, a lot of these guys aren’t allowed to associate with other known felons, so that will never happen.

This post is long enough as it is, so it will only include footballers. Steroid-abusing asshole Roger Clemons will not be mentioned. Nor will domestic abusing basketballer Jason Klotz, drunkard basketball coach Tom Penders, drunkard baseball coach Auggie Garrido, or sleazebag corporate defense attorney Joe Jamail.

I’m sure I’m leaving some people out, so feel free to include your own below.

So, all of that out of the way, fellow Sooners and our welcomed guests from all corners of the Interwebs, I give you … the Texas All-Garbage Team:

Quarterback

1st team – No brainer: Vince Young. We all know as we move through life that after the applause comes the reality. Sorry the people of Tennessee didn’t line up to swallow your choad everytime you walked through a shopping mall, Vince. Did the NFL turn out to be actual work? Did people actually start critquing your work? At least next time you’re so distraught that you embarrass a 13-year-old girl, we’ll know where to find you – at your friend’s house eating chicken wings and watching football. Your mama says you just need “a lot of love and support.” Apparently, that’s mama’s code phrase for “my welcoming bosom.” While you’re cuddled up with her, see if she can help you with your throwing motion, Vince.

2nd team – Matt Nordgren. You thought I was going to say Chris Simms, right? Not even little Chrissy’s all-world talent could match Nordgren’s rocket arm that, upset at not getting playing time earlier in the day, fired a UT student’s cell phone through a few practice tires after said student wouldn’t yield a drop-off spot outside Jester Center at 3:30 a.m. in the fall of 2003. Apparently Nordgren had his feelings hurt (see a theme here?) because he didn’t get any playing time earlier in the day. Further pissing him off was that the aggrieved UT student wasn’t impressed by Nordgren’s Lexus SUV (let that simmer), with DB Cedric Griffin’s gold teeth in the passenger’s seat playing willing accomplice.

Carrying a clipboard – Chris Simms. After decommitting from Tennessee to play for the Horns (how doe$$$ that happen, anway?), Simms went on to star in Teddy Lehman’s and The Great Roy Williams’ personal highlight reels for a couple of years. Simms went 0-fer against Oklahoma and seemed to have more interceptions returned for touchdowns than he did actual passing scores. That’s why he’s holding the clipboard on this team: if there’s some way, any way, we can get Chris Simms back on the field or at least coaching those who are in the OU-TX game, I’m all for it.

Graduate assistant – Peter Gardere, he of beating OU four times (approximately 15% of his total wins as a starter over four years) and marrying banging rich Westlake skanks cougars broads fame, was pulled over in downtown Austin for DUI in 2007.

Top incoming recruit – Ryan Perrilloux didn’t set foot on campus, but apparently that didn’t matter on the OU AGT. He was supposedly the crown jewel of Mack’s 2004 recruiting class, but did a 180 on signing day and stayed in state to play for Les Miles. Don’t kid yourselves, Longhorns: it’s not that you didn’t want Perrilloux; he didn’t want you. Mack and UT fans were drawn like mosquitos to a bug-zapper to Perrilloux’s now-defunct www.ryan11.com website, which listed all of his high school accomplishments and was a celebration of everything Ryan. After he got to LSU, it didn’t take long for trouble to, er, find him. Miles suspended him “indefinitely” in May 2007 for trying to use his brother’s ID to get into a casino. “Indefinite” turned out to be three months as Perriloux was starting by September. In October, he got into a bar fight with some other LSU players and was subsequently suspended for one game (the others involved in the fight were kicked off the team). The following February (2008), Perrilloux was “indefinitely suspended” again for “violating team rules.” Supposedly those rules had nothing to do with anything outside the football program. Tell that to the feds, though, who had been looking into him for more than a year for his part in a counterfeiting ring (allegedly).

Running back

1st team – Ricky Williams. How’s that draft workin out for ya, Ditka? How’s that Nepalese blonde hash workin’ out for you, Ricky?

Admittedly, he was one of the best college running backs I’ve ever seen. But as good of a runner as he was, he was just as much (if not more) of a fruit. Apparently the rigors of having to earn his paycheck proved to be too much.

“Playing in the National Football League, you’re told, you know, where to be, when to be there, what to wear, how to be there.”

Ricky quit the NFL before news of his third failed drug test came out. Apparently he didn’t care that he was liable to the Dolphins for millions in signing bonus money they wanted back because what did he do with his time off? He moved to an RV park in Australia and read a lot. Presumably he eschewed the cheeba so he could come back and make the millions he pissed away. Well, not so much.

This guy’s one of the biggest waste of talents in NFL history, but surprisingly enough, he almost didn’t make the first unit on the Texas AGT.

2nd team – Cedric Benson. You could almost say Ced the Head is on the 1a team. Benson had already been busted for pot and the innocuous-sounding “criminal trespass” in 2003. The latter was actually when he and a couple of his boys rolled up at some girl’s apartment and busted down her door looking for his stolen (allegedly) plasma TV. He was sentenced to jail time, but as luck would have it, the Travis County Jail had no vacancies and he was free go to. Being the strict discplinarian that he is, Mack punished him further by suspending him for the Baylor game. In 2008, Benson apparently couldn’t use his NFL millions to hire a boat driver at Devil’s Cove on Lake Travis and was arrested for boating while intoxicated. Benson said he wasn’t drunk and thought he passed all of the field sobriety tests, which included saying his A-B-Cs, a challenging feat for him even if he was sober.

“They gave me a field sobriety test, told me to say my ABCs and told me to count from 1 to 4 up and down,” Benson told the Chicago Tribune. “I’m thinking, I passed all the tests, did everything right.”

He resisted arrest and eventually had to be pepper-sprayed in order to be subdued. How did he respond? He got arrested for DUI again two months later in downtown Austin, near the Rainbow Cattle Company, a popular gay nightclub at 5th and Lavaca (just sayin).

Given all that, yeah … it’s a wonder Benson didn’t make the first team on this list. The reason he didn’t was, in actuality, he was a gutless, overhyped running back.

3rd team – Edwin Simmons. Here’s another guy who almost deserved first-team honors if it wasn’t for that little thing called lack of talent. He once had a lot of promise and even had a great game against OU one year, but he lost it when he went off-tackle with some UT alum’s wife in 1987. Austin Police arrested a naked and stoned Simmons in somebody’s West Austin yard.

Reserves – Selvin Young and James Henry. Young worked himself into the defensive bong rotation in 2003, arrested for pot along with half of the UT defense (see below). Henry was a real winner, of “bitches must be kicked” infamy. In 2007, he was arrested for defending the honor of a teammate, Robert Joseph, who was already in jail for robbery (allegedly). Henry was outed courtesy of an overheard phone call at the Travis County Jail, teaching both he and Joseph that the jail phones are tapped. You learn something new every day.

Fullback – Because everybody needs a battering ram to make a hole, may I present fullback Brock Edwards. In 2002, Edwards was sentenced to 2 years probation, 200 hours of community service and ordered to pay $5,700 in restitution for a fraternity fight where he punched a guy, knocking him out, then kicking him in the face when he was on the ground. Dude, if I ever need to get three yards, I want Brock leading the way.

Wide receiver

1st team – Ramonce Taylor (Texas AGT MVP). If you thought Benson and Henry were fun, you’ll love this guy. Taylor was arrested with four pounds of pot in his native Temple, TX in 2006. Lucky for him, it didn’t weigh more than five, else the charge would have been upgraded (items tend to settle during shipping). Naturally, Taylor’s attorney said he was just holding it for a friend. Mack took a hard line and dismissed Taylor from the team, but not for the pot charge. Rather, he cited academics. Taylor made it academic after doing two months, then getting busted again for pot possession in 2008. Realizing that Taylor was really just a misguided kid who “is like a piece of coal … If you put enough pressure on him he can become a diamond,” the court suspended his two-year sentence. Taylor served five months.

2nd team – We get a two-fer here: Mike Adams and Lovell Pinkney. Adams was an ultra-talented wideout who, in 1994, was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend. It’s amazing he had the strength to do it since, just two months prior, he was stabbed by UT basketball player Al Segova during an altercation. Adams also slugged a cop on Sixth Street while in school at UT, but I digress.

When Adams was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend, who was holding her down? Lovell Pinkney. That’s right, the same Lovell Pinkney who admittedly made 30 grand selling crack when he was 16 years old.

Pinkney and Adams were also investigated for the free use of a rental car, but after assaulting cops and selling crack, this seemed so insignificant that it just went away.

3rd team – Myron Hardy. He was arrested in 2005 for pulling a switchblade in a fight at Seventh and San Jacinto in downtown Austin.

Tight end

This position was pretty scarce in my research, but we can approach this a couple of ways to alleviate any issues:

• Move Pinkney to TE. He was pretty big and based on the incident with Adams girlfriend, good at holding people up (or down) if he has to stay in to block.
• Run the spread with no tight end. UT pretty much has to do it these days anyway since they have no TE.

Offensive line

Going for quality over quantity here. If nothing else, since we have so many skill position players already, we could just take this team and run Leach’s Ninja formation.

1st team – BucKKK Burnette. I know lots of people from Wimberley and “racist” can’t be applied to a single one of them. Obviously, none of them are Buck Burnette, a backup center who Mack booted from the team in 2008 for posting a racist epithet on his Facebook page just after President Obama’s election:

“all the hunters gather up, we have a #$%&er in the whitehouse”

BucKKK subsequently came out and said how sorry he was for putting it on a public site and for just repeating what somebody else had told him. He failed to apologize for being a racist, though. At least I think that’s what he meant with his Facebook status. I assume he didn’t censor “Sooner.”

2nd team – Stan Thomas. This genius thought it would be a great idea to taunt Miami before the Horns met them in the 1991 Cotton Bowl. Among the gems he fired off:

• Taking Russell Maryland’s Outland Trophy away from him
• Compared attending a barbecue to Canes being in prison (not sure of the logic here, but he’s on a roll – let him go)
• He wanted “the first play to last five minutes because I’m going to hit everybody.”
• He predicted Texas would win 28-10

Let’s just say that didn’t sit well with Miami. They had 16 penalties (nine for unsportsmanlike conduct) for 203 yards and face-raped the Horns, 46-3. Texas AGT graduate assistant QB Peter Gardere was sacked eight times, three of them by Maryland, who abused … Stan Thomas – all day long.

3rd team – Mike Williams. The posterboy for fatass linemen turned out by the moobs-laden Maddog Madden, Williams is considered by the Buffalo Bills to be the biggest bust in the history of their organization. Williams was 6’6″, 375 when he was the #4 pick in the draft and signed a $10.5 million bonus. His ankle joints understandably started failing in his rookie season, causing him to miss a few games. The next year he began missing workouts and only started five of nine games before his back said “enough” and he lost his job to a converted tight end.

Maddog’s name in Project Mayhem was “Robert Paulson.”

Defensive line

1st team – Andre Jones. This genius was busted in 2007 for assisting in the robbery with Robert Joseph (see below), which subsequently led to James Henry kicking some bitches (see above).

2nd team – Henry Melton. Before he was a fat defensive end, he was known as UT’s fat running back who could get you three yards and an oxygen tank. Melton’s DWI bust in downtown Austin was just a part of the Longhorn Summer of Love in 2007.

3rd team – Lamarr Houston. He was arrested for DUI when he drunkenly wrecked his car in downtown Austin last fall. Mack was torn about suspending him for the UTEP game.

Honorable Mentions

Stonie Clark. After James Allen stopped juking ghosts, Stonie Clark opened his big arms and bear-hugged the Sooner tailback on the goalline to preserve a Texas win in 1994. Clark became a Longhorn legend and parlayed that one play into a lucrative skeezy career selling cars on the Austin Motor Mile.

Larry Dibbles. He was in the car with Selvin Young (see above), Edorian McCullough and Aaron Harris (see below) when the Brazos County Task Force stopped them and did a “well, looky here!” with the weed they were packing.

Linebacker

1st team – Sergio Kindle. He’ll be on the DL this fall, but he was a linebacker when he was busted for DWI in Austin.

2nd team – Aaron Harris. Harris was the rocket surgeon who tipped police off to the pot in the car when he, Tyrell Gatewood and Tarrell Brown (see below) were arrested.

Top incoming recruit – Chris Collins. The only reason Collins isn’t on the first team is because Mack finally had to cut him loose, or else. Collins was sentenced in 2007 for the aggravated sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl when he was 17. Collins admitted to police that he had sex with the intoxicated girl in Room 207 of the Comfort Suites in Texarkana at an after-prom party. After Mack was forced to cut him loose, Mike Gundy’s humanitarian streak kicked in and he welcomed him to the Payne County lockup Oklahoma State football team in Stoolwater.

Defensive back

If you’ve made it this far, get comfortable. The Texas AGT is absolutely loaded in the secondary (pun intended).

1st team – Ron Weaver (a.k.a. McKelvey). First team status here really means something and Ron McKelvey’s story is one of my favorite Longhorn schadenfreudes of all time. McKelvey (that was his UT name, so I’m going with it) began his football career as Ron Weaver the wide receiver at Monterey Peninsula College in 1984, then went to Sacramento State in 1988. By the time he got to Mackovic’s Longhorns in 1995, he was a 30-year-old defensive back, still clinging to glory like Uncle Rico wistfully throwing a football over a mountain. He’s best known (athletically) for getting burned on a long touchdown in a 48-7 win against Tech, costing the Longhorns a shutout.

2nd team – Another two-fer: Tyrell Gatewood and Tarrell Brown. Only a real-life Wooderson could knock these two out of the starting spot. Brown was arrested in 2006 with Gatewood and Harris (see above) at 3 a.m. on I-35. Brown gets special recognition for, unlike the other two, having a loaded 9-mil in his lap. Gatewood makes the team for having multiple arrests. His second bust was with Ben Wells (see below) when police found pot, xanax and a baby bottle full of codeine cough syrup.

3rd team – Robert Joseph. Really? The guy charged with aggravated robbery at an East Austin apartment complex is THIRD team?!? I told you the secondary was stacked. Joseph was arrested with Dre Jones (see above).

Honorable mention

Edorian McCullough. One of the Madisonville 4, he was arrested with Dibbles, Harris and Young (see above).

Ben Wells. Arrested with Tyrell Gatewood (see above) in, you guessed it, 2007 for possession of drug paraphernalia.

Kicker

Russell Erxleben. He once set an NCAA record with a 67-yard field goal in 1977. He was also a three-time All-American punter, so the guy had really good feet. He’s also a sneaky, thieving motherfucker. In 2000, Erxleben was convicted of running a Forex ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of close to $33 million. He plead guilty and was and sentenced to 84 months in prison (that’s 7 years, if you’re into the math thing). He was ordered to pay $28 million in restitution and fined another mil on top of that.

Coaches

1st team – Mack Brown (MacIII). Might as well grab the low-hanging fruit. With teeth yellower than a baby’s stool and a voice that’s a dead ringer for Mr. Haney on Green Acres, Brown has exactly one (1) conference championship in 25 years as a head coach. It does so happen that in that conference title year he got a national championship, as well, but that was also in 2005 and if you’re doing the timeline math with the above-referenced arrests, you’ll see how desperate he was to get one. Mack coddles when he thinks his players need a hug, he claps when you do poorly, he answers questions for Chris Simms at press conferences and he makes excuses like “we didn’t throw because it was too windy” and “we didn’t lose, we just ran out of time.” He’s a living legend in the UT community, which only goes to show that it doesn’t take much.

2nd team – John Mackovic (MacII). Even UT fans will tell you he’s a douche. He’d rather have a nice Pinot than a Shiner and he sure didn’t like to coach defense. Ask UCLA, who came into Austin for the infamous Route 66. MacII also lost to Rice and John Blake. That speaks for itself.

3rd team – David McWilliams (MacI). McWilliams was just barely over .500 in five years (’87-’91) at the helm, with only two of them winning seasons. He also went to just two bowl games, winning only the Bluebonnet in ’87. He was 1-4 against A&M.

Honorable Mention – Darrell K. Royal. I would have put him higher on the list, but he is from Hollis, Oklahoma afterall. DKR will forever hold the ignominious distinction of coaching the last all-white national championship team in 1969. He resigned from coaching in 1976 after Barry Switzer was kicking 100% of his ass every year using Texas players – black Texas players who thought they wouldn’t be given much of a shot at UT. Because the UPI awarded their national champion before the bowl games, DKR’s 1970 title has an asterisk next to it.

Our friends over at Barking Carnival thought it would be a great idea to come up with an Oklahoma All-Garbage team, pointing out trouble players at various positions and making a team out of them.

For their target audience, it was a fairly well-written and funny piece that made for a nice off-season story. The impetus was that it has been 20 years since CT was on the cover of SI in an orange, Cleveland County jumpsuit. With that backdrop, this submittal was pretty clever. Kudos.

There were just a couple of problems, though:

1. We Sooners were probably thinking “Yeah, they’ll bring up Buster Rhymes and Stanley Wilson. We know we know.” Actually, no. The article is poorly researched by what appears to be a young 20-something who did nothing but scan the SI article, then throw in Chaisson and Granger to spice it up.
2. Really, Texas? You really want to play the “all-arrest” team? Fine, I’ll play your game, you rogue.

Before listing enough Longhorn arrestees and asshats to fill out a two-deep, Orange-White game scrimmage roster, I want to address the first point above. If you’re going to go with an all-douchebag team (or whatever your criteria was), do a little research. Look, man, any number of us could have helped you fill out this roster. Despite your perceptions, we know our flaws and readily admit that yeah … Joe Don Looney was fucking cray-cray, but he was our guy. Never heard of Joe Don? My point exactly.

Since you admittedly said you’re so young you’ve only been following football for 20 years, it’s understandable (and also obvious from the article without you even telling us) why you’d miss so much low-hanging fruit like Kerry Jackson, Buster Rhymes, Marcus Dupree, Stanley Wilson, Jamelle Holieway (seriously, you missed Jamelle and put Brent Rawls on there instead??), Darryl Hunt … I’ll stop before my Sooner brethren start stringing me up. Just know, fellow Sooners, that I’m not trying to bag on our own guys, but just wanting to help this kid out with his research because he obviously only flipped through the old SI a bit before he logged into his WordPress account, using the password “itsfiveoclockandoustillsuckshahaha.”

It never gets old

Then you think it’s clever to include Keenan Clayton and Jermaine Gresham for what amounts to parking tickets. Srsly? Hell, go ahead and throw me on your team then. It took me a couple of months past the due date before I remembered to pay that $4.00 tollway bill I got. TxDOT slapped me with a $5.00 late charge on top of it. Can I play kicker?

Addressing point two above – really, you want to play this game? I guess 2007 just magically didn’t happen in Austin. I’m glad you were able to dig up Billy Sims, who played 30 years ago (not three, like Ramonce Taylor). Oh, by the way … if the best thing you could dig up on Billy was his performance at Sam Bradford’s Heisman ceremony (which I thought kicked major ass, Billy!), you totally failed on your Sims research.

I’m just the messenger here, Billy. You can BOOMA! whenever you want to, my man!

We’ll soon post our own compilation of similar Texas transgressions, going position-by-position.

I can’t make up stuff this good: a day after the world learned that UT claims a 2008 Big 12 football championship, Asterisk-gate continues on the 40 Acres. DeLoss Dodds has decided to pay $44,000 in bonuses to Mack’s assistant coaches as part of a contractual-incentive for winning … the Big 12 championship. Be sure to read some of the comments. They’re priceless.

So, in honor of this silliness, we at TaW thought we’d map out the timeline to see how we got here. A special thanks to DeLoss Dodds and the UT SID for helping out us bloggers during football nuclear winter.

May 20 and 22, 2008: Annual Big 12 spring meetings

Football revenue-sharing and player eligibility highlight the agenda. Most are mainly looking forward to seeing the conference’s success over the past 10 years translating into something besides chicken casserole and soggy rolls at the media trough buffet.

July 31, 2008: Big 12 issues press release regarding divisional tie-breaking procedures

Ah … here they are: the tiebreaker procedures that will be used in the 2008 season. It’s good the Big 12 did this just in case there’s a question later and we need to refer back. Some of these are a little bit overkill, though. A three-way tie? There’s no way would that ever happen*.

Divisional Champion: The (eligible) team with the best winning-percentage of all divisional members in its eight conference games is declared the divisional champion and representative to the Dr Pepper Big 12 Conference Football Championship Game. A team ineligible under NCAA or Big 12 rules for postseason (bowl) competition shall not compete in the Championship Game.

Divisional Tiebreakers:

The following procedure will determine the representative from each division in the event of a tie:

a. If two teams are tied, the winner of the game between the two tied teams shall be the representative
b. If three or more teams are tied, steps 1 through 7 will be followed until a determination is made. If only two teams remain tied after any step, the winner of the game between the two tied teams shall be the representative.
1. The records of the three teams will be compared against each other
2. The records of the three teams will be compared within their division
3. The records of the three teams will be compared against the next highest placed teams in their division in order of finish (4, 5 and 6)
4. The records of the three teams will be compared against all common conference opponents;
5. The highest ranked team in the first Bowl Championship Series Poll following the completion of Big 12 regular season conference play shall be the representative
6. The team with the best overall winning percentage [excluding exempted games] shall be the representative
7. The representative will be chosen by draw.

August 30, 2008: College football season starts.

Our summer of discontent has finally ended and football season has started. #4 OU sleepwalks 57-2 past Tennessee-Chattanooga with Joey Halzle throwing a touchdown pass in the second quarter to put OU ahead 50-0 at halftime. This prompts the first of many shrill cries throughout the season that the Sooners run up the score (hereafter abbreviated “RUTS”). Howard Schnellenburger spends too long at Scholz’s and misses kickoff of the game between his Florida Atlantic Owls and #11 Texas. He missed his quarterback’s happy-go-jacky routine against UT’s young secondary, putting up over 2 bills through the air by halftime. By the time Drunkenberger shows up, UT’s on the way to crushing FAU 52-10.

September 13, 2008: Get bent, Pac-10

Sam Bradford has maybe his finest game as a Sooner, completing 18 of 21 passes for 304 yards and 5 TDs. The #3 Sooners smashed UDub in Seattle, which despite the Huskies finishing the year as one of the worst teams in college football, it finally showed that OU could perform well on the road. The shrill cries this week came from people warning everybody in Austin to build an ark before Hurricane Ike washed the entire city away. UT postpones its ass-kicking of Arkansas while just enough rain fell in Austin to fill a pitcher of diluted margaritas at El Arroyo.

October 11, 2008: UT wins Red River Rivalry

Bradford throws for 387 yards and 5 TDs, but thanks to an inability to stop #5 Texas in crucial second half situations (that was your backup plan, Venables? Seriously?), #1 OU falls to Texas, 45-35. With the win, Texas takes essentially a two-game lead in the Big 12 South (see Tiebreaker A). Brainfart Players of the Game are shared by Brent Venables, Brandon Crow and the entire Sooner kickoff coverage team. Two phantom personal fouls against Colt McCoy and a disallowed Sooner interception in the end zone leave Oklahoma fans seething.

October 25, 2008: OU 58, Kansas State 35

The #4 Sooners look like they’re playing Madden 2008 on Playstation as they put up 55 points by halftime on Kstate, prompting cries of RUTSing by those who didn’t actually watch the game. This running theme will continue.

November 1, 2008: #7 Texas Tech 39, #1 Texas 33.

Tech’s Michael Crabtree shakes free of two Longhorn tacklers and scores with :01 second left to upset Texas and turn the college football nation upside down. Leach says his team plays 60 minutes, including the last minute of the game. By Monday, Texas fans will forget this game ever happened. With this game, Tech is now – gasp – atop the Big 12 South and just has to win at Oklahoma to go to the Big 12 championship.

Meanwhile on that same night back in Norman, #4 OU is teabagging Nebraska 28-0 with 9:30 to play in the first quarter on the way to a 62-28 rout. (insert RUTS meme)

November 8, 2008: #6 Oklahoma 66, Texas A&M 28.

After dropping 60 on Nebraska, the BCS has no love for the Sooners and drops them two spots. OU takes out its frustration by hanging 60 again, this time at College Station. It was 21-0 at the end of the first quarter. OU had 66 points with 3:54 still to play in the third quarter, the final points coming on Dom Franks’ 39-yard fumble return. RUTS cries continue from those who don’t have televisions or eyes.

November 22, 2008: #5 Oklahoma 65, #2 Texas Tech 21.

It was 42-7 by halftime and the entire stadium was jumping around. Bradford threw deep for a 66-yard pass to Ryan Broyles late in the third quarter. OK, maybe Stoops ran this one up, but he and the entire team was pissed. With the win over previously undefeated Tech, there is now a three-way logjam atop the Big 12 South standings between OU, Tech and Texas. Longhorns immediately begin discounting Tech since the Sand Aggies just got beat by 44 points, essentially trying to punish OU for doing what Texas should have done itself three weeks earlier. The politicking begins.

November 29, 2008: #3 Oklahoma 61, #12 Oklahoma State 41.

OU wins a wild, back-and-forth shootout in Stillwater by scoring 17 points in the last 8 minutes of the game. Despite this being a tight, three-point game with 10 minutes to play, people like Geoff Ketchum convince themselves that OU is once again* RUTSing. I call Ketchum’s show and rhetorically call him a “freaking idiot” on the air. UT fans and interwebs posters are convinced that there’s not even a prayer that OU will jump Texas in the BCS poll (UT is ranked #2, OU #3). As shown in the above-cited tiebreaker procedures released from the Big 12 offices four months prior, the team that is rated higher in the next BCS poll will go to the Big 12 championship the following week and will play North Division champion for the Big 12 title.

December 1, 2008: OU jumps Texas in BCS poll.

Neither airplane banners nor Mack’s politickin’ nor the plaintive wailing of “45-35” could make BCS voters forget that Texas lost to Texas Tech. OU’s blowouts down the stretch impressed the voters as much as UT’s whining turned them off, and they install OU as the #2 team in the nation, behind Florida and just ahead of Texas. Since there is a three-way tie in the Big 12 South (not a two-way tie, but a three way … you don’t get to discount losses whenever it’s convenient, Texas), according to rule b(5) posted above, OU will play Missouri for the Big 12 championship next week in Kansas City:

The highest ranked team in the first Bowl Championship Series Poll following the completion of Big 12 regular season conference play shall be the representative

In a presser following the announcement, Stoops makes sure to point out that there were three teams, not two, involved in the process. Oh, and maybe (just maybe) OU deserved to go just as much as the other two.

December 14, 2008: Sam Bradford wins Heisman

Bradford had the best season in school history for a quarterback, throwing for 4,700 yards and 50 TDs, and leading the highest-scoring team in NCAA history. Heisman voters chose him over Colt McCoy and Jesus Tebow. What does this have to do with Asterisk-gate and UT not playing for the Big 12 championship? In reality, nothing. However, in the failed logic of UT fans, it was just another reason to think that somehow the rules they couldn’t change after the fact or whine their way around screwed them.

January 8, 2009: #2 Florida 24, #1 Oklahoma 14

The Sooners come up just short of winning their 8th national championship, but when the other team has Jesus at quarterback, really what can you do? What does this have to do with Asterisk-gate and UT not playing for the Big 12 championship? In reality, nothing. However, in the failed logic of UT fans, it was just another reason to think that somehow the rules they couldn’t change after the fact or whine their way around screwed them. Obviously UT would have been in this game if they had just played in Kansas City instead of Oklahoma because, you know, it was like a foregone conclusion and whatnot that they’d beat Missouri. Duh.

February 13, 2008: Asterisk-gate gains momentum

Woodward and Bernstein Our friends at the Red Dirt Kings are among the first to notice that UT is somehow claiming a Big 12 championship they did not win. Unfortunately, the big boy media either doesn’t see the story, or because they didn’t report it themselves, choose to ignore it. Of course we at TaW, never to be confused with the big boy media, were all over it and so were the tens of loyal readers.

April 5, 2008: The sh*t hits the fan

Texas’ spring game the prior Sunday had all kinds of media inside the bowels of UT’s Moncrief-Neuhaus athletic shrine. Somebody finally noticed what had been up there for at least two weeks: the Horns are claiming they won* a Big 12 championship. Much laughter and derision ensue.

April 6, 2008: UT decides to take down the 2008*

After repeated calls and guffaws from, well, pretty much everybody, the UT SID decides to pull the offending numbers (and asterisk) off the wall. Mack Brown claims he knew nothing about it, according to Asst. SID John Bianco, who prefaced the canned statement it with “let me answer that for Mack.” I sort of don’t blame Mack for not minding the 2008* being on the wall. After all, if you only have one conference title in a quarter century as a Division I head coach, you’ll take all the help you can get.

April 7, 2008: Longhorn coaches get bonuses for winning* Big 12 Championship

In what essentially amounts to “yeah, we still think we won it,” UT decides to go ahead and pay Mack’s assistants bonuses they would have received had they actually won the Big 12 Championship the way you’re supposed to: playing for it on the field and taking home a trophy. UT president William Powers said it was “the right decision.” Mack didn’t get a bonus, ostensibly because after further review, the Longhorns actually didn’t win shit.

April 8, 2008: Where does Asterisk-gate go from here?

Bloggers can only hope the madness continues as we search for something – anything – to write about from now until fall practice begins. Given the reputation for clownish antics on the 40 Acres, we at TaW might have to dig deep and hire a phalanx of writers to keep up.

Thought you could use a quick cruise around the Interwebs this morning while I’m drawing pictures of OU’s guards on this carton of half-and-half I’m using with my eleventy-first cup of coffee:

Doperbo over at Barking Carnival says DeLoss Dodds has a novel idea on how to fund the new turf at DKR: sell grass. Hasn’t that been tried before?

Actually, I have a better idea for raising the money, although admittedly I stole it from the Orange Aggies plans to recoup losses in the T. Boone hedge fund:

The KU guys over at Oread Boom Kings break the shocking news that Lerch-like stiff Cole Aldrich will return next season. Color me shocked.

Mizzou fan Boo Radley at Atomic Teeth compares Mizzou’s loss in another West Regional final to a Greek allegory.

For the recruitniks out there like our own atlantasooner, the Tortilla Retort’s Dedfischer updates the status of Tech’s 2010 prospects.

Lastly, the Red Dirt Kings have posted an interview with OU’s all-star hoops recruits Tiny Gallon and Tommy Mason-Griffin.

While basking in the Big 8′s success in another postseason, here’s your one-stop shopping, blogowebs roundup for the beginning of your Sweet 16 week:

This morning’s genius from Red Dirt King’s Dirt Monkey says OU still has yet to play their best basketball. That’s a scary thought … if you’re Syracuse

The Barking Carnival guys really don’t want to bitch about the officiating in their loss to Duke on Saturday, yet there sure is a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Our Rock Chalk friends at Oread Boom Kings seem to think they’re landing Lance Stephenson, the all-time leading scorer in New York prep hoops history. The kid’s been on recruiting radars since junior high. Apparently he has really big feet, too.

Football junkie and recruitnik Dedfischer over at the Tortilla Retort likes what he sees with Tech DE signee Aundrey Barr.

Mizzou fan Phenomenal Smith over at Atomic Teeth relays Ken Pomeroy’s projection that OU has a 48% chance of beating Syracuse. Pomeroy’s brackets are getting hammered, so take it fwiw.

Ogle Madness continues over at The Lost Ogle. #1 seed Gary England will drop some flat earth knowledge on appropriately-seeded, #9 Channel 9 sixth-man Toby Rowland while #4 seed Carrie Underwood puts her pipes up against the inmate running the asylum, #5 seed Mark Rodgers.

We’ll see where our Sooners go when the NCAA tournament seedings are announced at 5 p.m. (Oklahoma time) on the worldwide leader in sports’ network CBS.

Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology had OU at a 3 seed yesterday, bracketed with Syracuse. The thought of Flynn and Devendorf driving on OU’s defenseless guards all day is u-g-l-y. Today, Lunardi has OU back in at a 2 seed, bracketed with Cal State-Northridge, Marquette and Michigan in Kansas City. That’s a little bit better draw, although Marquette scares the bejeezus out of me.

The Big 12 is looking at probably a total of six teams getting in: OU, Big 12 Tournament champ Mizzou (projected as a 3 seed, RPI #10), Kansas (projected as a 3 seed, RPI ranking #11), Texas (projected as an 8 seed, RPI #41), OSU (projected as a 9 seed, RPI #20) and A&M (projected as a 10 seed, RPI ranking #36).

Our brohams at Barking Carnival have given their top 16 projections and also think OU will be a 2-seed.

Well, if you read recent message board threads and our friends over at Barking Carnival, you’d think UT has already signed all the best prospects and OU will be lucky to field a team.

So let’s review where we are.

UT’s off to a great start in recruiting, and by getting Connor Wood managed to snag OU’s number one QB target. UT may very well be done with recruiting by May at this rate.

However, right now for all of UT’s success, four of the five players in Texas are still up for grabs.

Seastrunk RB, Jeffcoat DE, Wilson DE, Darius White WR. And that list is pretty fluid but they appear to be the five star type guys from Texas. Granted it’s a matter of time until White is probably a Horn, and Ahmad Dixon already is. The next 3 are definitely in play overall. And that’s presuming that the recruiting lists match the Sooner coaches’ evaluations. OU has already offered Torrea Peterson at DT, who is not currently highly rated by any service (then again, they don’t have film on him either). OU offered Peterson the same time they offered UT verbals Bible and Cotton and their own DT verbal Noble. I’m not saying Peterson is as good as the other 3 DTs, but it would appear the OU coaches are. 

So for all of OU’s struggles OU already has two verbals from the top 50 players in Texas:

Eddrick Lofton FS 6-0,200 and Daniel Noble DT 6-4,275.

OU in fact right now appears to be making a bunch of offers to skill folks in Georgia, Florida, and rest of SEC territory. In addition, OU is going after recruiting targets in Kansas, Missouri, and New Jersey.  The Barking Carnival article is based on an accurate lie: that Oklahoma’s success is based solely on Texas recruiting. It’s not. 

For instance, OU’s top TE target is probably Xavier Grimble from Las Vegas Bishop Gorman. I don’t have to tell OU fans about OU’s current recruiting success from that school. In a potential hilarious recruiting story, OU has targeted Atlanta RB Mack Brown. Although he’s in the heart of SEC territory, Brown has been angling for an OU offer for months, and will visit OU this summer. OU just offered Gainesville, GA WR Tai-ler Jones who seems very interested in the Sooners. 

Out of OU’s top 10 returning players, (McCoy, Gresham, Williams, Bradford, Murray, Franks, Jackson, Lewis, Beal, Alexander), four are from Oklahoma, 4 from Texas, and 2 from elsewhere. Out of OU’s top 6 All American Recruits, 2 from Oklahoma, 3 from Texas, elsewhere. So, OU needs to recruit Texas very well, but it’s not the end all be all to OU’s success. Ideally OU can land one or two of those top kids from Texas, keep 4 stars kids in state going to Norman, and land a high four/five star kid from out of region. 

So OU has lost out on Connor Wood, where does QB recruiting go? It goes to Kansas to Blake Bell a very talented 6-6, 210, 4.6 QB who projects very close to Connor Wood nationally, and will get Elite 11 QB attention.   Will OU get Bell? Who knows, but prior to the start of recruiting Bell clearly mentioned the Sooners as his favorite. He’s now in the recruiting whirlwind, but those kinds of statements are often good predictors. Actually, UT might have done OU a favor. OU seems to have far more success under Bob when they don’t have a Texas kid at QB, but I’m really hoping that Drew Allen breaks that trend.

The biggest blow to OU recruiting that UT appears set to hit on is actually Demarco Cobbs the top player in the state of Oklahoma and a WR as well. He seems very interested in the Horns and may give them a verbal. I’m actually surprised that UT offered him, but he’s a very talented WR a position that OU really needs. UT’s already at 2 WR verbals depending upon where folks project in college, so it will be interesting to see if UT still has room for Cobbs when they get Darius White. 

Last comment, please remember recruiting is a marathon not a sprint. And from prior historical perspective, OU appears to be off to a good start.

The Lubbock Pirate just stared down Texas Tech and AD Gerald Myers while patting his inner thigh and pointing toward his cutlass.

This is one of the best off-season trainwreck stories I’ve seen since Dave Bliss took a dump all over Baylor.

Apparently, one of Leach’s hangups has nothing to do with money, as you might suspect. Some guys at the Sporting News say he was pissed that Bobby Knight got his parking spot:

Here’s more background: A close friend of Leach told me a story last fall that sums up the situation. When Bob Knight arrived at Tech in 2001 to coach basketball, Myers gave Knight Leach’s university parking spot.

Even though Leach was given another spot in the same lot, the move didn’t sit well. For the rest of the semester, Leach parked in a commuter lot and walked to work.

Looks like Leach is primarily objecting to no-interview clause, which says Myers will extort him for $1.5 mil if he decides to interview elsewhere. That’s merely doing what all most some men do when they’re getting bored in a relationship and don’t feel like they’re being respected: they try to trade up.

“I don’t have to have hall passes on this one,” Leach said.

Scipio over at Barking Carnival says Leach is the Sand Aggies’ boob job and now they need to pay for it. Actually in Lubbock, I guess 76 wins in 9 years does qualify as a cosmetic enhancement since Leach got the school some sweet and tender love from 60 Minutes and 2nd-tier bowls (the Holiday Bowl is their booty call).

The two sides will meet again Friday. Leach could be gone by Saturday.

Get’cher popcorn, folks.