Wow, that was a rough one...

The competition has ramped up over the last few decades as well as attempts to level the playing field. I hate it when we lose, but in reality the gap has narrowed from bottom to top and it seems there are tons more athletes out there. Every week you have to play at the top of your game or someone will knock you off. Stoops wins a ton of games, but he drops a few now and then too. The 48 game streak has been there for awhile and you really don't see it threatened much and maybe never will again.

 

And to becoming Michigan or Tennessee or Texas.

 

If by "now and then" you mean every season, I agree with you.

 

Bravo! This is a post deserving of SPEK!

 

I take solace in all those teams losing yesterday and next week, OUr part is going to be taken OUt on texas. Some payback coming.

 

So, you expect 12-0 every year?

 

Well, I think most seasons. Very few undefeated teams that matter anymore Let's face it, the last championship we won took some luck. There was more than 1 game that year that could have gone either way. Winning them all against good competition doesn't happen often.

 

The wide open offenses have balanced the playing field considerably

 

Nope, quit expecting that about oh...7 or 8 years ago. Hell, I don't even bother wishing for it anymore - why waste the energy on something that isn't gonna happen again in the near future.

 

Very few teams are so dominating that luck was no factor in winning a national championship. The '95 Huskers would be an example of that.

 

I don't either. That has nothing to do with Stoops, recruiting, etc. etc. It's just how things are now. There are many factors at play, but undefeated seasons are mighty rare these days.

 

Find an interview with Stoops at the end of the 99 season (before the bowl game). Some reporter was congratulating him on a great job of 7-4 in his first season. He got really pissy and defensive (as he does with reporters) and basically said that we could have and should have won all 11.

I'd like to see some if that attitude back in place of "we just got outplayed and out coached". I'd like to not see the same mistakes repeated season after season.

If we lose because the other team plays better, no issue. When we lose because we can't get play calls in after a timeout and because we line up 3 defenders against 4 receivers, that should not be tolerated by any Oklahoma coach, player, donor or supporter.

 

Winning it all always takes a little luck. Whether it be with injuries or the way the ball bounces, there's always a small amount of the unknown, the one think you can't prepare for, that has to happen for it all to work out.

 

I dunno if you'll ever see the '99 Stoops again. How many of us are the same versions of ourselves 15 years later? With the same circumstances, the same motivations?

Lot ha$ changed in Bob's life in the pa$t 15 years. Now I'm not saying he's gotten soft or still isn't a fiery competitor. But he may not be at the same EXTREME level he was back in 1999. Remember, he was scared in 1999. Scared that taking the OU job was a mistake. We all know what a great motivator fear is.

 

Oh, there were plenty of mistakes made yesterday (enough to go around to the coaches and players), you'll get no argument from me there. However, you didn't answer the question, do you really expect to go 12-0 every year? Of course you don't. You'd have to be delusional to feel that way every year.

I understand the frustration. I get that losing sucks, especially at Oklahoma. What I don't get is the mentality that Stoops is never going to lead us to another title, or he's just not good enough. That attitude is lost on me.

Without getting into a philosophical debate, I'll just say that Stoops has preformed exceptional in his time at Oklahoma, and leave it at that.

Losses suck, and there's no way to spin it otherwise. I hate losing to a team that outplayed us as much as I hate beating ourselves, my hatred does not differentiate. But, this is one loss to a ranked team (it could be worse, ya know?). I'll let the season play out before I start kicking the dog and burning down the house.

I respect that some take loses more personal than I do, but I ask that you respect my perspective on the loss too.

 

Well, it has more than a little something to do with Stoops, recruiting, etc... I mean if it doesn't have anything to do with Stoops why don't we just replace him with the head coach from Norman High and save a few million a year?

 

Okay, okay...it has a *little* to do with Stoops. Although, I'm pretty good at Madden on the Xbox, so there's a chance I could get an offer when Stoops decides to hang 'em up.

 

I think the lack of great quarterback play on a consistent basis is largely attributed to poor coaching, specifically Huepel.

Landry regressed throughout the 2011 and 2012 season, in terms of consistency. He went from a fairly shifty quarterback occasionally making plays on his feet therefore opening passing to a dead duck in the pocket who couldn't move the ball without Ryan Broyles.

Blake Bellgot progressively worse with each passing week last season (Let's not forget he had pretty good games against Tulsa and Notre Dame, and threw the ball well)

Now we move to Trevor Knight. Fast, elusive, capable of an accurate ball. No reason anyone of his talent at this stage in his career should be struggling as much as he did. For some reason we completely abandoned the short passing game (swing passes, and quick slants, which we did call in our first touch down drive, only to abandon it). Huepel kept calling long bombs when Knight's confidence was falling apart, and left him out to die with a problem that could have been fixed by setting up some shorter plays.

As optimistic as I was entering the season. I was not sure whether or not we had the right OC to win the championship, and now I am even less sure. Huepel is now in his fourth year as OC and still struggles with basic play clock management, burning multiple timeouts, showing no awareness of his QB's mindset when things go south, and has done nothing to convince that a QB can improve under his watch (at least as an OC).

 

I'd be on your side. You might suck at the job, but that would beat the complete inevitably of a 2-3 loss Stoops season.

What year did the Miami Dolphins go undefeated? If Stoops had coached that team ya know what?

.... they'd have lost 2-3 games.

Certain things are inevitable - the passage of time, the stupidity of liberals, and Stoops losing 2-3 games.

 

I guess what surprises me the most is not that our D let them have a track meet against us in the 1st half or that our offense got bent over in crunch time and looked like the keystone cops, but from the sites I've visited tonight, most Sooner fans are resigned to the fact that we're going to cough up 1 or 2 games a year that we should win. A lot don't even get pizzed off with a loss anymore and seem to feel it's business as usual. I guess as long as the money keeps rolling in, at least for the short term, the administration feels it's ok. I've even seen the term thrown around, "We are now Texass-Lite", which really infuriates me.

I saw on one site that we haven't gone undefeated into the month of November since 2004. Surely, that's not right. That's 10 years. Has it really been that long since the year of the K-State fiasco in the Big 12 Championship game at Arrowhead? That fact can't be right.