Tilting at Windmills

“Wrestling Midgets Killed by Fake Hookers.”

The luchadors picked up the two women after filming a TV fight show and took them to a hotel, according to police in Mexico City.

But while preparing for their ’bouts’ they appear to have had their alcoholic drinks spiked before being robbed.

The pair were found by cleaners at the hotel on Monday. Tests suggested they had not had sex with the women.

It is thought their size made them more vulnerable to the drugs the women put in their drinks.

Police suspect a gang known as The Leak or The Drops was involved in the incident and said 20 people were arrested for similar crimes last year.

I heart the interwebs.

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.