85Sooner
12/3/2006, 11:14 AM
KIRK BOHLS: COMMENTARY
Oklahoma wins title, but doesn't get its due
Big 12 champion's prize is a bowl game against Boise State.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Oklahoma did almost everything asked of it this season.
And will get next to nothing for it.
Oh, the Sooners (11-2) receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Arizona, where they will play their spring game against Boise State, which figures to be dazed by playing on a green field.
And Bob Stoops gets his full quarter of a million or so in bonuses to help him pay the lawn boy, the pool attendant, his portfolio investor and the maid. Maybe he can afford to buy off an instant-replay official, come to think of it.
Yeah, we know the Sooners lost to Texas, which was a really good team until Halloween, when it forgot it was legal to have a running game and play pass defense. But that other OU loss comes with a Barry Bonds-sized asterisk since, as Texas A&M's Dennis Franchione would put it, Oregon cheated. Or Oregon's Pac-10 replay official did.
If not for Gordon Riese, the Sooners would be throwing their hat into the BCS ring to play Ohio State after dispatching Nebraska 21-7 on Saturday behind Paul Thompson's pinpoint passing to Malcolm Kelly, who beat the world's shortest cornerback, 5-foot-7-inch Husker Cortney Grixby.
The Sooners defense was so fierce that one would have sworn Nebraska quarterback Zac Taylor's go-to receiver was a guy in the first row.
With his team's eighth straight win in hand, Stoops would be hoarse from lobbying to get his team into that Jan. 8 game. Instead, OU is Fiesta Bowl-bound. Eleven wins and a conference title just don't get you what they used to.
For winning the excruciatingly rugged Big 12 — yes, that's a joke, but we do have so many bowl-eligible teams that Kansas will be left out — OU doesn't even get an IOU from the folks who bring you the BCS.
The Sooners will not get a bye in the first round of the NCAA Football Extravaganza Tournament. They will not be seeded high in any single-elimination College Football Playoff That Would Make the Super Bowl Look Like Deal or No Deal. They don't even get a board game or party favors or a night out with Danny DeVito.
They get some cheesy Big 12 trophy and thanks for playing.
Once again, college football's postseason format gets exposed worse than Britney Spears in a limo. If this keeps up, it will drive fans off a cliff.
Yes, Southern Cal did Florida or Michigan a big favor and ratcheted up the annual controversy over the BCS and its archaic means of deciding a champion.
We know who's No. 1. Picking a No. 2 became decidedly more difficult when the Trojans stumbled. LSU's two-loss Tigers are so athletic that coach Les Miles is thinking of starting a circus. And his team may be the hottest one going although Florida's Gators can make a similar claim.
They at least have a more legitimate case than Michigan, which can't argue that it's a conference champion or won its last game. Florida deserves the No. 2 spot because it was the champ of the best conference in America, one that had three 10-win teams in the SEC West Division alone.
But no team should be more upset and disgusted with the system than Oklahoma. It did all it could and will wind up with the worst BCS slot, matched up against the Western Athletic Conference champion.
Don't hold your breath for a playoff system or even a plus-one model any time soon, especially when the current plan runs out after the 2009 season, because the plus-one would require seeding, and the Rose Bowl will never go for it.
Harvey Perlman, Nebraska's chancellor and chairman of the Big 12 board of directors, said as much in a news conference Friday. Perlman said he detected zero sentiment among college presidents and chancellors for a change in the current format.
He mentioned conflicts with academics and the tradition of the bowls as major factors in favor of keeping the status quo. All of the claims ring hollow, especially when those presidents approved adding a permanent 12th game to the regular season.
"There's certainly no groundswell in the people I talk to about a plus-one system," he said.
Maybe he should get out more and talk to different people, like the 80,031 fans who filled Arrowhead Stadium on a brutally cold December evening to watch a Big 12 title game that should have been played during the day.
Big 12 Commissioner Kevin Weiberg should have demanded that this game and any game played in the North Division be held during daylight hours, when human beings still have feelings in the majority of their extremities.
Funny that last year's title game was played during the day at Houston in a stadium with a retractable roof. ABC wanted this game in prime time because it felt it would impact the national championship.
It should but it won't, not under this system.
Oklahoma celebrated on the field as if it won a real prize, which of course it did. It's just a shame that that prize couldn't lead to something more.
But then that would be asking the stewards of college football to think outside the box. That — ahem — would be outside the luxury box, where most of the powers-that-be were sitting.
Oklahoma wins title, but doesn't get its due
Big 12 champion's prize is a bowl game against Boise State.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Oklahoma did almost everything asked of it this season.
And will get next to nothing for it.
Oh, the Sooners (11-2) receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Arizona, where they will play their spring game against Boise State, which figures to be dazed by playing on a green field.
And Bob Stoops gets his full quarter of a million or so in bonuses to help him pay the lawn boy, the pool attendant, his portfolio investor and the maid. Maybe he can afford to buy off an instant-replay official, come to think of it.
Yeah, we know the Sooners lost to Texas, which was a really good team until Halloween, when it forgot it was legal to have a running game and play pass defense. But that other OU loss comes with a Barry Bonds-sized asterisk since, as Texas A&M's Dennis Franchione would put it, Oregon cheated. Or Oregon's Pac-10 replay official did.
If not for Gordon Riese, the Sooners would be throwing their hat into the BCS ring to play Ohio State after dispatching Nebraska 21-7 on Saturday behind Paul Thompson's pinpoint passing to Malcolm Kelly, who beat the world's shortest cornerback, 5-foot-7-inch Husker Cortney Grixby.
The Sooners defense was so fierce that one would have sworn Nebraska quarterback Zac Taylor's go-to receiver was a guy in the first row.
With his team's eighth straight win in hand, Stoops would be hoarse from lobbying to get his team into that Jan. 8 game. Instead, OU is Fiesta Bowl-bound. Eleven wins and a conference title just don't get you what they used to.
For winning the excruciatingly rugged Big 12 — yes, that's a joke, but we do have so many bowl-eligible teams that Kansas will be left out — OU doesn't even get an IOU from the folks who bring you the BCS.
The Sooners will not get a bye in the first round of the NCAA Football Extravaganza Tournament. They will not be seeded high in any single-elimination College Football Playoff That Would Make the Super Bowl Look Like Deal or No Deal. They don't even get a board game or party favors or a night out with Danny DeVito.
They get some cheesy Big 12 trophy and thanks for playing.
Once again, college football's postseason format gets exposed worse than Britney Spears in a limo. If this keeps up, it will drive fans off a cliff.
Yes, Southern Cal did Florida or Michigan a big favor and ratcheted up the annual controversy over the BCS and its archaic means of deciding a champion.
We know who's No. 1. Picking a No. 2 became decidedly more difficult when the Trojans stumbled. LSU's two-loss Tigers are so athletic that coach Les Miles is thinking of starting a circus. And his team may be the hottest one going although Florida's Gators can make a similar claim.
They at least have a more legitimate case than Michigan, which can't argue that it's a conference champion or won its last game. Florida deserves the No. 2 spot because it was the champ of the best conference in America, one that had three 10-win teams in the SEC West Division alone.
But no team should be more upset and disgusted with the system than Oklahoma. It did all it could and will wind up with the worst BCS slot, matched up against the Western Athletic Conference champion.
Don't hold your breath for a playoff system or even a plus-one model any time soon, especially when the current plan runs out after the 2009 season, because the plus-one would require seeding, and the Rose Bowl will never go for it.
Harvey Perlman, Nebraska's chancellor and chairman of the Big 12 board of directors, said as much in a news conference Friday. Perlman said he detected zero sentiment among college presidents and chancellors for a change in the current format.
He mentioned conflicts with academics and the tradition of the bowls as major factors in favor of keeping the status quo. All of the claims ring hollow, especially when those presidents approved adding a permanent 12th game to the regular season.
"There's certainly no groundswell in the people I talk to about a plus-one system," he said.
Maybe he should get out more and talk to different people, like the 80,031 fans who filled Arrowhead Stadium on a brutally cold December evening to watch a Big 12 title game that should have been played during the day.
Big 12 Commissioner Kevin Weiberg should have demanded that this game and any game played in the North Division be held during daylight hours, when human beings still have feelings in the majority of their extremities.
Funny that last year's title game was played during the day at Houston in a stadium with a retractable roof. ABC wanted this game in prime time because it felt it would impact the national championship.
It should but it won't, not under this system.
Oklahoma celebrated on the field as if it won a real prize, which of course it did. It's just a shame that that prize couldn't lead to something more.
But then that would be asking the stewards of college football to think outside the box. That — ahem — would be outside the luxury box, where most of the powers-that-be were sitting.