University of Oklahoma Sports

[Lazio85]

I don't follow this close, but how did OU do on signing day? With OU seemingly always in the championship playoffs, winning the conference title what , 4 years in a row.....having back to back Heisman winners, you think they would be in the top 5 if not top 2, but have not heard anything of it?

As of today and the early signing period finishing up according to 247sports.com:

Alabama = 312.24
Georgia = 297.87
Texas A&M = 283.98
LSU = 282.02
Oregon = 274.57
Oklahoma = 273.67
Clemson = 273.57
Michigan = 273.29
Texas = 268.18
Penn State = 262.27

[chuck5815]

Well, boys, it was a nice season in the Farmer Tad Conference, but we’ve apparently run into a Clutch, Southern juggernaut tonight.

[dcsooner]

Big 12 is a weak conference. Will never prepare a team for a championship playoff, also, OU's gadget offense and non existent D continues to expose them as a fraud relative to the elite teams. Same for MICH, ND, TX. There are only 4-5 elite teams in CFB now. Clemson, Ala, Oh St, GA

[PhiAlpha]

Big 12 is a weak conference. Will never prepare a team for a championship playoff, also, OU's gadget offense and non existent D continues to expose them as a fraud relative to the elite teams. Same for MICH, ND, TX. There are only 4-5 elite teams in CFB now. Clemson, Ala, Oh St, GA

Conferences have nothing to do with it. Alabama and Clemson have both just flat out been better than everyone else over the last few years.

[Dustin]

We didn't give up minus the 1st Q.

Time to go recruiting!

[PhiAlpha]

We didn't give up minus the 1st Q.

Time to go recruiting!

Without the 1st quarter, we won by double digits!!! Haha

[mugofbeer]

Big 12 is a weak conference. Will never prepare a team for a championship playoff, also, OU's gadget offense and non existent D continues to expose them as a fraud relative to the elite teams. Same for MICH, ND, TX. There are only 4-5 elite teams in CFB now. Clemson, Ala, Oh St, GA

LOL, l guess thats why we beat Ohio State by 15 in their house last year. Give OU a medium level defense this year and we would have beaten Alabama by 10 tonight. Their recruiting ensures the offense stays powerful in the next couple of years. Hopefully, they figure out how to get better defensively. At dead last, they couldn't get worse.

[dcsooner]

You gotta love the spin people take on this board when faced with facts. OU got manhandled plain and simple. Ala could have scored 70.


Winners and Losers of the College Football Playoff Semifinals
BRAD SHEPARD
DECEMBER 30, 2018



Loser: College Football Parity
8 OF 9

Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press
Blame Alabama. Blame Clemson. Blame every other team for not being up to the level of those two.

It's Ali-Frazier. It's Yankees-Red Sox. It's Celtics-Lakers.

As college football gears up for Bama-Clemson IV in Santa Clara, California, on January 7, it's fair to wonder if the lack of parity in college football is going to hurt the sport.

How much more of this can the fans take before they stop caring?

Back in 2008, the Crimson Tide beat Clemson 34-10 in the season opener to really start the Nick Saban era of dominance, announcing their arrival onto the scene, and they've never left. Once Dabo Swinney got entrenched with the Tigers and got his team rolling downhill, they've been right there, too.

In 2016, Alabama beat the Tigers 45-40 to win the national championship. Clemson returned the favor in 2017 with a 35-31 win to get its own title. Then last year, the two teams met in the semifinals, and Bama dominated in a 24-6 win.

They'll meet again this year. Ho-hum.

Will the game get high ratings, or are fans becoming numb?

You've heard the buzz about "Alabama is killing college football," and a familiar refrain surrounds Clemson, too. But while other programs such as Georgia, Ohio State and Oklahoma can throw the occasional punch, the finalists own college football right now.

They're recruiting at a high level, many of their stars are underclassmen, and they have two magnificent coaches who are at the top of their game. So, it's not changing any time soon.

Is it good for college football to have two megapowers? Will other teams rise to the occasion, or is this a monopoly that will damage the game?

Say what you want, but what are they supposed to do? Just quit? It's remarkable to see what Alabama and Clemson are accomplishing right now. But everybody else needs to step up their games. Right now, everybody seems to be playing for third.

[okatty]

I can’t believe you guys are missing the key point here.....OU covered the 14

[OKCRT]

When the game mattered Bama beat OU like a red headed step child. That is a fact. It was total domination. Bama took their foot off the gas and the final score looks closer than it really was. OU never had a chance.

[Richard at Remax]

I can't believe they didn't take the ball first. OU coaches had to know Bama was going to score on their woeful defense. Why not take the ball first and try to punch them in the face? Not saying they would have scored but if they had it might have been an more interesting game. Hard to win when you spot the best team in football 28 points.

[Pete]

^

Yes, I was very surprised OU didn't take the ball after winning the toss.

I know Lincoln likes to have it to start the 2nd half, but he had to know they would go right down the field and score, which is exactly what they did.

It wouldn't have mattered, but it was a strange decision.

[BG918]

^

Yes, I was very surprised OU didn't take the ball after winning the toss.

I know Lincoln likes to have it to start the 2nd half, but he had to know they would go right down the field and score, which is exactly what they did.

It wouldn't have mattered, but it was a strange decision.

OU should’ve had the ball at the 1 after the fumble. That was some BS that overturned that call. And the second Bama touchdown should have been called back. Hard to win when the refs make such blatant bad calls.

[Laramie]

I can't believe they didn't take the ball first. OU coaches had to know Bama was going to score on their woeful defense. Why not take the ball first and try to punch them in the face? Not saying they would have scored but if they had it might have been an more interesting game. Hard to win when you spot the best team in football 28 points.

That was the biggest surprise. OU could have come out and landed the 1st punch to begin the steeplechase; instead the defense got pounded early which put more pressure on the offense.

[dcsooner]

Alabama and Clemson Domination Creates Ugly Day for CFB Playoff Committee
MATT HAYES
DECEMBER 30, 2018

Alabama head coach Nick Saban, left, and Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney talk before the Sugar Bowl semi-final playoff game for the NCAA college football national championship, in New Orleans, Monday, Jan. 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Gerald Herbert/Associated Press
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — You want to blame someone for this mess? Blame those who mucked it up in the first place.

You want to complain about a truly awful day of college football? Take a long, hard look at a College Football Playoff committee that was supposed to make the postseason a unique spectacle and instead turned it into an unsightly scene.

Clemson beat Notre Dame by 27, and Alabama beat Oklahoma by who cares.

And the CFP committee got dragged in shame through the streets of public opinion.

"We don't look at who we're playing; it's not about them, it's about us," Alabama defensive tackle Quinnen Williams said, in his best Nick Saban imitation.


But it is all about who plays in the CFP, now more than ever.

Because this is what happens when a committee full of coaches and athletic directors embrace age-old values instead of actually, you know, watching games:

Notre Dame didn't score a touchdown and couldn't even hit 250 total yards in a 30-3 loss.
Oklahoma and its point-a-minute offense went down 28-0 early in the second quarter, and Alabama played keep-away the remainder of the game in a 45-34 victory.
The result is an unmitigated disaster of a day.

The worst part of it all is it didn't have to be this way. We didn't have to be force-fed Spam when there was filet mignon waiting to be devoured.


Michael Ainsworth/Associated Press
Take any Joe Sixpack in early December and tell him his life depends on choosing the four best teams in college football. Not deserving, not conference champions, not even the unbeaten.

The four best teams.

Those four, in order, would've been Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Ohio State.

But who wants to watch Clemson and Georgia play? They're only bitter rivals, and Georgia only had mighty Alabama on the brink of defeat twice—twice!—in the last 11 months and couldn't finish the deal.

And really, who in their right mind wants to watch Alabama play Ohio State and the hottest quarterback in the game in Dwayne Haskins? The same Ohio State that, four years ago in the CFP semifinals, beat favored Alabama on the way to winning it all.

Instead we get a committee of 13, a group with the undeniable mandate to protect Power Five teams—plus Notre Dame—at all costs (see: fox, meet henhouse), delivering two dud matchups.

When asked Saturday night after Alabama advanced to yet another CFP national title game (its fourth in five CFP years), SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said, "Georgia was a very [playoff] worthy team."


When asked to elaborate, Sankey said, "The committee does a fine job. I don't want to get into publicly calling out anyone."

So I will. The committee blew it.


Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press
Not just by ignoring the reality that Georgia was one of the four best teams in the nation, but by passing on Ohio State, too. Frankly, UCF would've put up a better fight than Notre Dame.

This nonsense has to stop, and it's not about adding more teams to the mix (what, you want more blowouts?) or guaranteeing spots to conference champions or giving an automatic bid to the best Group of Five team. It's about choosing the four best teams.

How does it happen, you ask? The committee makeup has to change.

We can no longer allow those who have the greatest vested interest in who makes the playoff to decide who makes the playoff. At least with the dreaded BCS, there was equal weight given to a coaches poll, a media poll and six computer polls—even if none of us could figure out the damn thing.

How do we do that? Eliminate former coaches and current administrators from the committee and fill it with former NFL scouts and personnel folks and allow them to objectively decide the best four teams.

A committee of NFL scouts and personnel people and former NFL and college players would never care if the SEC has two teams in the playoff again, and it wouldn't give a flip about an unbeaten team if its resume didn't back up the record.


We wound up with these four teams, and these two clunker national semifinals, because the committee was absolutely, positively not giving the SEC two teams again. And it wasn't overlooking unbeaten Notre Dame because, well, the Fighting Irish were unbeaten—and in college football, being unbeaten is and always has been a big deal.

ARLINGTON, TEXAS - DECEMBER 29: K'Von Wallace #12 of the Clemson Tigers tackles Ian Book #12 of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the first half during the College Football Playoff Semifinal Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic at AT&T Stadium on December 29, 2018
Tim Warner/Getty Images
Unless you're UCF.

"I don't know how they pick who gets in, and I really don't care," said Alabama tailback Damien Harris. "All we know is we have to win. If you don't win, you leave it up to someone else."

The same someone else that isn't about the four best teams, but the four teams that come as close as possible to making everyone happy. The committee dynamic has gotten so ridiculous that a few conference commissioners recently told Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic that they were interested in talking about expanding the playoff for better access for more Power Five schools and one team "like UCF" that currently gets shut out from the process.

That's right: The very men and women, the commissioners and university presidents, who have done everything they can to keep UCF and the Group of Five out of their playoff are now using UCF as a rallying point.

Meanwhile, their committee blew the most important decision of the season and left what should've been the best day on the college football calendar grasping for relevancy with meaningless regular-season NBA games.

Look, I don't care about Ohio State's 29-point loss to Purdue or Georgia's 20-point loss to LSU. I care about the best teams translating to the best semifinals, no matter how we get there.

MIAMI, FL - DECEMBER 29: Trey Sermon #4 of the Oklahoma Sooners is tackled by Xavier McKinney #15 and Anfernee Jennings #33 of the Alabama Crimson Tide during the College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Capital One Orange Bowl at Hard Rock Stadium on D
Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Rewarding a two-loss team doesn't mean losses have no impact. Losses have impact for teams that aren't worthy.

This isn't rocket science. Watch the games and make an informed decision, not one that protects your product and reinforces the tired ways of the past.

If the committee makeup changes, you've got a pretty strong chance of not ending up with games where one team loses by 27 and another team spends the entire game trying to convert fourth downs to not get blown out, then talks about not giving up.

"That's what our team is built around—fighting to the end," said OU wideout Marquise Brown.

So we've got that going for us.

The sport deserves better than this, and the simple fix isn't as drastic as adding more teams or implementing more metrics.

It's just the best four teams, no matter the record, no matter the conference.

And it's needed now more than ever.

[Jake]

Ohio State is retroactively one of the best four teams now, eh?

[mugofbeer]

According to the historically negative dcSooner......

[dcsooner]

According to the historically negative dcSooner......

Actually the article was written by someone named Matt Hayes, BUT, I do agree with him, maybe you don't, OK by me. Lol

[chuck5815]

Actually the article was written by someone named Matt Hayes, BUT, I do agree with him, maybe you don't, OK by me. Lol

I’m pretty sure the Big Ten has been complete garbage throughout bowl season.

Michigan was terrible—as was Purdue. And there’s a very good chance that tOSU will lose by double digits to a non-clutch, PAC 12 team.

[mugofbeer]

OU lost by 11. OU scored more than any other team against the nations 5th ranked defense - and did so in 3 quarters. You knew the defense was going to give up a lot but with 4 quartets of Tuo, but they gave up less than 9 other teams - where Tuo usually only played 1/2 the game. Yes, the 1st quarter was a catastrophe but OU fought back and you can't tell me Alabama was sluffing off that 2nd half. There were a couple of points in the 2nd half their defense seemed a bit rattled. lt would have been interesting to have played another quarter.

Notre Dame on the other hand, is the team that got crushed. 30 -3. Dominated on both sides of the ball.

[PhiAlpha]

Big 12 is a weak conference. Will never prepare a team for a championship playoff, also, OU's gadget offense and non existent D continues to expose them as a fraud relative to the elite teams. Same for MICH, ND, TX. There are only 4-5 elite teams in CFB now. Clemson, Ala, Oh St, GA

So if the Big 12 is what’s really holding OU back, what’s your reasoning for how Clemson continues to perform well in the playoff and win championships despite being in the ACC which is comparable if not weaker than the Big 12?

[Laramie]

Many were in favor of a CF playoff expansion to 8 teams because of the challenges among the top 10 ranked. IMO, keep it at 4; because it really doesn't matter.

The 4 top teams selected were there on their 2018 performances. Alabama & Clemson deserve to be in the championship game.

[dcsooner]

So if the Big 12 is what’s really holding OU back, what’s your reasoning for how Clemson continues to perform well in the playoff and win championships despite being in the ACC which is comparable if not weaker than the Big 12?

Don't think the ACC historically is weaker than the B12


Syracuse 1 NC 1959
Florida State 3 NC
Georgia Tech 1 NC 1990
Miami 5 NC
Virginia Tech
NC
NC State


are historically better competition than Ok State, Kansas, Iowa State, TCU, Baylor and KSU All zero NC

[Jake]

In past decade, Oklahoma State has been substantially better than every single team on that list minus Florida State. Not even close.

I think you could argue that TCU has been as well. Texas being down in recent years has hurt the Big 12, looks like that won't be the case anymore.

[jedicurt]

In past decade, Oklahoma State has been substantially better than every single team on that list minus Florida State. Not even close.

I think you could argue that TCU has been as well. Texas being down in recent years has hurt the Big 12, looks like that won't be the case anymore.

agreed... and K-State hasn't been terrible expect the past few years. and Baylor has several really good years.