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Bai Jobe and others talk about being at Bedlam:

This dude colossally screwed up not taking a job after last season.

Can someone edit the GIF( i think that’s a thing) of the scene in Tombstone. Have Gundy sitting on the porch and LR pulls up in the scooner with coaches hanging out the back. Gundy “we’ll…bye.”

Seriously?

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If you have not done it already, please go look at the second to the last 4th down stop by OSU late in the fourth quarter. Devin Harper spies Williams, picks the perfect time and route to sack him, but dives and Williams avoids. Harper immediately bounds to his feet and chases Williams down from behind with a diving shoestring tackle, five yards short of the first. Williams had 20 yards of open field in front of him. If he makes the first down, i think that we are all feeling differently this evening, and LR is still OU's coach---for another week or so. I'll remember that effort for a long time!

Ok, raise your hand if you would have mocked someone at the beginning of the season for saying that by Bedlam Spencer Sanders would be the best QB in the Bedlam game. Don't lie to us or yourselves!

We have long talked about how quarterback play is the most critical element to Big 12 championship runs, and that this current OSU team's ceiling would be set by the play of Spencer Sanders. Now that Coach Gundy and his staff have helped carve out a team identity that fits and is grounded in a reliable defense, the pressure has largely been taken off of Sanders. He now has the necessary breathing room to make the routine plays and not worry about having to make plays and force things that are not there. "Living to play another down" takes on a whole new meaning when having to punt is not necessarily a bad thing. OSU's dominating defense has kept the offense from falling into the trap of chasing points all game long. The results are lower completion percentages, but fewer turnovers.

It has been a bit of a struggle for fans to be patient with Spencer Sanders' growth as his curve has been impacted by injury runs at two position groups critical to his success: OL and WR. Once we started getting consistency in those two groups for practice and game reps, the production on the field increased significantly. Spencer Sanders is a competitor. He has very good running skills and enough arm talent to make all the throws. He has some limitations, but the shift in style to more complementary football has allowed the staff to tailor the offense to things that maximize his strengths and minimize his limitations. For example, the reliance on RPOs against teams that mixed up their zones and disguised their looks caused hesitation. Sanders was not seeing things and processing them quickly enough to truly 'take what the defense was giving him'. When teams sent pressure, he was not getting the protection time He needed to correctly process things, set his feet, and make accurate throws. He was also hesitating to take off running. There were several times when he could have pulled the ball down and made plays with his legs, but he just did not have the time he needed. Simplifying reads, focusing on route concepts he knows best, getting the ball out quickly in the pocket, allowing him to roll away from pressure, and encouraging him to throw the ball away when the routine play was not there have all been very helpful.

Obviously, OSU still uses formation, shifts, and motion to create 1 on 1 opportunities for receivers on routes with low turnover risk. Spencer Sanders is highly competitive, and he has played most of his career with the attitude that he needed to win every snap, make a play with every throw. Only recently has he begun to grasp that at times an incompletion or a sack is not the worst thing in the world. This is a huge positive for his development, and is directly correlated to lowering the turnover issues.

Meanwhile, OU comes into the game with a true freshman who has the same struggles that Sanders is now growing out of. Caleb Williams does not see the field well when teams drop 7 or 8 into coverage. He hesitates when making throwing decisions which allows pressure to get home and also leads him to making ill-advised throws. He has exceptional athletic talent, so his best option is probably to pull the ball and run, but doing so too much will stunt his development and make the offense more 1-dimensional. Right now Caleb Williams has all kinds of big play potential, but he struggles to string together simple plays that sustain drives. That is a bad thing heading into a match-up with the best 3rd down defense in the country. Until he matures, OU is going to have to rely on big plays to fuel their offense in games like Bedlam.

One thing that has surprised me about Caleb Williams is that despite having a big arm, he is not very effective connecting on the deep ball. We see it some (like against Texas), but against the better teams (Baylor and Iowa State), he has not been able to stretch the field vertically. I expect OU to go deep early to see if Saturday is a day when he will hit. They will have to scheme it up (perhaps on play-action or a trick set up) to minimize the risk that he throws it into coverage. Spencer Rattler would probably be the better QB to use to attack OSU's defense, but it remains to be seen if the coaches will go back down that road or not.

Both teams need their QBs to run the ball, avoid turnovers, and make the simple plays throughout the game. OSU is more likely to get what they really want.

That would be a really good (scary) combo IMO

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Once again @bigdaveosu doing the Lord’s work! Thanks, Dave!

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Another great recruiting class signed and in the books

Article on Okstate.com mentions the following: "The six newest members of Cowgirl softball combine to rank Oklahoma State's signing class 20th nationally, per Extra Inning Softball". It also summarizes each players ranking nationally and by position.


Got to love our program and our coach getting it done.

A lot of whining and complaining. And of course, blaming all of OU's struggles this season on LR not being into the Sooners 100%.

Note on the nature of Riley's divorce with OklahomaVIP

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Parker Thune
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Just received a text from a source that should give you some semblance of an idea how this all unfolded:

"Riley was not open to negotiation [from Oklahoma]."

This comes less than 24 hours after he said the following when asked about the Oklahoma athletic administration:

“I have no concerns about our administration, our A.D., our president. We’ve been through a lot together. This isn’t our first rodeo together. So, we always have conversations about the future. And certainly with all that’s changing right now in the college landscape, all that’s getting ready to change, for us, at some point here we transition into a new conference, those are always conversations that we’re going to have, and we would be having those yearly no matter what. We’re always, all of us are trying to make this place better, make this program better. And so you don’t do that without working together, conversing with each other. So, of course we’re going to continue to do that. We work well together, and we’re going to keep working well together.”

Take that for what you will. But for those of you that said it seemed as though Lincoln Riley was coaching with one foot out the door, there's certainly some growing merit to that perspective.

One source actually told me several days ago, "The team thinks he's getting ready to leave." I initially didn't report that because we had good intel on the situation with LSU, and we were pretty certain he wasn't taking that job. The variable we (and everyone) failed to consider was the USC job, which we all probably should have paid a bit more attention to, especially given that Riley had shifted the focus of his recruiting efforts to the West Coast and zeroed in on several of USC's priority targets. It also wasn't difficult to foresee that job opening up several months and even a year ago, which would have allowed Riley to subtly get the pieces in place.

In sum, I'm beginning to get the sense that this might have been in the works a lot longer than anyone knew. If that's the case, it's even more of a back-stab for the players and recruits who took Riley at his word when he said he wasn't going anywhere

It is crazy that you have two college football coaches leave blue blood programs for another blue blood program. I always thought we or I would appreciate Gundy after he left but I think it is now. You can’t tell me he couldn’t land a job at a good school today and make a lot more money too. He may end up doing it tomorrow the way things have worked this week. However, we will never have another coach that will do what he does. We may hit on a coach but he will be gone soon after as we won’t have the money to pay what theses schools are paying. We might not have gotten the alumni discount that so many wanted but we are now it appears.

The other thought is I think we will be lucky to keep Knowles. These assistant coaches at ND, Florida and LSU are fixing to get paid a lot of money as it appears these schools will throw a lot of money at coaches. If we can sign him to a long term contract of 5 years I would feel a lot better.

First one of two from Bedlam

I am faarrr from an insider but just trying to read between the lines. It appears that Riley might not have been consulted about the sec move or at the least his opinion was ignored on the subject. He knew they were lowering him into a snake pit and then would not back him on the resources needed to cheat and compete in the new conference. If this move was sprung on him like it was others did he just say “well two can play that game” and proceeded to plot this exit.
If so, I actually may have a little respect for him now.

So, many have already seen the video clip of when Asamoah kicked Spencer Sanders in the nuts and didn't get a penalty. But I found something that is potentially worse. Watch this video!!!!! It is on the OU pick six.

Asamoah hit Sanders as he was trying to keep OU from scoring. As he gets up he forcibly hits Sanders in the nuts from behind with his left arm/hand. You can see Asamoah's arm rare back, swing forward and Sanders body thrust forward upon impact. It is at the 7:22/7:23 mark of this video. You have to watch it a couple of times, and focus on Spencer Sanders to see what happens.

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Hated them. Like them slightly more now, but far from my fave.

Of course not, but I would have never guessed Kelly to LSU.