One of the most entertaining things about football is the sheer rarity of meteorological postponements; it usually takes a hurricane to move or reschedule a contest. In fact, some of the best games have been played in winter conditions that would derail any other sporting event. Especially golf.
During the home stretch of their sixth championship season, the Oklahoma Sooners had such a contest against their in-state whipping boys "rivals" Oklahoma State, who were #17 in the nation at the time. The 1985 game was the first in the "Bedlam" series to be played at night, which is probably a decision both schools deeply regretted at the time. The wind chill was near 0 at kickoff, and conditions steadily deteriorated throughout the game. Or in other words, this. was. awesome.
Oklahoma would win the game 13-0, then go on to capture the MNC with a 25-10 win over Penn State in the Orange Bowl. Oklahoma State, meanwhile, would do nothing of consequence for the millionth year in a row, a streak that survives to this day.
The Big 12's annual meetings are currently taking place in Colorado Springs and league commissioner Dan Beebe has a lot on his plate. But one agenda item that he is pushing strongly is a fifth year of eligibility for football players. He hopes the proposed change will get some attention from the NCAA rules committee.
The proposal for a fifth year of eligibility would eliminate redshirting, instead giving college football players five years to compete on the field. Under current rules, players have a five-year window in which to complete four years of playing time. This isn't the first time this change has come up, but opponents have argued that eligibility rules need to standard across sports. Big 12 commissioner Beebe, disagrees.
Beebe, however, said he thinks football should be seen as unique because it has a high rate of redshirts and injuries.
"Injuries happen and coaches have players who could contribute, but they don't want to play someone on a limited basis and burn a redshirt year," Beebe said. "And you have kids during their redshirt year who are getting the heck beat out of them in practice every day with no hope of playing."
The rule change would certainly eliminate the need for coaches to agonize about redshirting decisions. In addition, it would seemingly end the need for athletes and schools to file medical hardships in the wake of injuries. Lastly, given that the average college football player takes around 4.7 years to graduate, the five-year eligibility window could help improve graduation rates.
We'll never forget Mike Gundy's famous rant in which he informed the world that "he's a man and 40." Now, the player he was defending is suggesting that Gundy is actually just a man and a phony. That's right, former Oklahoma State quarterback Bobby Reid and his mother recently accused Gundy of putting on an act on that fateful day.
"Reid was caught off guard. Here was a coach who'd been burying him and now he was going to war for him? It didn't add up. "At first, everything [Gundy] was saying sounded real and true," Rajika says. "But I'm a believer where there is smoke, there's fire."
In other words, Bobby and Rajika Reid felt info in Carlson's column came indirectly from Gundy or his staff. ("I'd have a hard time agreeing with that," Gundy says.)
In other words, they felt Gundy's rant was fake.
"Honestly, the way I took it, I felt like it was all a front," Reid says. "That it was all a big show. It didn't feel genuine."
Last summer Oklahoma State wide receiver Artrell Woods was involved in a serious accident in the team's weightroom.
Carrying 185 pounds across his shoulders, Woods finished a set of repetitions and walked over to set the weight down. He tweaked an ankle and lost his balance, collapsing to the floor. The weight fell on top of him, dislocating his spine.
Woods was unable to move and immediately lost feeling in his legs. He was flown by helicopter to an area hospital and underwent a spinal fusion surgery. At the time his football future wasn't the only thing in doubt.
"At first, the doctors didn't think I would ever walk again, period," Woods said. "They weren't even thinking about me playing again. They were just trying to get me moving."
After a strenuous bout of rehabilitation, Woods was amazingly cleared to play football again in January.
"I still have some work to do," Woods said. "I'm not the same player I was before I got hurt. It would be pretty obvious if people were out there watching me. I'm almost there, though, almost there."
He has been given a green jersey to keep from getting hit in practice, and team doctors are confident he will be ready for the season opener against Washington State on Aug. 30 in Seattle.
When I wrote about Woods' injury last summer I never imagined he would be back on the field this spring. His story is quite a tribute to modern medicine, his own fierce determination, and the power of love and support from family, friends and teammates.
But in Woods' mind, the comeback isn't over yet:
"[If I score a touchdown] I hope everybody goes crazy, and I hope the stands are full when I do it, too," Woods said.
With spring practices getting underway across the Big 12, why not check in with one of the high profile positions, the quarterback?
At Iowa State second year head coach Gene Chizik has a two-man race for the starting QB job as Austen Arnaud and Phillip Bates will battle it out.
"For me, it's just learning every day," said Arnaud, who is competing with Phillip Bates for the starting job. "You can make your share of plays, but if you're turning the ball over, it doesn't really matter."
Bates played wide receiver a year ago, but is a full-time quarterback for the time-being.
At Nebraska Joe Ganz begins the spring as the clear-cut number one QB after starting the final three games of the 2007 season. This is a new spot for Ganz who had spent three years in the program as a backup.
"It's weird," Ganz said. "It's going to be different."
"Now that I've gotten to where I want to, I'm just going to have to work that much harder to not let anybody take it from me," Ganz said. "I've worked too hard to let somebody come up and take the job from me, so I really don't need any more motivation than that."
In Stillwater, Zac Robinson also has the starting job locked down. The backup spot, however, is up for grabs. Sophomore Alex Cate and redshirt freshman Brandon Weeden will vie for the job.
"It's huge for those two guys," co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Gunter Brewer said about Friday's scrimmage and the three others that will take place this spring. "They have not had any live action. They found that out today. That's why live snaps are so much better than practice snaps. It's as close as you're going to get to a game against a defense that's throwing a lot of stuff at you."
I believe Kansas would beat Oklahoma in a Big 12 Championship match and doesn't view the Sooners as the main road block for the Jayhawks. If I were a Jayhawk fan I would be more worried about Oklahoma State this Saturday. You see at this level of the game where the difference in athletic ability is insignificant on a program to program basis the difference many times is really a mental one. Kansas is a program that's used to playing disrespected and thrives in the underdog role.
The Jayhawks will be more than comfortable in that situation playing in the Big 12 Championship game against Oklahoma but this week they are out of their element. They're playing on the road under a ton of pressure and are EXPECTED to win. Meanwhile there are no such expectations on the Cowboys just a loose football team playing at home with no pressure and a ton of motivation. Very, very dangerous.
So in my mind it's not Oklahoma or Missouri or even pollsters who can rob Kansas of a championship berth. Oklahoma State is actually the biggest threat.
Who knew? Well actually, some people are buzzing about that game as Kansas' downfall but there's something even more surprising to consider: Kansas as a touchdown favorite over the Sooners.
Should the Jayhawks get past Okie State and Missouri Kansas known for its rich basketball history likely would face Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship. "Right now I'd make that game a touchdown maybe," 7 1/2 [LVSC's Ken] White said.
A week after being likely underdogs to Missouri, Kansas might be favored by a touchdown or more over Oklahoma. Crazy talk? You decide and maybe just maybe it might play out that way.
On the day in which Nebraska honored its 1997 National Championship team (sorry Michigan), the 2007 Husker team chalked up its own honor. This one was a little less positive, however, as Oklahoma State crushed NU 45-14 marking Nebraska's worst home loss in 49 years.
Like each team for the past five weeks, the Cowboys dominated the Huskers up front. Dantrell Savage (pictured at right) rushed for a career high 212 yards as OSU slashed Nebraska's woozy defense for 551 yards of total offense. The Cowboys 45 points also meant that the 2007 Huskers became the first Nebraska team in the program's 118-year history to surrender 40 points four times in the same season.
"Really, our coaches did such a good job this week preparing us for every situation we could be in," [OSU quarterback Zac] Robinson said. "They just told us it was not any different than practice. We went out and they did a good job of putting us in those situations."
"To see that many points, especially here and in this type of environment...," Robinson said. "We weren't really worried about what the score was, but it was definitely big to jump on them early."
Nebraska has become the team you want to play when you need a chance to pad your offensive totals. The Huskers now find themselves on the other end of the kind of unmerciful poundings they handed out for the better part of two generations. Never was the irony of this fact more evident then when Robinson and Savage scorched Nebraska's defense on a slew of power option plays.
But Nebraska fans can rest easy knowing that their fearless leader Bill Callahan has his finger on the pulse of team's problems.
"I really thought coming into this contest we were going to play more competitively, but that wasn't he case," Callahan said.
"He [Bomar] does a nice job of throwing the ball on time and he has a big-time arm, and he's tough and he runs the ball effectively, so I was concerned about that," Gundy said. "But I thought we handled him well."
The Cowboys who hit the field for the first time since Gundy's infamous tirade controlled the line of scrimmage on their way to 584 yards of total offense. Quarterback Zac Robinson 279 yards and two scores and Adarius Bowman caught eight passes for 141 yards and a score. Oklahoma State's special teams star Perrish Cox also returned a punt for a touchdown in the third quarter.
Bomar – who was playing in Oklahoma for the first time since being forced out of Norman – completed just 22 of 49 passes for 270 yards. The Cowboys also held him without a touchdown pass for the first time since in eight games.
Gundy's return to the field after his passionate support for maligned quarterback Bobby Reid did not go unnoticed or unappreciated by the home crowd.
"The public address announcer introduced Gundy as "America's head coach," and some fans wore orange T-shirts with the message "I'm a man. I'm 40. Go Pokes." -- a play on one of Gundy's most replayed remarks."
Desmond Howard, on ESPN's College Football Live earlier today in response to Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy's outburst towards a reporter:
So I read the article, and as I started to read the article I was like, she started drawing a reference to this kid's mom giving him some chicken. I'm like is this kid's mom ... where is she going with this? It painted a picture.
He's sitting there holding a cell phone and you see like this big black hand with a chicken leg come into the screen and feeding him. Or is she taking a knife and fork and giving him a chicken breast?
I didn't know where she was going with that. So then I started to read some more and she never really wrapped it up. She just tried to allude to this mother's boy image. I'm like come on little lady you must not know athletes - some of the toughest players I've ever played with were mama's boys.
It might have been meant innocently, or maybe it was intentional - hopefully Mr. Howard can clarify that mangled statement. I'm just as confused as him about the article but I also don't know how far he was going with his comment. Reid is a black player and it's not hard to see how people might confuse Jenni Carlson's description of a scene between Reid and his mother as slyly racist.
If Howard didn't mean to infer as much, he needs to be more careful in how he says things. If Howard suspects as much, then it's not a leap to think others are suspicious that race was one of Ms. Carlson's calculations about Bobby Reid and how she described him. And if that's true, race is another element to this ordeal that should be given attention instead of hiding in the shadows to simmer in peoples' hearts unaddressed or left to vague allusions.
On Saturday The Oklahoman published a piece by columnist Jenni Carlson about Cowboys' Quarterback Bobby Reid. More specifically, about why she thinks he was benched in favor of Zac Robinson. The column didn't sit well with Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy who had something to say about the column. His chief complaint was that Carlson's column was little more than a smear of a good kid who hadn't been playing as well as the coaches would've liked.
He made a mistake, though, in his tirade by claiming that "three-fourths" of the article was "inaccurate." It wasn't a mistake because Carlson's column was full of truth and facts. It was a mistake because it gave Ms. Carlson exactly the opening she needed to completely avoid the chief criticism of her column. Her response, essentially, was... Inaccuracies? What inaccuracies!? "I really wanted to know, from him, what those inaccuracies were," she says.
I certainly hope that Ms. Carlson is not as dense as she appears. Meanwhile, other columnists and media organizations are rushing to her defense. They're asking for everything from more respect for the media to his firing. More detailed analysis after the jump...
The Big 12's annual meetings are currently taking place in Colorado Springs and league commissioner Dan Beebe has a lot on his plate. But one agenda item that he is pushing strongly is 
We'll never forget 
Last summe
With spring practices getting underway across the Big 12, why not check in with one of the high profile positions, the quarterback?
On the day in which Nebraska honored its 1997 National Championship team (sorry Michigan), the 2007 Husker team chalked up its own honor. This one was a little less positive, however, as 
Unfortunately, for OSU fans we're not talking about a huge Bedlam win over the Sooners. Instead, they'll have to settle for 
Desmond Howard
