milesl
11/21/2015, 10:30 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/oklahoma-is-in-a-state-of-anxiety-over-college-football-playoff/2015/11/20/e48fc16a-8fa7-11e5-ae1f-af46b7df8483_story.html
https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2015/11/20/Sports/Images/Oklahoma_Baylor_Football-02c2a-3938.jpg?uuid=Iw4Eso-1EeWuH69Gt9-Egw
Oklahoma, 9-1 and ranked seventh, will host TCU on Saturday while Oklahoma State, 10-0 and No. 6, will host Baylor. (Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press)
By Chuck Culpepper November 20 at 1:36 PM
OKLAHOMA CITY — Worry, a particular province of college football fans, has begun to settle into the 69,903 square miles of this state, probably even that skinny panhandle over to the west. Like all worry, it pesters some more than others.
As he travels to Boone Pickens Stadium in Stillwater for this colossal football Saturday evening in Oklahoma, T. Boone Pickens will not pack worry. “It’s not my nature,” Oklahoma State’s peerless donor said in a telephone interview from Dallas.
Yet other Oklahoman brains function differently, so as 142,000 minds go to Stillwater and Norman to see two games boasting four teams with records adding to 36-3, more than some will tote vague fret over a December doomsday. The very educated might even say such worry has long resided in the Oklahoman psyche.
It meshes with “how people view big government and corporate America,” said J. Brent Clark, a Norman attorney, Oklahoma alumnus, Georgetown master’s degree holder, Oklahoma law alumnus and author of three sports books, one about the Sooners. “They lump it together and they’re wary of it all. And it’s based on what their grandparents taught them at the breakfast table.”
What has that to do with the College Football Playoff selection committee? Oh, plenty. On Saturday, Oklahoma State (10-0) will play Baylor (8-1) and Oklahoma (9-1) will play TCU (9-1). Next Saturday, Oklahoma (possibly 10-1) will visit Oklahoma State (possibly 11-0). After that, on a December Sunday, the committee will issue final rankings, and either orange Cowboys or crimson Sooners could end up euphoric.
Or indignant.
Oklahoma State ranks No. 6 and Oklahoma No. 7, trivial if one dwells in the present. Yet if one permits thoughts of untold wretchedness that could haunt the future — in short, a definition of the word “fan” — that stokes at least two fears. The first goes that the committee doesn’t fancy the Big 12, the only of the five major conferences omitted from the four-team playoff last December.
Nathan Ruiz, sports editor of the O’Colly, the Oklahoma State student newspaper, said, “I think the Big 12 as a whole just lacks respect” — evidenced, he said, by Oklahoma State sitting behind No. 5 Iowa (10-0) of the Big Ten.
The second fear goes like this: Notre Dame.
Clark said: “We can’t rule out Pope Francis making a call. He’s really socially aware, so we don’t know. He might make a call.” With 3.8 million people in the 28th-most-populous state, Clark said: “We don’t have the TVs in our state to be persuasive. We just don’t. So think about being on that committee . . . . ”
. . . and perceiving Notre Dame, its Atlantic-to-Pacific fan base, its TV pull . . .
Notre Dame sits, lurks and blares at No. 4, and if a final argument for the coveted fourth and final playoff spot pitted Oklahoma State at 12-0 against Notre Dame at 11-1, that might be scary. If a final argument pitted Oklahoma at 11-1 against Notre Dame at 11-1, that might be really scary. “Very,” Sooners historian Mike Brooks said. “There’s a bump in the road here that we can’t get around, in the sense that Texas beat us handily in the Cotton Bowl [on Oct. 10], while Notre Dame beat Texas handily” on Sept. 5.
While Brooks has heard only scant talk of such fright, the committee’s curious practice of releasing weekly rankings does wreak chatter. Said Scott Verplank, the Oklahoma resident, PGA Tour veteran and Oklahoma State alum and fan: “That whole situation, they’re doing a great job coming out with rankings, which are a little too early, and getting everybody talking about it. It’s a great marketing ploy. Gets some people upset, gets some people happy.”
It can behoove a brain to remain assured or calm.
“I don’t see that happening to us,” Pickens said of the Cowboys finishing 12-0 and excluded. “If we were fortunate enough to win these last two games, you don’t have the same situation as Baylor and TCU” in 2014, when each lost once and finished achingly at Nos. 5 and 6.
Besides, the present is nice. “When I made the big gift, I can still remember my remarks,” Pickens said, referring to the $165 million he gave Oklahoma State in 2006, the largest single donation to an American university’s athletic program. “I said, ‘This is going to make us competitive. I’m not going to leave the stadium anymore looking down at my shoes and talking about what a sad day this was.’ ”
He went on. “The only week that really makes any difference is the last week. I don’t sweat the week-by-week. I really don’t. If we deserve to move up, if we deserve to play in the four. . . . If we get it, it’ll be great. Nobody will enjoy it more than I will.
“I’m running down on years. I’m 87. Got out of Oklahoma State in 1951.”
Ruiz, the student journalist, will get out presumably in 2017, yet he noted the many days of yore when Oklahoma State lived as an afterthought — especially to Oklahoma, its seven national titles, its five Heisman statues standing near the stadium — and would have relished any No. 6 ranking.
That leaves room for concern about brand name and conference size.
“My thought on it is if OU had OSU’s résumé, OU would be number one, or it would definitely be in the playoff,” Ruiz said. “I think an 11-1 OU team might have a better chance than a 12-0 OSU just because of that brand idea.”
But then, the Oklahoma brand could run up against the Notre Dame brand, all while many maintain that if Baylor or TCU had been Texas or Oklahoma, brand-wise, one would have pipped Ohio State, which snared No. 4 at the end last year.
Mix in familiar refrains: The Big 12 is the only Power Five league without a conference championship game for burnishing résumés. The Big 12 plays a game perhaps unappetizing to the seasoned ex-coaches among 12 committee members, sorts who dislike seeing the football pinballing around the field as in the Big 12, with scoring defenses ranked Nos. 24, 51, 61, 68, 71, 87, 94, 94, 123 and 127.
“There’s a latent concern that the Big 12 has made tactical errors” with conference size, Clark said, and “a latent, unspoken anxiety with our messing up our own mess kit” plus “our populist tradition.” It all adds up to worry.
That worry went in questions toward Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops on Monday. He began with focused-on-TCU athletic mode. The questions kept coming. He kindly provided block-paragraph answers of perhaps-essential campaigning, about Oklahoma’s schedule (which includes an optional visit to Tennessee), its win at No. 6 Baylor, its holding Baylor 250 yards below its norm.
Farther north, Verplank takes the present tense so vital to golf and applies it to fandom. While he did say, “I just don’t see how you could leave an undefeated team from a Power Five conference out,” he also said, “There’s still a lot of ballgames to finish, and a lot of 18-to-22-year-olds to play them.”
https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2015/11/20/Sports/Images/Oklahoma_Baylor_Football-02c2a-3938.jpg?uuid=Iw4Eso-1EeWuH69Gt9-Egw
Oklahoma, 9-1 and ranked seventh, will host TCU on Saturday while Oklahoma State, 10-0 and No. 6, will host Baylor. (Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press)
By Chuck Culpepper November 20 at 1:36 PM
OKLAHOMA CITY — Worry, a particular province of college football fans, has begun to settle into the 69,903 square miles of this state, probably even that skinny panhandle over to the west. Like all worry, it pesters some more than others.
As he travels to Boone Pickens Stadium in Stillwater for this colossal football Saturday evening in Oklahoma, T. Boone Pickens will not pack worry. “It’s not my nature,” Oklahoma State’s peerless donor said in a telephone interview from Dallas.
Yet other Oklahoman brains function differently, so as 142,000 minds go to Stillwater and Norman to see two games boasting four teams with records adding to 36-3, more than some will tote vague fret over a December doomsday. The very educated might even say such worry has long resided in the Oklahoman psyche.
It meshes with “how people view big government and corporate America,” said J. Brent Clark, a Norman attorney, Oklahoma alumnus, Georgetown master’s degree holder, Oklahoma law alumnus and author of three sports books, one about the Sooners. “They lump it together and they’re wary of it all. And it’s based on what their grandparents taught them at the breakfast table.”
What has that to do with the College Football Playoff selection committee? Oh, plenty. On Saturday, Oklahoma State (10-0) will play Baylor (8-1) and Oklahoma (9-1) will play TCU (9-1). Next Saturday, Oklahoma (possibly 10-1) will visit Oklahoma State (possibly 11-0). After that, on a December Sunday, the committee will issue final rankings, and either orange Cowboys or crimson Sooners could end up euphoric.
Or indignant.
Oklahoma State ranks No. 6 and Oklahoma No. 7, trivial if one dwells in the present. Yet if one permits thoughts of untold wretchedness that could haunt the future — in short, a definition of the word “fan” — that stokes at least two fears. The first goes that the committee doesn’t fancy the Big 12, the only of the five major conferences omitted from the four-team playoff last December.
Nathan Ruiz, sports editor of the O’Colly, the Oklahoma State student newspaper, said, “I think the Big 12 as a whole just lacks respect” — evidenced, he said, by Oklahoma State sitting behind No. 5 Iowa (10-0) of the Big Ten.
The second fear goes like this: Notre Dame.
Clark said: “We can’t rule out Pope Francis making a call. He’s really socially aware, so we don’t know. He might make a call.” With 3.8 million people in the 28th-most-populous state, Clark said: “We don’t have the TVs in our state to be persuasive. We just don’t. So think about being on that committee . . . . ”
. . . and perceiving Notre Dame, its Atlantic-to-Pacific fan base, its TV pull . . .
Notre Dame sits, lurks and blares at No. 4, and if a final argument for the coveted fourth and final playoff spot pitted Oklahoma State at 12-0 against Notre Dame at 11-1, that might be scary. If a final argument pitted Oklahoma at 11-1 against Notre Dame at 11-1, that might be really scary. “Very,” Sooners historian Mike Brooks said. “There’s a bump in the road here that we can’t get around, in the sense that Texas beat us handily in the Cotton Bowl [on Oct. 10], while Notre Dame beat Texas handily” on Sept. 5.
While Brooks has heard only scant talk of such fright, the committee’s curious practice of releasing weekly rankings does wreak chatter. Said Scott Verplank, the Oklahoma resident, PGA Tour veteran and Oklahoma State alum and fan: “That whole situation, they’re doing a great job coming out with rankings, which are a little too early, and getting everybody talking about it. It’s a great marketing ploy. Gets some people upset, gets some people happy.”
It can behoove a brain to remain assured or calm.
“I don’t see that happening to us,” Pickens said of the Cowboys finishing 12-0 and excluded. “If we were fortunate enough to win these last two games, you don’t have the same situation as Baylor and TCU” in 2014, when each lost once and finished achingly at Nos. 5 and 6.
Besides, the present is nice. “When I made the big gift, I can still remember my remarks,” Pickens said, referring to the $165 million he gave Oklahoma State in 2006, the largest single donation to an American university’s athletic program. “I said, ‘This is going to make us competitive. I’m not going to leave the stadium anymore looking down at my shoes and talking about what a sad day this was.’ ”
He went on. “The only week that really makes any difference is the last week. I don’t sweat the week-by-week. I really don’t. If we deserve to move up, if we deserve to play in the four. . . . If we get it, it’ll be great. Nobody will enjoy it more than I will.
“I’m running down on years. I’m 87. Got out of Oklahoma State in 1951.”
Ruiz, the student journalist, will get out presumably in 2017, yet he noted the many days of yore when Oklahoma State lived as an afterthought — especially to Oklahoma, its seven national titles, its five Heisman statues standing near the stadium — and would have relished any No. 6 ranking.
That leaves room for concern about brand name and conference size.
“My thought on it is if OU had OSU’s résumé, OU would be number one, or it would definitely be in the playoff,” Ruiz said. “I think an 11-1 OU team might have a better chance than a 12-0 OSU just because of that brand idea.”
But then, the Oklahoma brand could run up against the Notre Dame brand, all while many maintain that if Baylor or TCU had been Texas or Oklahoma, brand-wise, one would have pipped Ohio State, which snared No. 4 at the end last year.
Mix in familiar refrains: The Big 12 is the only Power Five league without a conference championship game for burnishing résumés. The Big 12 plays a game perhaps unappetizing to the seasoned ex-coaches among 12 committee members, sorts who dislike seeing the football pinballing around the field as in the Big 12, with scoring defenses ranked Nos. 24, 51, 61, 68, 71, 87, 94, 94, 123 and 127.
“There’s a latent concern that the Big 12 has made tactical errors” with conference size, Clark said, and “a latent, unspoken anxiety with our messing up our own mess kit” plus “our populist tradition.” It all adds up to worry.
That worry went in questions toward Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops on Monday. He began with focused-on-TCU athletic mode. The questions kept coming. He kindly provided block-paragraph answers of perhaps-essential campaigning, about Oklahoma’s schedule (which includes an optional visit to Tennessee), its win at No. 6 Baylor, its holding Baylor 250 yards below its norm.
Farther north, Verplank takes the present tense so vital to golf and applies it to fandom. While he did say, “I just don’t see how you could leave an undefeated team from a Power Five conference out,” he also said, “There’s still a lot of ballgames to finish, and a lot of 18-to-22-year-olds to play them.”