Before Urban Meyer’s run or the less successful eras of Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain, the original breakthrough Florida Gator teams were the Steve Spurrier squads of the 90s. Those squads won six SEC titles and a National Championship in 1996. Those Gator teams come up tangentially in my book… …his 95 team went to … [Read more…]
Today’s largely accepted wisdom is that you build a National Champion by recruiting the best players in the country, regardless of their location, and assembling your team out of the best of the best. Alabama started to employ that model as the Nick Saban program got going, Ohio State got there as well, and Clemson … [Read more…]
That’s the name of chapter three in the book, which tells the tale of how Bob Stoops took over Oklahoma, hired “the Pirate” Mike Leach to bring the Air Raid, and transformed the Big 12 and game of football forever. I posted an excerpt you can read for free over at Texas Tech blog, Staking … [Read more…]
Due to outstanding demand, I’ve made “Flyover Football: How the Big 12 became the frontier for modern football” available on Amazon in paperback! Reviews have been positive, this one was my favorite: I’ll give you full disclosure, I know drryanpepper, but I could share a text screenshot in which he intimated the same impression that … [Read more…]
The old “Mack Brown wanted prospect X as a safety” meme is pretty much dead and gone now that Texas is on their second post-Mack coach, but the ultimate example of Mack’s QB eval problems just went no. 1 in the NFL draft. Back in the day before that meme got going things were chugging … [Read more…]
It’s time for another twitter-bag! I took questions from Twitter users about this upcoming Big 12 season. I’m currently in the midst of a deep dive into about 25% of the college football world as I writeup previews for the 2017 Football Outsiders Almanac. It’s a publication with more NFL data and info then you … [Read more…]
Over at Football Study Hall I broke down how Stoops’ chosen successor earned that opportunity with his brilliant offenses over the last few years. After a good deal of reflection I think I’m ready to say that 2016 was probably the best offense that Oklahoma ever put on the field, they just didn’t have the … [Read more…]
For as long as I’ve been a fan of college football, Bob Stoops has been the head coach at the University of Oklahoma. The numbers over the years, 18 total, are pretty staggering. He won 10 Big 12 championships and had nine home losses over that stretch. I’m not sure any number better encapsulates the … [Read more…]
Later tonight I’m going to go on the Blatant Homerism podcast to talk the Sooner spring game with Allen Kenney but I figured I would offer some notes here. I’ll also do some notes on any other B12 spring games I can get my hands on over the next few weeks. Even Texas Tech…I guess. … [Read more…]
This is the big one, the highest rated B12 class and by a very wide margin. That success led Zack Kram of the leader to speculate that this class might push Oklahoma back into playoff contention. I’m going to play my favorite role as the contrarIAN and note that Oklahoma’s recent run of success that rescued … [Read more…]