Big 12 teams pay price for 12th game (Milenko Martinovich, FWST)
Oklahoma and Texas Tech accepted the difficult challenges of playing ranked teams on the road last weekend and lost. Now the worth of such games are being questioned.
“You’re not rewarded for going on the road, playing a tough schedule,” said Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops, whose Sooners lost to No. 13 Oregon 34-33. “All everybody looks at is the wins and losses.”
That’s a strange bit of whining coming from Stoops, given the fact that his team backed into a BCS title game one year (that many folks think was undeserved) largely because of his team’s strength of schedule.
However, blasting the Pac-10 clowns who blew those calls in the game with Oregon is perfectly legit. That does make a person question the sanity of scheduling a tough Pac 10 road game.
6 comments On Strange complaint from Stoops
There was a similar story in the Statesman today. It didn’t emphasize the need for an off week as much as it talked about the fact that nobody would schedule tough games anymore. DeLoss Dodds has pretty much said he wouldn’t schedule any more Ohio State-type games.
Personally, I don’t think a I-A program should be allowed to schedule a II-A, absent a compelling reason, like a last-minute scheduling emergency. It’s embarassing that UT is playing Sam Houston State in a couple of weeks.
I think a tough home-and-home is a great idea. If UT hadn’t won in Columbus last year, if they had beaten, say, even a C-USA team like UH or UTEP, there’s a decent chance that Penn State would have passed them and played USC in the Rose Bowl. Plus, I haven’t seen this city as excited for a game since the Notre Dame game in 1995.
And yeah, to reiterate, I don’t know as I’ve ever seen a team get as thorough a…er…going over as OU got against Oregon. That was pathetic.
UT has an upcoming home and away series with UTEP, which should be good. The Sun Bowl is a hell of a place to see a game (or a concert).
On those OU calls, I thought the kickoff was defensible, because it was hard to tell if the front point of the football had actually gone ten yards from the replay. If it was short, it was by a few inches, so I give the refs/replay a pass on that (although there explanation was just plain stupid). But the tipped pass was clear as day on replay and there is no way the replay booth could have missed that. OU was robbed. TX/OU will be a good one – winner takes the conference title, as usual.
The kickoff was the least defensible in my view. The camera angles alone were problematic, but the position of the players relative to the yard markers cleared up that confusion, as the Pac 10 officials have conceded. And the fact that an OU player emerged untouched with the ball was obvious. Either way they ruled, it should have been OU ball.
I want to see Big 12 teams scheduling decent non-conference opponents. Let’s have the power conferences playing each other. I could see the SEC balking at too much of that because of the depth of great programs in that conference, but I’m tired of seeing what Big 12 teams can do to Arkansas State and Nicholls State and Middle Tennessee State. Bleh!
I know this 12th game put some ADs in a bind as scheduling goes, but still… who wants to see some of these matchups?
Well, other than some Montana State fans. 🙂
It’s a scheduling bind for maybe a year or two. After that, start scheduling the mid-majors that say they never get a shot, TCU, Utah, Colorado State, etc. That’s a win-win. For example, an 11-1 TCU could hypothetically say, "We deserve a BCS bowl, our only loss was to USC," and the BCS schools can keep their strength of schedule out of the gutter.
Of course the obvious solution is simply to play another conference game. I’ve always thought that one of the major problems of Big 12 scheduling was that OU and Nebraska didn’t play every year. Well, here you go.
No, the obvious solution is to create a legitimate playoff system for at LEAST the top 16 teams. The argument against playoffs has always been that they add too many games to the schedule yet here we go adding a 12th game this year on top of the conference championship games that were added a few years back.
With a legit 16 team playoff system you’ll have 2-loss teams from the big conferences qualifying easily. So these early season losses are not nearly so crucial as with this mythical national championship/BCS nonsense.
As for the game in question. I have it on Tivo. Earlier in the game Oregon got burned on 3 missed calls. Two times OU ran past the 24 second clock on big plays that should have been called back but were’t. On top of that, the fumble by Oregon’s Jonathan Stewart was not a fumble if you look at the replay. He had the ball all the way down to the ground and it squirted out upon contact with the ground. Reverse that bad call and give the ball back to Oregon and you have a potential 10 or 14 point swing in the score. Oregon was already close to field goal range. And OU scored after the fumble recovery. So take away 7 from OU and give 3 or 7 to Oregon and suddenly you have Oregon in the lead going into the fateful onsides kick. Oregon would be leading either 34-26 or 31-26. Either way they don’t kick an onsides kick with the lead and the entire thing is moot.
Fact is, there were at least 5 bad calls or no-calls during the game. Two resulted in OU scores, only one resulted in a UO score. Take away all the bad calls and Oregon very well could have won the game anyway.
Early calls that might have been overturned but weren’t don’t have the impact of three game-changing blown calls at the end of the game. You’re talking "potential swing" versus game-changing calls.
Popular sentiment has it right on this one, however anyone wants to spin it. Three blown calls at the end of the game affected the outcome of the game. Pac-10 officials were right to apologize.
That said, those facts don’t and won’t change the outcome. Oklahoma has plenty to play for, and plenty of internal problems to correct if it wants to contend for a Big 12 title.
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