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SleestakSooner

9/26/2006, 06:36 PM

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=2603017

Big 12 Conference
Their ad: (Open with shot of Vince Young pointing to the fans in the Rose Bowl while confetti rains down.) "The Big 12 is a league of champions. A league of heavyweights. A league that knows how to bring home the hardware." (Roll tape of Bob Stoops (5) holding up the national championship trophy in 2000.) "The Big 12 has had two Heisman Trophy winners this century alone and has the man who can bring home a third." (Roll tape of Adrian Peterson (6) blazing through various defenses.) "It can also be a league of surprises." (Roll tape of undefeated Missouri.) "And if it weren't for the unscrupulous, conspiratorial and dishonest officials of the Pacific-10, the Big 12 would still have a legit national title contender." (Show black-and-white photo of referee on the phone to the replay booth from Oklahoma-Oregon game.) "The Big 12. When we don't get screwed, we're really good."
The attack ad: (Open with same shot of Vince Young, then freeze the frame and fade to black.) "Vince Young doesn't live here anymore, and neither does championship football." (Cut to split-screen, slow-motion, black-and-white misery shots of Mack Brown (7) against Ohio State and Dan Hawkins (8) against Montana State.) "Fact: On Sept. 15 and 16, seven Big 12 teams lost nonconference games -- including losses to teams from the MAC and the Mountain West." (Cut to half-screen video of a baby crying. Place next to picture of Oklahoma president David Boren (9).) "The most noteworthy Big 12 moment of September has been the David Boren-led whining over the outcome of the game at Oregon. Is this a league of champions or a league of crybabies?"

The following is a letter I wrote in reply to Forde's article to the ESPN ombudsman, which I also forwarded a copy to Forde himself.

Dear Sir,

Although I do agree that there are more pressing issues that a president of a prestigious university should concern himself with, I find it highly insulting (to myself as a student of the University of Oklahoma and to those of us who follow OU sports... fans) that your "news" service would allow Mr. Forde to be so critical of David Boren and to highlight this criticism as the lead feature on the web sight.

It reminds me of the time right after the bombing in OKC a few years ago when Connie Chung belittled Oklahomans by seeming so suprised that we should find ourselves capable of dealing with the tragedy on our own.

We are a very proud group of folks in this state. We love our university sports because until the Hornets came to town that was really all we had. When we travel we expect to be treated as we treat others when they arrive in Norman. In all my years watching Sooner football I have only once seen a call anywhere near as blatantly incorrect as the several missed calls in Autzen Stadium two saturdays ago. That was at the end of the Red River Rivalry in 1984 when SWC officials blew a call that wound up causing a tie between OU and Texas (a fate worse than kissing your sister).

We were outraged then, rightfully so. Now with the advent of replay in NCAA football things like the '84 debacle are no longer supposed to happen. But they still do.

This may make great fodder for media and the expert senior writers at ESPN. Boren just said what 99% of all OU fans wanted to scream until certain officials ears bled. He never whined, nor did he take more than a moment away from his other duties as the president. It takes him about five minutes to write a letter like that. And last I checked football is a very important part of the experience at the university over which Mr. Boren presides. It is his job to seek justice, through whatever means, when what is presumed to be fair competition becomes blatantly biased in the favor of our opponent.

David Boren is a distinguished former governor of our state and senator who represented our values and morals very well when helping to provide leadership for our country. Please do not ever allow his name to be dragged through the mud on this site again! He deserves it about as much as the Oregon Ducks deserved that win verses OU.

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

badger

9/26/2006, 06:56 PM

to be fair, he trashes all the conferences, not just big 12 and boren

SoonerPr8r

9/26/2006, 07:09 PM

to be fair, he trashes all the conferences, not just big 12 and boren
true story

ADs_Agent

9/26/2006, 07:15 PM

Pat Forde is just having his man period, so be gentle

stoops the eternal pimp

9/26/2006, 07:16 PM

here is what happens in these cases.
1. he writes article
2. he receives thousands of email from sooner fans.
3. he now realized he has people reading his columns because of the response.
4. he continues to write things to keep people reading his article so that he is not taken off of espn.com

ADs_Agent

9/26/2006, 07:19 PM

the child of Pat Forde and Doug Gotlieb

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f299/flash7205/nickzepp1.jpg

Jackal

9/26/2006, 08:11 PM

I realized Pat Forde was a idiot a long time ago, his opinion doesn't mean anything.

Blitzkrieg

9/26/2006, 08:18 PM

I just sent him a death threat.

Flying Scotsman

9/26/2006, 08:22 PM

Who's Pat Forde? How do you pronounce his/her/its last name?

Jewstin

9/26/2006, 08:25 PM

Why do you think these guys are doing sports analysis for ESPN? Because they've failed in their careers. I don't even know if Pat Forde ever even played sports to fail at them! In that case, he's just a journalist ... but based on his terrible quality of writing, I seriously doubt that's his trade (and if it is, I pity him).

These guys don't know a single thing about OU or Boren. Forde was one of the first people to come out and take Oregon and the refs side on the matter, so it's no surprise that he loaded up when Boren sent out his letter.

This university has turned around since he arrived ... he really knows how to bring in that money. My sister went here in the mid 90s and relative to now, it's like a whole different university (especially Price ;) ).

OUDoc

9/26/2006, 08:26 PM

Excellent letter. Spek.

GrapevineSooner

9/26/2006, 08:51 PM

Sounds like your run-of-the-mill rabble rouser.

BigDeezy

9/26/2006, 09:00 PM

Who the heck cares what Pat Forde thinks?

Let it go, move on.

BigUgly

9/26/2006, 09:14 PM

Slee,

Niche. Very niche.

The Maestro

9/26/2006, 09:24 PM

I just sent him a death threat.

Am I the only one who realizes that is the freaking funniest post of the 2006 college football season? Classic!

badger

9/26/2006, 09:25 PM

Am I the only one who realizes that is the freaking funniest post of the 2006 college football season? Classic!
Death threats? zzzz. send him a letter bomb and THEN i might start laughing :rolleyes:

TheGodfather889

9/26/2006, 09:41 PM

Quick question: you can email the producer of Sportscenter? Because if so I've wanted to ask them why they won't give Adrian Peterson more love for the Heisman like they do Troy Smith and Brady Quinn. Anyway, it was a great letter.

goingoneight

9/26/2006, 09:52 PM

Pat Forde... ghey.

AD is more than capable of winning a trophy for Nation's greatest College Player.

If Brady Quinn wins this trophy after his "stellar" start, I'm gonna be so ****ed at the sport of college football in general.

crimson&cream

9/26/2006, 11:57 PM

Talk about needing to move on it's the media that keeps this fire burning. It reminds of little kids taunting the class whiz kid which in this case being Boren.

the_ouskull

9/27/2006, 12:12 AM

I just sent him a death threat.

Funniest post on this thread. It should be a thread-killer...

the_ouskull

StoopTroup

9/27/2006, 12:45 AM

Why would you use "Pat" and not "Patrick"?

"Patrick" is at least a bit more manly.

mfosterftw

9/27/2006, 06:55 AM

The following is something I wrote Saturday on a blog of mine (I cover junior hockey). A lot of folks were getting tired of me being off-topic (excuse me, but it's my blog and I'll write what I damn well want to), so I finally vented my spleen. Excuse me for taking few paragraphs to get warmed up, but I was addressing many things at once. I'll highlight the areas I think are most critical to media idiots like Forde.

What OU did before and after the main play is irrelevant. They did what they had to do, on the road in a hostile environment against a ranked opponent, to be in a position to win a game. No team should be expected to win by 50 just to take the refs out of the equation. By the same argument, with 450 yards of offense to that point Oregon shouldn't have needed the onsides kick to win, but their offense committed four turnovers, an offense every bit as detrimental as Oklahoma's porous secondary.

Make the right call and OU gets the ball, takes a couple of knees, and the media instead talks about Adrian Peterson stepping up in the 4th quarter, Paul Thompson's error-free game at QB, and OU's bend-but-not-break defense forcing four turnovers.

Gordon Riese has been caught in a shifting lie since this whole thing started. His leave of absence is, in all likelihood, permanent. If he admits he blew the call, no excuses, then he's taken the appropriate responsibility and this all goes away. Unfortunately, with the assistance of John Canzano of The Oregonian and others in the media, he tried to become a victim, and his claims about not having all the feeds has been shot down by ABC like the ducks in the old Nintendo game. The media that everyone thinks I should let cover this seems to have missed it, too busy building the dogpile of outrage over official Oklahoma comments that are now several days old. Boren's letter came out late Monday and Stoop's last comments were at the weekly press junket on Tuesday. Lee Corso was on Gameday this morning telling Stoops to get over it, when Stoops hasn't said a word in four days.

As for President David Boren... the old senator is still a calculating politician with more power in his pinky toe than any of us will ever enjoy in our lifetimes. Let the record show he's received his primary requests - the apology, the suspensions (defacto one-game and effective lifetimes for the replay pair), and now the Pac-10's consideration of the non-conference policy at their October meetings. The "result nullification" was a throwaway, Boren the politician being sure to ask for more than he expects. It was not, however, unprecedented... As reported in this morning's Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in 1940, Cornell won its 19th consecutive game when its last-second touchdown pass secured a 7-3 victory over Dartmouth. The referee, however, had lost track of downs; he ruled Cornell's fourth-down incompletion as a third-down play, allowing the winning points to be scored on fifth down.

The referee, Red Friesell, admitted his mistake. After reviewing the game films, Cornell sent a telegram to Dartmouth and conceded the victory. It is officially in the record books as a 3-0 victory for Dartmouth.

I know that the Pac-10 is proud of their integrity. However, the phrase that has danced in my head all week has been "trust, but verify." To bury their head in the sand in their initial reaction was rather myopic.

There is too much at stake in this game to not demand excellence in officiating. That is all Boren is doing. The Pac-10 doesn't have a problem, it has an opportunity for improvement. Curse Boren for pointing out such an opportunity.

The national counter-reaction reminds me a lot of the international shift in attitude following the 9/11 attacks. The world was behind us until we started to react. We may disagree on the appropriateness of going into Afghanistan and/or Iraq, but I suspect international opinion was going to be against the USA/Bush regardless. Similarly, everyone agrees Oklahoma was screwed, but heaven forbid the University and fans actually demand changes to prevent such events in the future.

Those who bash Boren for taking time out of his day have no idea 1) what he has accomplished in 12 years at OU or 2) what is the role of any university president. To address the first element, my degree is worth a million times more now than when it was granted, thanks entirely to Boren bringing excellence to the institution. When he started, he stated that OU's peers weren't Big 12 schools (although Texas and Texas A&M are clearly academically and financially above the rest), but Big 10 schools... and he immediately set forth to make it a reality. As someone who is chest-deep in university planning and strategy, I cannot begin to describe what a significant step and accomplishment that was. The second element revolves around what a president is supposed to be. Someone in the media mentioned that he looked more like a booster club president than a university president. When it comes to fundraising, that's exactly what he's supposed to be. Watch OU's promotional clip at halftime during OU-Texas, and you'll see what I mean. Click here to see what Boren does when he's not demanding accountability and excellence in athletics (http://www.ou.edu/publicaffairs/OUFacts1.shtml). Every single one of those accomplishments is directly due to the vision he has brought to the university. His addressing the controversy of the game 1) sent a political statement and 2) played to the donor base.

Now, as for Riese. We have a man now caught in several lies and the one I discovered last night. Where's the media on that one? Where is the media, period? Oh that's right, it's the blogosphere that is [url=http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/09/16/opn_ltr.html}doing all the work these days[/url].

[end blog rant]

The "lie I caught last night" is the statement on Portland State's Hall of Fame that Riese played for the Kansas City Royals. We know he did no such thing, and was at most a minor leaguer for the Kansas City A's. There is a sports columnist with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (not Galloway) that told me through a mutual friend that he was going to investigate the baseball claim, but I've heard nothing about it since Sunday. Since there's no longer any pressing urgency about the Oregon affair, perhaps it will be additional fodder for the RRS. We'll just have to wait and see.

Marc

Jason White's Third Knee

9/27/2006, 07:57 AM

KYHonorarySooner

9/27/2006, 08:29 AM

Being from KY and hearing them announce Forde as a Louisvillian (which isnt really a part of KY anyway) every time he is on ESPN you don't understand how many times I have wanted to kick this guy in the balls. He is just another "journalist" who says the most outrageous, controversial things whether he believes them or not just to get a rise in order to get his face on the national stations more often.

sooner_born_1960

9/27/2006, 10:32 AM

KYHonorarySooner

9/27/2006, 12:33 PM

You really need to spell out Kentucky every so often. I originally thought you were referring to the jelly.

Funny... I guess I thought it would be OK since it is the actual state abbreviation. :D

Jason White's Third Knee

9/27/2006, 01:29 PM

Funny... I guess I thought it would be OK since it is the actual state abbreviation. :D

No, OK would be Oklahoma.

Jewstin

9/27/2006, 05:38 PM

I wrote him an angry e-mail and addressed him as "Patricia." ;)

Jason White's Third Knee

9/29/2006, 07:00 AM

It's this kind of journalism that get's a-holes noticed. Just add him to the list:

Lu pica
Forde
Fiutak
Albom
Bayless
Jim Grey

How else would we know these names? When they are complete asses, they get noticed... primarily because people want to hurt them.

Oh, for F sake! I forgot the biggest career launcher of them all!

Jim Rome

If he wasn't a dick to Jim Everett, would anyone know who he is? Everett did Rome a favor by shoving his scrawny ***.

MI Sooner

9/29/2006, 11:57 AM

Jason White's Third Knee

9/29/2006, 02:07 PM

Maybe I'm just obtuse, but wasn't the premise of Forde's column that he'd make the the best arguments he could for and against the conference? I suspect that the OU = whiners argument would be pretty convincing to non-OU fans. I know my unsympathetic co-workers have told me to shut up about the Oregon game numerous times.

Doen't stop me from sending links to every new video of the blown call that I find, though.
I haven't found a true college football fan that didn't think we got jacked. The half assed fans might think we're whiny, but not people that really dig in. They know how important a big call like that is and the travesty that was the review.

PDXsooner

9/29/2006, 02:44 PM

right, wrong, or indifferent -- the more OU fans continue to write letters and keep pressing this issue, it will only make us look worse. i wish it wasn't that way, but it is.

if the team goes 13-1 and wins the national title, that would be the best response. nothing the fans do can help the situation aside from dropping it and cheering really, really hard.

soonermaticsam

9/29/2006, 08:11 PM

I thought this thread was going to be about Alana De La Garza. oh well

The media has been whining more about us whining than we have whined about the, um, that one thing........... Alana De La Garza...........what were we talking about?

Desert Sapper

9/29/2006, 09:44 PM

if the team goes 13-1 and wins the national title, that would be the best response. nothing the fans do can help the situation aside from dropping it and cheering really, really hard.

...and praying some of those teams at the top lose. The only way we pull out a MNC this year is if some other teams lose AND we win out. The best thing is if the team goes 13-1, wins the Big XII, and wins in Glendale. Beyond that, it's out of the team's control. Too many losers like Forde casting votes one way or another.