Tilting at Windmills

You know bias when you see it.

Being an unabashed, biased OU homer, I’m qualified to point out fellow spades. There are times when it’s OK to be a homer … you’re getting paid by a university/team/organization and you naturally want to cater to your meal ticket; your make your living elsewhere, but your livelihood depends on you being a unbelievably ignorant, obnoxious homer (holla James Hale, Robert Allen and Geoff Ketchum); your best friend’s girlfriend wants to know where your bud has been spending his weekday nights, and you feign ignorance with the daintiest “bros before hos” tap-dancing you can, careful not to offend so much that she decides not to hook you up with her twin, augmented, morally-loose friends who “do everything together” and say they like short, pasty white guys that like to air-guitar when they drive.

Here are two fresh examples of biases that this Dude just could not abide:

1. Mack Brown is apparently claiming another Big 12 title he did not earn. Added to the collection of co-Big 12 South championship rings is now a claim to a share of the 2008 Big 12 championship. The irreverent Red Dirt Kings dug up these tasty nugs from a UT recruiting video (thanks for letting me post swipe them, fellas):

I pretty much know I’m right about OU actually winning the conference championship, but just to make sure, I guess I better go rewatch a.) the Big 12 championship game where OU cockpunched Mizzou, and; b.) the last 2 minutes of the UT-Tech game.

But we’ll let this one go, I guess, because it’s laughable and because it’s OK to be biased towards Texas if you’re Mack Brown. That’s his job.

2. Two college basketball gurus over at Rivals think there are two coaches in the country right now doing a better job than our Jeff Capel. Fine, those guys get paid to write shit and call it an opinion, who am I to stomp on their livelihood. However, the one that caught my eye was Jason King’s dubbing Bill Self as coach of the year.

Still, somehow, Kansas is 20-5 overall and 9-1 in the Big 12, where it trails undefeated Oklahoma by 1.5 games in the standings. If the Jayhawks take care of business as expected and defeat Iowa State and Nebraska at home this week, they’ll play the Sooners on Feb. 23 in a game that could determine the league’s regular-season championship.

Win or lose against Oklahoma, Self’s efforts this season will be remembered as nothing short of masterful.

Ok, now this is just asinine (and before the Texas fans want to bring up Thayer Evans, save it – you made your points, too). Nevermind that Kansas lost to a 9-14 (they were a blistering 2-6 at the time) UMass team in Kansas City. How about losing to an Arizona team that’s in the middle of the Yak-10 and had just lost to A&M a couple of weeks earlier. Losing at Michigan State? Ok, the Spartans are pretty good, you can have that one. Losing to Mizzou on the road? Another good team, but you need to beat your rivals to go anywhere in this league.

What really galled me was the obvious bias. It’s commendable that King wrote Kansas Jayhawks – A Year to Remember. I even like his cutesy autograph gif he puts on the site, that’s a keeper. But don’t give me Bill freaking Self over Jeff Capel when …

Jason King has been considered the leading source for Kansas athletics since he began covering the Jayhawks in 2000. King spent seven years as the KU beat reporter for The Kansas City Star before becoming a national college basketball and football writer for Yahoo! Sports.

This kid and whRon Franklin should sit down and have a glass of warm milk together some day and slap-fight the homer out of each other.