Tilting at Windmills

As we “celebrate” the two-decade anniversary of The King being unceremoniously shown the door by the OU administration, some around the country are understandably taking their own shots, as well.

Some shots are being taken by those who were still shitting in their diapers when Switzer left. Others are being taken by those who have reverted back to shitting their diapers and think their bedpan is their cat Millie that died in 1977.

Get off my lawn!

Today’s cloud-yeller, Tim Hutton, takes umbrage with The King’s not-so-subtle backhand of Howard Schnellenberger in Rohde’s Oklahoman story. What really stuck in his walker was this:

Rock bottom came during coaching stints by former player John Blake and Howard Schnellenberger.

“I hated to see that, especially for John, the mistakes he made,” Switzer said, before adding, “I didn’t feel that way for Schnellenberger, though.”

Make mine a double.

Hutton, who apparently knows dick about Oklahoma football and gives The Drunk some folksy, WTF moniker – “The Voice” – doesn’t think Howard was some old, boorish drunk who sent players to the hospital due to heat stroke, took a dump on the history of one of the most storied programs in college football and would have completely decimated Sooner recruiting were it not for John Blake coming in to at least do that well for the following three years.

I give The Voice a huge advantage in this clash of egos.

Switzer did run a dirty program in his final years, and I can understand why Schnellenberger distanced himself from him.

The Oklahoma job was a bad fit for Howard.

That’s about as simplistic as Sarah Palin watching Pootin from her backyard. The topper is that Hutton starts reveling in the glory of increased page views and unique visitors, calling for FAU to play OU in a bowl game.

I gots three for ya here, Tim:

1. You got it. Let’s put each other on the schedule. We’ll even go home and home. We’ll even spot you two touchdowns and a handle of Jameson in Norman.
2. First, you have to make it to a real bowl game to play us. No, we’re not accepting an invitation to the Prefabricated Furniture Bowl sponsored by Palm Harbor Homes.
3. Were FAU to turn water into wine and actually make it into a real bowl, there’s no fucking way you’re another Boise State. Bring it.

Let the bitching begin in earnest.

Paranoiacs and straight-up whiny bitches (you know who you are) that think they got screwed in last year’s USA Today Coaches Poll (one of the components in determining BCS rankings) can now have their little snogfest, comfortable with their conspiratorial knowledge that the world is out to get them:

The final USA Today Coaches Poll in 2010 will be secret.

Why in the world would Leach be in this discussion?

That means the theory that Stoops has half of the Big 12 (and a bunch more of the overall voters) in his pocket will now no longer be confirmed, nor denied, for it’s hard to prove or disprove something without all of the facts (not that that matters usually).

Tell me, Mrs. Vito ... does the defendant's argument hold water?

AFCA Executive Director and Baylor god (small “G”) Grant Teaff wins the award for worst analogy of the day by comparing the coaches’ votes to the United States’ electoral system:

Gallup recommended the change because confidentiality leads to a better poll, according to Teaff. “Why do you have booths for people to vote in?” he said.

It’s about accountability, coach. Nobody cares who I voted for in the ’96 presidential election, but there are a shit-ton of folks who want to know where Tech savant Mike Leach put OU (1), Tech (2) and Texas (5) in the final 2008 poll (what excuse could he possibly have for voting his own team higher than UT?).

At one level, this tells us how important college football is. The electoral college system used for selecting the POTUS is decried and some would like to change it, but there hasn’t been a serious effort to change or abolish it in almost 40 years. Voices scream almost as loud about the BCS method and there have been discussions at the highest levels of the federal government to tweak it (presumably because they have nothing better to do).

Should it really be that big of a deal, though? Do people really care that ex-Washington coach Tyrone Willingham put Texas at #4 behind USC, then got fired for putting up a donut in the win column? We’re talking about football here, not something less serious like who is going to represent us to the nation and world for the next 2, 4 or 6 years.

Coaches will still be allowed to vote for their own team, so somebody might want to tell Mack. Tired of the silliness after voters still put Missouri ahead of OU after the 2007 Big 12 Championship beatdown, Stoops stopped voting in the poll.

So, in order to address the tinfoil hat theory that says Stoops has half of the coaches in his pocket, let’s take a look at the Stoops tree and how they voted in the final 2008 poll:

Bo Pelini – OU (1), Texas (2), Florida (3), Tech (6)
Mike Leach – OU (1), Tech (2), Florida (3), Texas (5)
Steve Spurrier (South Carolina) – OU (1), Florida (2), Texas (3) … which is exactly how they finished in the overall poll.
*Art Briles (Baylor) – OU (1), Florida (2), USC (3), Bama (4), Texas (5)
Kevin Sumlin (Houston) – doesn’t vote
Mike Stoops (Arizona) – doesn’t vote
Mark Mangino (Kansas) – doesn’t vote

*Briles included because he coached for Leach, ergo some think he’s in Stoops’ coaching tree. I don’t get it, but that’s what “they” say.

It’s a silly game, but if you really want to go down that path of the “well, those coaches are in your pocket” meme, here are Mack’s:

Gene Chizik (Iowa State) – Texas (1), Florida (2), OU (3), Tech (6)
*Mack Brown (Texas) – Florida (1), Texas (2), OU (3), Tech (8)
Todd Dodge (North Texas) – Texas (1), Florida (2), OU (3), Tech (9)
Dick Tomey (Syracuse) – Florida (1), Texas (2), OU (3), Tech (9)

*Yeah, Mack votes. It’s weird how a team that beat his got ranked 6 spots lower on his ballot, too.

As you can see, the whole argument about having coaches on your side didn’t really work in 2008. Will it have any bearing in 2010 when we’ll just be guessing at the coaches’ individual ballots? Your guess is as good as mine.

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.

I'm your Huckleberry ...

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.

The problem with judging spring scrimmages is that if the offense looks great, it could mean that the defense really sucks, and vice versa. And with that caveat in mind, based on Saturday’s Red and White Game, sophomore Frank Alexander is going to win the Lombardi, and senior Trent Williams is going to finish his OU football career in the same state of exile in which Brandon Crow currently resides.

You didn’t need to have the ghost of Isaac Newton again explaining the arcane scoring system to know that the white team (defense) had kicked the asses of the red team (offense). For the record, the defense won, 63-36, but even with the offense being awarded points for saying excuse me after belching or for linemen not noticeably staining their britches , the red team couldn’t make a game of it. Sure, the offense was missing more weapons — DeMarco Murray, Chris Brown, Jermaine Gresham, Brody Eldridge, Matt Clapp and maybe most importantly, Jarvis Jones and Stephen Good — but still, with the biggest questions being how would the Sooners replace the graduation-depleted offensive line and wide receiver corps, after Saturday’s game, those questions remain unanswered.

Now when you go from having Gresham as your main target at tight end to walk-on sophomore Trent Ratterree (sophomore James Hanna failed to distinguish himself), you’ve got a problem. But if you’re a freshman quarterback and you get precious little time to throw before Alexander or junior Jeremy Beal or a defensive tackle is all over your ass, you’ve got an even bigger problem. Williams, at left tackle, was slapped around by Alexander worse than Rihanna is by that other Chris Brown, and junior Cory Brandon didn’t fare much better against Beal on the other side. Now Beal’s really good, and Alexander, in the little time he played last season after recovering from a stabbing, showed a lot of potential, but still, your best OT has to block his guy at least some of the time. (Williams, who went most of the way at LT, held his own against the second-teamers, while sophomore Donald Stephenson, the second-team RT, was caught holding frequently.) Colorado State transfer junior Brian Lepak, who was playing LG and getting a lot of Good’s reps, was cast aside by whatever DT he was facing with the ease of Lindsay Lohan tossing away her show-biz career (but at least Lindsay got laid a lot in the process). Redshirt freshman center Ben Habern and senior quasi-starter Brian Simmons held up the best, but then, that’s probably akin to being the ace of 1962 Mets rotation.

Bradford handled the pressure all day.

And if what we learned about the OL is that they still need to get a whole lot better by fall, we learned even less about the receivers. Sophomore Ryan Broyles was hands-down the best of the bunch, which has been the assumption since January. Senior Pooh Tennell showed a couple of flashes of brilliance — like on the 23-yard TD pass he caught from Sam Bradford — but then he’s always showed flashes; his problem is staying healthy, and that remains to be seen. Youngsters like sophomores Jameel Owens and Dejuan Miller need to step up, and whereas Owens had a solid but not spectacular game, Miller was a nonfactor. Mossis Madu looked pretty good as the slot receiver (although he fell to the ground making a cut and allowing junior CB Dom Franks to get a pick for an easy score), but he was far and away the best of what was healthy at RB. Redshirt freshman Jermie Calhoun had a couple of nice runs early on, but after that, he was being met by three defenders in the backfield whenever he got the handoff. Sophomore Justin Johnson was pretty much the same thing only less so. It’d be nice to see what they could do with blocking.

Calhoun should be productive in a bit role this year.

At quarterback, well, hey, that Bradford kid looks like he could be a player. The Heisman-winner, despite facing the same limitations as freshmen Landry Jones and Drew Allen, managed to complete more passes than the other two combined. He seemed to be able to find an open WR against senior CB Brian Jackson (such as the TD pass to Tennell) or the tight end across the middle against senior MLB Mike Balogun whenever he needed to. Given the pass rush he was facing, Jones probably played acceptably, or at least as well Joey Halzle did in this game the last couple of years. And although their numbers were roughly the same (5 of 12 for 73 yards for Jones, 4 of 14 for 58 yards for Allen, with both throwing a pick), Allen looked significantly worse. Two or three more of Allen’s passes probably should have been picked off (freshman safety Javon Harris had a couple of drops) and he threw a couple of passes to nowhere. But hey, the guy should be getting ready for the prom, so what do you expect?

But then, the same can be said about the entire crew of second-team LBs, Jaydan “the Raptor” Bird at weak side, Tom “the English Football Hooligan” Wort at middle and Ronnell Lewis at strong side. Heck, they might have been the best-looking group the Sooners fielded Saturday. Bird has a nasty streak that the Sooners haven’t had at LB in a while. Not just the ability to be in the right place and make a play — Travis Lewis does that, and so did Rufus Alexander pre-knee injury — but the meanness to just blow people up as well. And if anything, Wort is even nastier. Ratterree could consistently catch a quick pass over the middle for a 4-yard gain against Balogun, but with Wort lowering the boom as the ball arrived, he couldn’t. Nobody could. I’m not sure when the Sooners have had an MLB who looked equally competent and vicious against both the pass and the run as Wort, and I can’t see how any Texas prep LB could have been ranked ahead of him. You’ve got to love this kid’s moxie. He was one of the few players who went over and signed autographs for fans after the game (Bradford, of course, was one of the others), and for a kid who has yet to play in a varsity game, that takes a lot of chutzpah. I think the last MLB we had with that level of talent and attitude was Brian Bosworth, and we did OK with him.

Anyway, not a lot to be said about the defense, other than the first- and second-team defensive fronts pretty much kicked ass. Franks had a great game at one corner, and Harris, other than the drops, had a nice game at safety, but once Bradford was out of the game, the DBs didn’t have a lot to do, and it didn’t seem to matter that Quinton Carter didn’t play. The quarterbacks didn’t have enough time to find receivers downfield, and the running game was getting stuffed without the DBs having to come up and help out. Keenan Clayton didn’t play either, and senior J.R. Bryant, who largely looked clueless last year, had a very good game in his place. Balogun’s still iffy against the pass, but Justin Johnson’s going to be checking for Balogun before sitting down for the next two weeks, because Balogun was always in his back pocket. Seniors DT DeMarcus Granger and DE Austin English didn’t play either, and and although they’re capable when healthy, we got along without them for a large part of last year. Sophomore LB Austin Box and junior LB Crow also didn’t play, but I think it’s safe to say they’re now both about as far behind Wort as a politician running as a Whig candidate, and Crow will be lucky if somebody e-mails him the practice schedule. But I do find consolation in the fact that the offense looked nearly as lousy in last year’s spring game, and that bunch wound up posting some fairly decent numbers, I seem to recall.

As for the kicking game, not to change the subject, but the weather for the spring game was really nice. Sunny, but not too hot, breezy, but not too windy. I mean last year, it really sucked, cloudy, colder than hell and a fierce wind. Redshirt freshman Tress Way had a couple of really great punts, but most of them looked like they could have come off the foot of Mike Knall. Maybe we can at least cover the damn things this year.