11 Things I think you think I think about Sandusky situation

1. I read the 23 page grand jury document. It’s revolting. Actually I didn’t read all 23 pages. I had to skip some paragraphs due to their nature. 
2. My heart grieves for the children – many who are now adults - who were abused by Sandusky. I pray they somehow find peace. 
3. I think Joe Paterno had to be relieved of his duties. I think it’s impossible to gracefully fire someone in that situation. The man had served the university for 60 years. He did a lot of good things and had a wonderful impact on many people. The man’s not perfect (only one was). I doubt this was his only mistake, but it was most likely his most egregious one. Put yourself in the PSU Board’s shoes: 
4. You’ve got a long term employee and a beloved public figure. Some have contended for a few years that his time is past. But ignore that piece. Focus on the beloved and faithful employee. 
5.  You find out that at least 9 years ago – and probably 13 - he found out about a legal issue. He didn’t do the right thing. As an enabler, he enabled a continued cycle of sexual abuse for years to come. His inaction in his role led to tens of millions of dollars of potential exposure to the institution. 
6. You just cannot ignore the inaction that exposed your organization to millions of dollars of losses. Factor in the child sexual abuse that was enabled, and you cannot have a big going away party for the guy with 100,000 of his closest friends on Saturday. You have to pull the plug. 
7. My thoughts regarding McQueary’s role in this are confused. A quick story about myself: When I was 28 years old (17 years ago) I was working a new job as an accountant. The company had recently gone public. My wife of 1 year and I had just poured every cent we had into a down payment on a modest suburban home. We had no cash left. No financial reserves. After a few months, I realized the company was misstating their financial position. Now, the ethical thing to do is to report the malfeasance, right? Well, let’s throw some other dynamics in there. As I said, I was cash poor. The auditing firm, who would get sued if the financial misstatement were uncovered, was my former employer. If I go all whistleblower on everyone, my concern was that I would never get a job in accounting again. Whistleblowers don’t have good job prospects going forward. What did I do. I talked to the General counsel of the company. He blew me off. I found a job and was out the door in less than a month. I did not take my beef to the SEC. In hindsight, I chickened out.  The company collapsed under the weight of its financial problems 2 years later. 
8.  So, how does this relate to McQueary. He’s 28 years old, as a graduate assistant at his alma mater and where he grew up. Sandusky was the d-coordinator when McQueary was QB. So, McQ’s trying to climb the coaching ladder, making no money as a GA and he catches Sandusky in the shower with a kid. He probably figures if he takes this too far he loses his job, potentially his career. We can all say he would have been a hero, and that’s true. But sometimes heroes die. Or their careers take seismic career shifts. In our nature, we seek self preservation. It is only through self discipline or deference to a higher power that we look out for others. It took some level of courage to even tell Paterno. Yes, he should have done more. But I understand at some level the conflicting emotions that McQueary went through. I can tell you I had many sleepless nights as I went through my comparatively simple issue, and I would imagine he’s had a few as well. 
9.  The Penn State fans who are angry at the Board of Trustees are just making themselves and their university look stupid. You have to get rid of the President and the Coach for what they knew and didn’t do. 1989 was the year of rapin’ dopin’ shootin’ at OU, as well as NCAA investigation, I had just moved to Texas the previous year. I was embarrassed to be a Sooner grad. I had busted my butt at college to get a diploma and then some student-athletes, who lacked proper moral leadership from their coach, made some pretty idiotic decisions. As a Sooner expatriate in Texas, it was frustrating. Penn State fans, I can assure you, the “us against the world/media/board of trustees” mindset is just silly. You’ve lost perspective at that point. Kids were sexually assaulted. This was identified several times. You should be humbled, not defiant.  If you're one of those kids that was assaulted, or parent of that kid, what's going through your mind as you watch hundreds of people deify a man who enabled a monster?
10.  ESPN’s coverage of this was absolutely awful. It’s like they were the apologist for Penn State from the beginning. Twisting the coverage to “did PSU Board of Trustees do the right thing by firing Joe by phone” and "it was only a few students rioting" bit is insulting. They had no presence on site. 
11.  The rush to judgment on this is appalling. We’ve all failed somewhere along the way. Some of us fail in socially acceptable ways, some don’t. Let’s let the facts come out in a normal course of legal proceedings.The rumor mill is not going to solve things.

Landry Jones October season

Landry Jones threw for 2,072 yards in October, completing 148 of 233 passes for 21 TDs, and an NCAA efficiency rating of 163.7. If that month were a season, here’s where it would rank in the OU passing records:

 

• Yards – 13^th, just ahead of Rhett Bomar’s freshman season and just behind Cale Gundy’s senior season
• Completions and Attempts – 16^th, just ahead of Cale Gundy’s junior season
• TDs – 11^th, just ahead of Josh Heupel’s national championship senior season
• Efficiency rating – 3^rd, beating out Jason White’s Heisman campaign and trailing Sam Bradford’s two healthy seasons as a starter. 

This during a month where a QB that used to struggle away from Norman played three of the five games outside of the state.

Also during the month, Landry managed to overtake current Sooner coaches and former OU QBs Cale Gundy and Josh Heupel with most interceptions thrown in a career. Landry current has 35, and passed Cale's 32 and Josh's 31. 

With a good finish to this season, Landry could break the OU season passing yards record of 4,720 set by Sam Bradford in 2008. As a frame of reference to show you how far we've come as a passing school, in the three years of the Blake era, we passed for a combined 4,754 yards.

My, how times have changed.

Texas' busy non conference schedule

Yesterday Texas AD Deloss Dodds said the Horns non-conference schedule was full until 2018. As a courtesy to my reader, here's what the Horns have on the slate for the coming years:

2012 - Wyoming, New Mexico (backup plan to join the Mountain West?), at Mississippi.
2013 - New Mexico State, at BYU, Mississippi
2014 - North Texas, BYU, at Arkansas
2015 - at Notre Dame, Rice, Cal
2016 - Notre Dame, UTEP, at Cal
2017 - Maryland, UCF, at USC
2018 - Maryland, open, USC

Honestly, I was surprised at this slate of future contest. UT has been scheduling patsies of the SunBelt and Conf USA for several years. It look like they stepped it up a bit.

What will be interesting will be if the Big 12 loses Missouri and doesn't replace. Or if they expand to 12, and go back to divisional play. Either scenario would free up a slot on the schedule. UT seems to now be following the OU philosophy of a premier national exposure non-conference matchup, a cupcake, and a middle of the road independent or automatic qualifier. Not a lot of teams from AQ conferences sign up for two non-conference games of that magnitude.

The Newfound Horns Rushing Attack

Much ado this week about Texas being better because they have a run game now. Well, it's better than last year, but let's take a quick look:

In four games, Texas has averaged 4.55 yards per attempt. Someone will tell you they have the 25 best rushing attack in the country. That's true, if you count yards per game. However, what's really going on is the Horns are rushing more. They have the 13th most rushing attempts. The average per carry only ranks 37th.

Finally, here are the rankings of the four Horns foes in terms of yards per carry allowed:
Rice 117, BYU 92, UCLA 110, Iowa State 51. The most telling part of this: in only one of the four games (UCLA) was the Longhorn yards per carry greater than what the team has allowed in their other contests.

Rice gave up 4.77 yards per carry, and gives up 6.1 yards to everyone else.
BYU gave up 3.86 ypc against Texas, and 4.86 to everyone else
UCLA: 5.68 vs 5.01
Iowa State: 3.62 to the Horns, 3.73 to others.

Overall, the 4.55 yards per carry for the Horns compares unfavorably with the 4.95 yards per carry that the other opponents of the Horns foes have gained. So, Malcolm Brown is better than the Greg Davis coached RB by committee, let's not confuse them with Georgia Tech or Wisconsin.

Thoughts from Week 1, and why we should join the SEC

To lead off, thoughts and prayers go out to the Selmon family. I recall Lee Roy as a heckuva football player. Many I’ve read on the web recall him as a class man, and that’s more important. Lee Roy, may you rest in Peace.

Second, the Baylor win against the Horned Lizards was huge. While TCU lost a lot from last year's team, I believe time will show this is still a quality club. This win gives the Bears some additional exposure nationally, and helps Briles recruit in the state. I think the Bears are poised to be a power in Conference USA in 2012.

Third, if you thought that TAMU's departure didn't blow the Big 9 up, you have to acknowledge that they placed the C4 in place and David Boren told everyone Friday that he'sgot the detonation device and an itch .

As I type this paragraph, I'm watching Houston whip UCLA. Perhaps a Baylor led Conference USA is a better football conference than the PAC 12 anyway.  As I learn later that Sacramento State beat Oregon State and Washington nearly lost to Eastern Washington, I believe this more. Here's my crazy, anti-establishment idea...take all the D-1 Texas schools (sans UT, but include TAMU), add the three D-1 Oklahoma schools, form your own network. You've got UTEP, UNT, SMU, TCU, TAMU, TT, Baylor, Tulsa, Houston, Rice, Boone State and Oklahoma. You've got twelve teams, so you can have the playoff thingy. Partner with Fox or CBS college Sports. You'll have the non-Longhorn eyeballs in Texas and Oklahoma locked up from a televised college sports perspective. If you want to corner the market further on Texas eyeballs, televise Mexican Professional Soccer.

For about two and a half quarters, I was having fantasies about Rice upsetting Texas on the debut of the Longhorn network. Oh well. South Florida wrecking the start of Notre Dame's season was satisfying.

Last night's game was BORING. I really wish I would have watched with Gus Johnson doing the play by play. The only refreshing thing was the Dominique Whaley walk on story.

Other alignment thoughts: this lady does an excellent job of showing how UT can enter theSuper-PAC and deal with the Longhorn network

Overall, I'd rather be in the SEC than the Super-PAC. Ten quick reasons:

1.  I think it's geographically better. The existing schools in the SEC average 762 miles from Norman, Ok. The Pac-12: 1,472. 
2. If you want to argue #1 with the East division of the Pac-12, keep this in mind: 5 schools in the SEC West are closer to Norman than Boulder, CO is. The one exception, Auburn. 
3. All the programs already cheat in the SEC, so the infrastructure is already there. 
4. All the schools strive to be a university the football team could be proud of. 
5. The thirteen states with the highest teen pregnancy rates, according to statehealthfacts.org: MS, NM, TX, AR, OK, AZ, KY, TN, LA, NV, SC, AL, GA. The only states in the list above not represented in an SEC with Oklahoma and Texas A&M: Arizona and Nevada. States in the SEC not represented in the list above: none. States in the Pac-12 not represented in the list above: CA, WA, OR. 
6. With the Pac 16 you'll be getting the occasional 930 pm kickoff of your west coast game. Let's face it: I'm getting a little bit old to be staying up that late watching football.Particularly if Petros Papadakis is doing the color commentary. 
7. Arizona's got that whole weird non observance of daylight savings time thing going on. So somewhere along the way you're going to miss the first hour of an OU football game. On the bright side, that's only about one quarter when played at the pace of last night's OU-Tulsa game. 
8. Academics: we like to think of ourselves as an institution of higher learning at the U of O. By doing some researching on satscores.us, I’ve estimated the average SAT score of an incoming freshman at OU to be 1,755. We would be the 5^th highest school in the SEC and the 7^th highest school in the Pac 10. According to the metric I selected to evaluate, the top 5 schools in the SEC are in the SEC East, and the highest ranking school SEC west school is Auburn. We would be an average school in the SEC, and a below average school in the Pac 12.  
9. I really think the whole tree-hugger left coast thing just doesn't line up with OU. 
10. The Sooners would get better coverage on edsbs.com, my favorite college fb website.

Ten things I think you think I think about OU leaving the Big 12

Much ado last week about Texas A&M's lusting after the SEC. Meanwhile the Sooners have sat idly by.

I think the Sooners need to leave the Big 12-11-10 for greener pastures. My reasoning:

1. By biding our time in the We're Texas and Friends (WTF) conference, we lose control of our own destiny. We know Cash Machine U is already examining its options.
2. We know Missouri has already expressed an interest in jumping into the lap of the Big 10-11-12.
3. Let's pretend for a minute we lose those two members to the SEC or somewhere else. The replacement options are: TCU (thumbs up, but the WTF conference has already missed on that); BYU (seriously?, BYU already has their own network); the cream of the Conference USA (Houston-Tulsa-SMU); Boise State (geographically awful, but at least there's name recognition, and you'd secure the Idaho market)
4. You are replacing an attractive state-wide Texas draw and a St. Louis / KC market team with Fort Worth, Highland Park, part of Houston, Provo or Boise. TV wise, that's not exactly a step up.
5. You're overall conference strength takes a step back. Seriously, at that point the Big 12 is a Longhorn defection away from being Conference USA, but with a better TV deal. For now.
6. When looking at alternatives, whether it's in love, career or conference alignment, it's important to make sure you are running to something, not away from something. If we wait until Cash Machine U and Methzou jump, we may be in total reaction mode and be left trying to negotiate our way into something from a position of weakness.
7. I firmly believe that at some point you're going to have a 40 or so team Division 1-A, and the lower tier football schools in the automatic qualifier conferences, and Sun Belt, WAC, Conference USA schools will be a lower level. In the interim, you must continue to be proactive in maximizing your revenue stream. As I've said before, I think it would be fascinating to have a EPL type of format to college football.
8. With the Longhorn network contract, Texas is almost incented to leave the Big 12, and them joining another conference will be problematic without modifying the existing longhorn network contract.
9. To stand by and stick to tradition, or chant the "we just want to hang out with Texas and Boone State" will result in a loss of revenue and prestige for the program. It will be like having John Blake as your head coach, without the horrible press conferences.

Yes, that's only nine. But that's all that should be left in the Big 12.

Twelve/Ten/Nine/Eight Thoughts on Conference Chaos - 2011 Edition

1. Will Texas A&M be successful in the SEC? You betcha. You've got a school from one of the three best hs football states (CA, FL, TX) that just entered the conference that has consistently been the best football conference. I think they'll be very competitive in the SEC. Remember also, this is a school that has one Big 12 conference fb championship in 15 years and a national championship in 1937. The fan base isn't screaming for the coaches head if they go 11-1 there.
2. What's different now versus a year ago when everyone re-upped in the Big 12? I have no idea. The Longhorn Network was in play and everyone knew it was coming. Maybe reading the contract inspired everyone.
3. What happens to the Big 12? If TAMU cashes out of the Big 12, I think the B12 crumbles.We already know Missouri was standing on the sidelines yelling, "Pick Me! Pick Me!" when the Big 10 was looking to expand last year. Someone will head with them to the SEC. or pack their bags to the Pac 12.
4. Will OU head to the SEC? Berry Tramel says they won't. I would imagine he's better connected than me to the OU insider train. The comment in Tramel's column is that OU doesn't want part of the SEC recruiting circus. I find that curious. Would OU's recruiting change that much? I don't think OU's recruiting strategy would change at all. You're still going to a) raid Texas as much as you can; b) seek to maintain recruiting dominance in state; c) cherry pick from CA and across the nation when the opportunity presents itself.
5. If not the SEC, and the We're Texas and Friends conference crumbles, where does OU go? To me, OU has two choices: Be part of the SEC West or Pac 12/14/16 East. If With an A&M departure, the big 12 becomes the old Big Eight, subbing Texas for Nebraska. There's just not enough glory for that (or TV dollars) in today's culture. OU is in a precarious position...they have great brand name recognition, so many want them. But they need to keep an eye toward Texas (the state, not the university). You have to somehow keep in front of the eyeballs in Texas to keep recruiting well there.
6. Why do you not even consider the Big 10. I don't think it makes sense for either side. We're way south for the rest of the conference. Not enough eyeballs in Oklahoma for the Rust Belt network. They like to think they focus on academics there in the Big 10, but I think Ohio State is showing they can cheat just like any other school. From an OU perspective, it gives us a less of a presence in the State of Texas, and that could hurt recruiting.
7. What do you think Texas does. I think they end up a) in the Pac 12 East or b) independent. It all depends upon how the media deal works out. BYU is an independent with their own network, and they were able to cobble out a schedule for 2010 that's not completely unfortunate looking.
8. Don't you think it would be funny if Texas ended up in the SEC with their rivals from College Station? Yes.