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.

Weekend Wrapup - Week 1

It's a little late, but here's your weekend wrapup.

• The Mountain West went 2-1 against the Big 12 this week. Let's give a big shout out to Cash Machine U for thumping Wyoming and averting the sweep.
• In Cash Machine U's game against Wyoming, Jerrod Johnson looked significanly better than he had in the 08 campaign, going 31-41 for 349 yards and no picks.
• The Big 12 went 2-0 against teams from North Dakota, and 2-0 against Sun Belt teams.
• Missouri beat Illinois. Is Illinois not as good as we thought? Or did Mizzou not fall as far as we'd anticipated? It's tough to tell, but Blaine Gabbard sure looked good in his first game, as Mizzou beat the Illini for the fifth straight time.
• Baylor won a non-conference road game against a BCS opponent for the first time since a 1995 win at North Carolina, which was coached by Mack Brown at the time. Briles' Baylor Bears used some nice trickeration on the game sealing TD a beautifully executed lateral-pass from Griffin to Ernest Smith to Lanear Simpson. Baylor averaged 5 yards per carry against the Demon Deacons.
• Dez Bryant showed he's unstoppable with three catches, two for TD,s as Boone State beat Georgia on Saturday. One of the most bizarre new rules was on display, which says, "A receiver who is in the act of catching the ball, or if the pass receiver has already relaxed and shows no indication that he can still catch the pass cannot be targeted." In the Cowboys game, a Georgia defender hit a "defenseless" receiver, who had his hands on the ball when contact was made. I understand a desire to get rid of the unnecessary violence of the game, but he was aout to act the ball. I guess the Georgia DB should have offered an escort into the end zone instead. This hit was not a personal foul. Maybe they should have called a foul on Zac Robinson for lobbing a pass deep downfield into the middle of a zone defense. The biggest concern for me is that Okie State might be REALLY good this year. We'll know more as the season unfolds, as Georgia is not an offensive juggernaut this year. The game against Houston this Saturday will tell us more about the Cowboys D.
• Statistically, Coach Snyder's Cats dominated the Minutemen of Masschusetts on Saturday. However, a blocked punt returned for a score made the game an uncomfortable 21-17 victory for Willie and Friends.
• The Dan Hawkins farewall tour began on Sunday, with the Buffaloes losing to Colorado State 23-17. The anemic Buffalo offense amassed 251 yards against their intrastate rival, and Hawkins is 2-2 in his four games against the Rams. The scheduling geniuses in Boulder have followed up a Sunday game with a road game at Toledo. Dirk Koetter and Dan Hawkins have left Boise State for major programs and have come up short now. Will Petersen ever make the jump? Was he the reason Koetter and Hawkins were successful in the first place?

If your team did not get covered in this, have them schedule someone not in 1-AA and not in the Sunbelt Conference.