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Topic: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?

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longhorn320

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #14 on: February 04, 2022, 11:06:58 AM »
This Longhorn only wishes to beat OU after that they are free to beat aggie as much as possible
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Cincydawg

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #15 on: February 04, 2022, 12:59:58 PM »
We Dawgs often have that ONE TEAM driving us crazy, losing to them even when our team is much better, it has been South Carolina at times.

CWSooner

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #16 on: February 04, 2022, 02:23:39 PM »
I know the Texas Legislature actually wrote NIL legislation. It's extremely permissive. Anyone still using their old "under the table" networks is behind the times. It's far easier and more lucrative, at least in Texas, to do it the legal way. I believe the coaches making unprompted statements on the subject "doth protest too much", but I got no proof.
OU's big advantage in the Big 12 was always continuity. Ever since the mid 90's, when Stoops and Leach pieced together the pass-first dynamic, there's always been surety with the Sooners. Coaches and players would move, but the program was always assured that the man in charge would keep the talent going.
That's not true right now. The head coach is gone, and both starting QBs are gone. A new staff is running the show (one hurriedly pieced together after all the other programs had their pick). Other starters left the program in their wake.
Maybe this will work out. No reason to assume it won't. However, it represents a gross departure at a critical time for an OU program that never had doubts for 25 years.
I think it may be less of a change than you are thinking.
There's a lot of staff continuity on the offensive side of the ball. For example, Cale Gundy and Demarco Murray--both former OU players--are still on the staff. And other former Sooners have been brought in as support staffers.
It seems to me (and I think to many other Sooner fans) that what is changing is for the better.
There were worries about the Lincoln Riley regime even before his departure to USC.
His first team at OU was his best, with a 6-point loss in 2OT in the CFP semifinal, and each subsequent team was a bit less good.
He never did get the defense fixed. It reached acceptability in the Covid-year of 2020 but regressed in 2021.
There was a lack of accountability within the program. That went for players, certainly, but for coaches too.
He was very secretive, refusing to officially release innocuous information that everyone already assumed was the case. He made the Bob Stoops era look like an open book.
So, the Brent Venables regime seems to many of us to be more of a return to what was best about the Stoops era than a brand-new start or a lurch in a different direction.
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CWSooner

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #17 on: February 04, 2022, 02:24:23 PM »
Not sure about you Longhorns but nothing better I would like to see than OU suffer through a period of mediocrity and losing seasons.  Say, oh, for about 12 years to infinity would be fine with me.
Don't hold your breath.

If that were to happen, it would be the first time ever.

The Sooners had 3 losing seasons in a row (1996-98) under John Blake.  The only other time that happened was 1922-24.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2022, 02:37:53 PM by CWSooner »
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CWSooner

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #18 on: February 04, 2022, 02:32:15 PM »
This Longhorn only wishes to beat OU after that they are free to beat aggie as much as possible
It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

UT may continue to win the RRS at the same 1-in-3 rate it has enjoyed over the last 20+ years.  Or it might do better.  Or it might do worse.

Thanks for your good wishes regarding OU vs. ATM.
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Mr Tulip

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #19 on: February 04, 2022, 04:37:54 PM »
As fun as it is to see a rival fall apart, in college football, you're known by your opponents. If a team from the Big 12 could make a name for itself by beating OU and Texas, then the league would be healthy. If Texas and OU could win OOC games and establish the Big 12 as a competitive structure, then the victories against them would mean something.

As it is, Texas certainly hasn't upheld its end. Winning against Texas sort of lost its cachet. OU did its best to keep the spark going, but in the end, they just weren't enough of a formidable force to lift another team's fortunes. The Big 12 still plays talented football, but it's hard to care. 

While a strong OU makes the RRS more stress inducing, it's that grit that makes the sport so passionate. Texas seemingly went all in to rebuild the brand. Having a "well yeah, but the Sooners are mediocre" future would make it that much harder to fix the machine. I'm not suggesting they will be. I'm trying to emphasize that, while I can't actually wish good things for OU, having them lose credibility wouldn't be good for the game.

Gigem

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #20 on: February 04, 2022, 05:09:58 PM »
Don't hold your breath.

If that were to happen, it would be the first time ever.

The Sooners had 3 losing seasons in a row (1996-98) under John Blake.  The only other time that happened was 1922-24.
So you're saying it's overdue?  :)  



Gigem

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #21 on: February 04, 2022, 05:21:03 PM »
I think it may be less of a change than you are thinking.
There's a lot of staff continuity on the offensive side of the ball. For example, Cale Gundy and Demarco Murray--both former OU players--are still on the staff. And other former Sooners have been brought in as support staffers.
It seems to me (and I think to many other Sooner fans) that what is changing is for the better.
There were worries about the Lincoln Riley regime even before his departure to USC.
His first team at OU was his best, with a 6-point loss in 2OT in the CFP semifinal, and each subsequent team was a bit less good.
He never did get the defense fixed. It reached acceptability in the Covid-year of 2020 but regressed in 2021.
There was a lack of accountability within the program. That went for players, certainly, but for coaches too.
He was very secretive, refusing to officially release innocuous information that everyone already assumed was the case. He made the Bob Stoops era look like an open book.
So, the Brent Venables regime seems to many of us to be more of a return to what was best about the Stoops era than a brand-new start or a lurch in a different direction.
My own personal belief is that it really is small things that make a big difference.  You could argue that Bob Stoops best year was his 2nd year (2000 MNC) by that logic.  

BV may be a great coach, but he has never done it at the D1 level, and certainly not within a high octane program like OU.  John Blake, for all his failures, was considered a very good coordinator and recruiter.  Certainly Bob won his first (and only MNC) with Blake's players mostly.  

Hardly anybody had anything bad to say about LR until after he left.  Even right up until the oSu loss nobody said anything too bad about LR, until reports started surfacing that he was leaving.  Why he's leaving still remains a mystery, but I'm firmly in the camp that maybe daddy Bob stayed a little close to the program, and maybe was pulling strings behind the scene that LR didn't take kindly too. 

I sometimes think that Bob chose LR just because he thought maybe LR was somebody he could manipulate because he was pretty young then.  And maybe LR didn't react to that meddling the way it was intended. 

Wasn't it strange that Bob stepped in to coach the bowl game when there were a number of assistants who could have done that when they were with the team every day?  Certainly was very strange to me.  How many times has a coach from outside the program came in just to coach one game?  It indicates that maybe Bob really was either still very close to the OU program or wasn't quite done.  I kind of expected him to be named the permanent HC and was surprised when he wasn't.  Barry Alvaraz is about the only one I can think of, and I think he was the AD at Wisconsin so it's not like he was an outsider.  

It will certainly be interesting.  I look forward to OU and UT joining the SEC even if it's not what I wanted at this time.  What I really wanted was for A&M to grow a little bit more in our new conference before this change.  But I think we're on much better footing as a program in 2022 than we were in 1999, which was about the start of our Big 12 downfall.  What I mean by that is that this university understands what kind of commitment it takes to win in this world, and is willing to play that game.  
Besides, if we end up trading OU and UT for Alabama and Auburn it's not all bad.  

CWSooner

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #22 on: February 04, 2022, 07:35:28 PM »
My own personal belief is that it really is small things that make a big difference.  You could argue that Bob Stoops best year was his 2nd year (2000 MNC) by that logic. 

BV may be a great coach, but he has never done it at the D1 level, and certainly not within a high octane program like OU.  John Blake, for all his failures, was considered a very good coordinator and recruiter.  Certainly Bob won his first (and only MNC) with Blake's players mostly. 

Hardly anybody had anything bad to say about LR until after he left.  Even right up until the oSu loss nobody said anything too bad about LR, until reports started surfacing that he was leaving.  Why he's leaving still remains a mystery, but I'm firmly in the camp that maybe daddy Bob stayed a little close to the program, and maybe was pulling strings behind the scene that LR didn't take kindly too. 

I sometimes think that Bob chose LR just because he thought maybe LR was somebody he could manipulate because he was pretty young then.  And maybe LR didn't react to that meddling the way it was intended. 

Wasn't it strange that Bob stepped in to coach the bowl game when there were a number of assistants who could have done that when they were with the team every day?  Certainly was very strange to me.  How many times has a coach from outside the program came in just to coach one game?  It indicates that maybe Bob really was either still very close to the OU program or wasn't quite done.  I kind of expected him to be named the permanent HC and was surprised when he wasn't.  Barry Alvaraz is about the only one I can think of, and I think he was the AD at Wisconsin so it's not like he was an outsider. 

It will certainly be interesting.  I look forward to OU and UT joining the SEC even if it's not what I wanted at this time.  What I really wanted was for A&M to grow a little bit more in our new conference before this change.  But I think we're on much better footing as a program in 2022 than we were in 1999, which was about the start of our Big 12 downfall.  What I mean by that is that this university understands what kind of commitment it takes to win in this world, and is willing to play that game. 
Besides, if we end up trading OU and UT for Alabama and Auburn it's not all bad.
BV is a great coach.  He was the highest-paid DC in CFB last year, I believe.  What he has never been is a head coach.  We'll have to see if he can handle the additional responsibilities.  Early returns on the administrative, program-management, culture-building part of that job are positive.  We'll just have to see how the on-field part plays out.
John Blake had never been a coordinator at any level before OU hired him to be HFC after Howard Schnellenberger's dismal 1995 season.  He had been a position coach at Tulsa, OU, and the Dallas Cowboys.  And he was never a coordinator since getting fired at OU.  He was known to be an effective recruiter.  I will add to that my personal opinion that he was a dirty recruiter--not in the breaking-NCAA-rules sense, but in the telling-lies-about-other-programs sense.  And he was a jaw-droppingly ignorant fool.  And he was insecure, so he had to try to micromanage everything, about which he knew nothing, rather than letting his assistant coaches coach.  He was probably the worst coaching hire in OU football history.
About the strangeness of Bob stepping in to coach the bowl game, I don't see it.  The DC--Alex Grinch--left with Lincoln.  Lincoln had been the OC.  Shane Beamer had left a year earlier to take the HFC job at USC-E.  So Bob--over a position coach--was an obvious choice.  It's not without precedent.  As you mentioned, Barry Alvarez did the same thing at Wisconsin.  Bob obviously was not the A.D., but he has a permanent place in the Athletics Department as some sort of special assistant to the A.D.  So he's not an "outsider."  But nobody that I know of expected that he would come back as the full-time coach.
What I thought would have been cool was to see Brent Venables coach the team in the Alamo Bowl and have Bob as his D.C.
It's possible that you are correct that Bob meddled with Lincoln's program.  I've heard nothing of the sort, but it's possible.  I do think that Lincoln may have felt that he wasn't free to fire Mike Stoops, who definitely needed to go.  He ended up firing him a half-season later than he should, and there was never a peep out of Bob that Lincoln had erred.
I'll be happy to see OU play A&M again.  I've never taken many road trips, but I will always remember seeing the OU @ A&M game in 2006.  It was a white-knuckle game, as you probably remember.  I enjoyed the interaction with the folks in CS the night before the game and with the Aggie fans at yell practice and at the game.  I sat next to a very nice Aggie mom and told her how great I thought the fans were.  She laughed and said that I'd think differently if I were wearing burnt orange.  ;)
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Gigem

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #23 on: February 04, 2022, 09:19:43 PM »
Banks- the highly controversial coach at UT with the stripper monkey GF-was a position coach at A&M (WR I think) coached our bowl game after Sumlin was fired. 

He was highly regarded here, and also at Alabama. 

Of course we lost that bowl game, so maybe it was the wrong choice. 

longhorn320

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #24 on: February 04, 2022, 09:32:55 PM »
dont never cross a Longhorn stripper monkey cause he'll get ya
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CWSooner

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #25 on: February 04, 2022, 10:00:47 PM »
Banks- the highly controversial coach at UT with the stripper monkey GF-was a position coach at A&M (WR I think) coached our bowl game after Sumlin was fired.

Did you have someone like Bob--left on a high note, still respected and admired, still connected to the school, and available to coach if needed--at A&M?

Quote
He was highly regarded here, and also at Alabama.

Of course we lost that bowl game, so maybe it was the wrong choice.
Or maybe not.
In any event, it worked for OU and Bob.  And it gave Brent more time to set up his staff rather than prepare for a bowl game.
I'll add that Brent publicly credits Bob with saving the team from disintegration in the aftermath of Muleshoe's stunning departure, and helping to stabilize the 2022 recruiting class, which has (I think) ended up being a top-10 class despite some very visible decommits to join Muleshoe in Los Angeles.
Typing "Brent" reminds me.  OU has four coaches in the CFB HoF.  Each won 100+ games, and each had/has a first name beginning with "B."  Benny Owen, Bud Wilkinson, Barry Switzer, and Bob Stoops. . . .
« Last Edit: February 05, 2022, 05:28:41 PM by CWSooner »
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Cincydawg

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #26 on: February 05, 2022, 07:27:46 AM »
Winning the SEC is going to get a LOT tougher whenever the Anschluss happens.

Gigem

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Re: Blue Skies Ahead for the Crimson and Cream?
« Reply #27 on: February 05, 2022, 09:42:17 AM »
Did you have someone like Bob--left on a high note, still respected and admired, still connected to the school, and available to coach if needed--at A&M?
Or maybe not.
In any event, it worked for OU and Bob.  And it gave Brent more time to set up his staff rather than prepare for a bowl game.
I'll add that Brent publicly credits Bob with saving the 2022 recruiting class, which has (I think) ended up being a top-10 class despite some very visible decommits to join Muleshoe in Los Angeles.
Typing "Brent" reminds me.  OU has four coaches in the CFB HoF.  Each won 100+ games, and each had/has a first name beginning with "B."  Benny Owen, Bud Wilkinson, Barry Switzer, and Bob Stoops. . . .


I guess RC Slocum could have coached a bowl game for us when Fran got the can or Sherman. He was still working for the university at the time. 

Maybe it wasn’t weird or strange to OU folks, and I really didn’t know how Stoops still has a large presence in the AD. Like I said, it was kinda weird to me, and lots of other outsiders as well. 
in the end I guess it worked out as long as Brent does his part. 

 

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