Jump to content

Divided Windows

New Members
  • Posts

    33
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Divided Windows

  1. 14 minutes ago, quigley said:

    I think college is different from the pros at some positions because the floor of ability is so high (eg, LB, and mostly RB).

    What OU's facing in 2022 is a bit different. They only have 9 true WR on the roster, including 2 freshmen. Freshman WR are generally not good, so relying on them is not advised. Out of those 9, only 3 have any proven production (Mims, Stoops, Wease), one of those is coming off injury (Wease).

    So just having enough bodies at WR is a key.

    The WR who decommitted is a 2023 player. This staff has several good recruiters, and OU will likely look very different in October. So as long as the staff is making relationships, OU's be in good shape next Feb.

    Stoops is massively overrated too. I'm tired of hearing about him as if he's a significant piece of the offense. Maybe he will be next season, but he only had 16 catches last year. If I were a betting man, I'd bet big money both Farooq and West (if they both stick around) have more yards than Stoops next season. Hell, I'd probably guess Darby and maybe even one of the freshmen have more yards too.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  2. 1 hour ago, closetojumping said:

    I have to be in Tulsa for business concerns multiple times each year, dating back to 2013. While it isn't the shithole I assumed Oklahoma in general would be, I did realize very quickly that the correct approach, if possible, is to fly in and out on the same day. If you're at the point of extolling virtues around the restaurants, museums and golf course, you're finding yourself in very mediocre territory. I almost feel bad for you okies, having to live in that state and all.

    Don't start blushing on us. Considering your blinding Texas bias, for you to label something outside of the Republic as mediocre is high praise. I am a golf course and architecture connoisseur, so give me a high end Maxwell and a textile block FLW, and I'm happy from at least sunrise to sunset. Night is another matter. That's where Tulsa goes south quick. OKC has a few Michelin quality tasting menu restaurants, and Tulsa has none.

  3. On 1/21/2022 at 12:37 PM, texifornia said:

    Hah! Hills, art deco architecture (plus the Philbrook), fun restaurants, breweries and bars. I just like the vibe - a bit of Asheville-on-the-Arkansas. It's a good counterpoint to how spraaaawling and flat OKC is.

    Let's hope the restaurants are fun because the food is absolutely terrible. It's like every kitchen in the city is staffed by first generation immigrants from England who only eat bland meats with a side of syrupy root vegetables. Bascially, you pay $40 for the entree you would get a hotel wedding reception. Tulsa has the better golf course, a top 5 FLW house and better land and infrastructure than OKC, but my god is the majority of the food terrible.

  4. 2 hours ago, quigley said:

    Even if CW stays, the rationale (the weak rationale) for not taking at 2022 QB is now gone was the 2023 commit has de-committed.

    This strategy always seemed unwise to me. It assumed every QB pans out. I guess maybe LR thought he could raid the portal for stopgaps if necessary, but you can't pull an emergency portal QB in the middle of the year. The strategy also devalues competition. If it worked how LR planned and Rattler started every game this season and then went pro, CW would be handed the job in the spring. I don't like a lack of competition in a position room. I'd take a QB in every class.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  5. 3 hours ago, texifornia said:

    On the one hand, he had a good season. On the other hand, Guyer turned him into a sad puddle in the playoffs.

     

    OU just needs bodies at QB. If CW transfers, the only scholarship QB left is a guy who LR tried to switch to RB after he got beat out for the third string QB spot by a true freshman walk-on.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  6. 2 hours ago, closetojumping said:

    Reading okies equivocate about where the offense is going is outright fucking hysterical. Riley is an offensive witch. Gone. Multiple standout offensive players and probably the starting QB graduate or transfer. Whoops. But, oh hey, this Lebby guy, a rape-enabling Briles disciple, likes to throw deep if we trust that he can even competently call his own plays. And he might bring the UCF jagger. I see an offensive upgrade here, folks!

     

    Assuming OU keeps CW (by no means a given, but presumed for argument's sake), who are the multiple standout players OU is losing on offense? Brooks and...

    Mike Woods is graduating and the three portal guys are Stogner, Haselwood and Wease. Stogner caught 14 balls this year. Haselwood and Woods both had less than 400 yards receiving. Wease didn't play in 2021 and was pedestrian in 2020. Those four guys combined for less than 1000 yards of offense in 2021, which equals roughly 18% of OU's total offense. That kind of production should be replaceable via younger players and/or the portal.

    The offensive line is losing a few guys, but it was below average this year (ask Rattler). Probably the two most talented OL starters (Raym and Harrison) will be back. None of the OL losses were standouts. I would be surprised if any of them are drafted. Again, all are theoretically replaceable via younger players and/or the portal.

    Anytime you are replacing guys, there is a chance the replacements are not as good. My argument is with the exception of Brooks, the guys OU is replacing were average players and will most likely be replaced with comparably average players. As long as Brooks can be roughly replaced I think the talent levels will be a wash. There are reasons OU's offense could be worse next year, but I don't think a big drop off in talent level is likely to be one of them.

  7. 33 minutes ago, quigley said:

    I would give Thibbs credit for Kevin Gilliam and Ethan Downs also, both of whom seem promising and seem to be relatively scheme flexible also. The firing of Thibodeaux had to hurt both of them because Thibbs played for Venables at OU.

    I view Cain as the bigger loss.


    If Todd Bates (current Clemson DL coach) ends up as DL coach, and can recruit like he did at Clemson, it won't matter.

     

    Gilliam was a nice pull. I think Downs was going to OU even if a wasted Howard Schnellenberger (RIP) were recruiting him. Neither were top 100 composite players and both are the type of guys who any coach at OU should be able to get. I generally think Thibs did a solid job and am not trying to hate on him at all, but I do think it should be fairly easy to at worst replicate his level of recruiting success.

    • Hook 'Em 3
  8. 12 hours ago, Spider2YBanana said:

    Wtf is going on there? That's a bold move letting go of a dude who can actually recruit. Y'all might be in trouble. 

    Thibs has a solid recruiting resume, but nothing spectacular. Gabe Dindy was the only top 60 commit of Thib's career, and his recruitment was a one-off. He's an OU legacy whose family seems to be more interested in Gabe's development as a good Christian soldier than as a football player. Gabe's dad in a 247 article discussing Gabe's commitment to OU: "We addressed with [the coach] if we’ll have to be in position to make a decision whether to be at practice or be at worship." Later in the same article: "Coach Riley let me know conversations we had shed some light on some things he can do better in his program as far as the spirituality of it."

    The Dindys also insisted on Gabe playing DE when most everyone wanted him at 3 tech. Clemson, Bama and tOSU weren't finalists for Gabe because they told him they would play Gabe where the coaches see him as the best fit (3 tech). LR, ever the BS artist savant, insisted OU only wanted Gabe at DE. I presume Jimbo is telling them the same.

    Don't get me wrong, I think Gabe is a great player and would still love him for him to come to OU. I'm not trying to downplay the loss at all. My point is just that if you're basing your eval of Thibs on his recruitment of Dindy, I think that's fool's gold.

    • Hook 'Em 2
  9. 12 hours ago, crash_davis said:

    lulz. OU is going to get uppity with following the rules?

    OU's Rivals guys said one of the reasons Riley left was because he hated how strict OU's compliance department is. They said reporters for other teams can't believe all the compliance stuff OU teams are subject to. Supposedly OU has compliance people at every practice making sure the team is off the field at the exact moment mandated by the NCAA. They won't even allow the practice to go two minutes over time to allow the team finish on a good rep. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what OU's Rivals guys reported in their emergency podcast on Sunday. If you enjoy hearing upset OU reporters/fans roast on the program, you'd enjoy the episode.

    That's certainly not to say there aren't boosters or coaches who find a way around the compliance department though. A strict compliance department and cheating are not mutually exclusive.

  10. 7 hours ago, HtownHorn said:

    Brown and Lamb.

    Brown was a JUCO kid who came into OU with speed you can't coach. He mostly just took the top off of defenses at OU and didn't have many other tools. Lamb was naturally talented and had 807 yard receiving as a true freshman. Lamb's later development can primarily be attributed to his weight room gains IMO. I can't name a receiver who got better under Simmons. The ones who performed well during his tenure performed well in their first year at OU and most stayed the same or seemed to regress. Haselwood and Wease both looked better as true freshmen than at any point after that. I'd take both if I were a program in need of experience at WR, but I would have significantly higher expectations for Wease than Haselwood, assuming Wease has maintained his athleticism after the injuries.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  11. For the record, lots of top ams think the US Am is a joke. It produces more crappy champions than any of the other top am events. This is because only the top 50 in the world are automatic qualifiers, so you end up with 200-250 players who are good players at regional universities but are not elite and have zero chance of winning. The Western Am, Sunnehanna, etc have much better champions because nearly the entire field is filled based on world rank, which means a high percentage of the top 100 or 150 are in it. 
     

    Also, because the US Am uses two courses for qualifying, there’s a much higher chance to get screwed based on your tee time and course draw. That happened both last year and this year. Oakmont played much harder Monday than Tuesday (literally and figuratively) because of the weather. I know a top am who played in the bad draw last year and said he smoked a driver and then hit a good 3 wood and was 50 yards short of the green on a par 4 because the wind was so strong in the last afternoon. Guys who played that hole in the morning the day before got the opposite wind and hit driver-wedge and it was an easy birdie hole. Hard to tell who’s actually the best when half the field starts with a 5 stroke advantage 

    This year only one of the top 40 players in the world made the top 8, and only 3 of the top 80 made the top 8. If that happened in a professional major, we'd say something is seriously wrong. Sounds more like an off-field event than a major  

    Tldr: US Am champion is the coolest title in amateur golf and comes with the best perks, but it’s not set up to determine the best player, and there are at least 3-4 amateur events that mean more.

  12. 45 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

    I only did a Texas versus A&M and Baylor comparison to rebut some Texags and I think Colt Barber comments about 247's rankings. Turns out that those guys were shockingly full of shit. Both schools saw recruits go up, down, etc. And each school had guys who shot way the hell up because the staffs found them before the recruiting services. Did it for the 2019 class. Don't have a link but here were the results:

    Texas:

    image.png.8d1e9f704179593fc604b9c119009897.png

    Texas A&M:

    image.png.099ff52d3f07d12c06220f7b904edf1a.png

    Baylor:

    image.png.6e7f3f55a391bae2000fefc6599261c9.png

    Very interesting. Thanks for putting that together. My hypothesis is rankings are mostly independent of commitments, with the exception that kids who commit to any of the blue bloods see a net positive effective on average, especially ones who were ranked low to begin with. I think this is mostly the result of these teams having more fanboy writers for the recruiting sites (See: Drumm, Brandon), who then campaign for the kids they've watched the most (i.e., those who their team is recruiting hardest) to be ranked higher. Nothing nefarious, just normal human stuff.

  13. 20 hours ago, texifornia said:

    Imagine being an OU fan and joking about how much Farrell & Co underrate your commits.

     

    Serious question: Is there tangible evidence of player rankings changing based on commitment? Every fan base I've ever interacted with asserts their commits get screwed and/or their rivals' commits get juiced, but I haven't ever seen any tangible evidence other than a few anecdotes here and there that could be completely innocent.

  14. 19 minutes ago, golfclap said:

    While this is true, I just want to point out that the most recent Texas national title is more recent than the OU title. That Sooner title is now more than 20 years ago. Stoops made winning the conference a pacifier for the Sooners fans and they are placated by it because he controlled the Norman media's narrative and they are morons. A once proud fanbase not only accepts but revels in conference titles, as if they fucking matter. There's only one goal in college football and one trophy that matters. 

    IDGAF about BigXII titles and neither should any self-respecting Longhorn or Sooner fan. National Championships matter. Everything else is a fucking participation trophy. 

    On the topic but different sport, you know what's even less significant than a B12 football trophy? A B12 golf trophy. Like football, there are typically only 3 or 4 golf teams in any given conference who are even halfway decent. Those good teams play in regular season tournaments against the best teams from other conferences several times during the season. The B12 championship is probably the weakest event UT, OU and OSU played all year.

  15. 1 minute ago, closetojumping said:

    I don't think I called you a dumb fucking okie, today at least, but I could be wrong.

    As a rule, we don't consider candidates with undergrad degrees from OU. I'm not in engineering and I don't need things like PEs, otherwise that could alter things. We can hire local degrees that are as polished or better for what I usually need compared to what we see come through from places like OU. I'm involved with a business in Tulsa and even those guys don't hire OU grads, as they're engineers from Okie State and generally recruit from there or UT, so maybe they're as biased as anyone.

    Some of the folks we do hire are Comms degrees from UT. To be clear, and this may have changed slightly since the last time I looked, UT has the #1 Comms school in the nation and that's not an "easy" degree. They produce pretty fucking strong talent, however we want to think about the word talent, so there's not a big need to farm from elsewhere when good candidates are in the back yard and take discounts to stay in Austin. 

    Obviously all of this is generalized, but you asked.

    Good insight. I did not know UT had a great communications school. That is the "athlete" degree at OU, so I presumed it was easy at UT too. Regardless, I only used communications as a placeholder for an easy degree, and the point stands. If you're going to claim all degree programs at UT are difficult and all UT football players are high level academic prospects who would have gotten into UT if they weren't athletes, I'm afraid we're going to have a fundamental disagreement here. The easy classes and degree programs some athletes take are available to the average student too. My neighbor played LB at Yale said even Yale has joke classes athletes could take.

    I live in OKC, and OSU is definitely viewed as the lesser of the two schools academically here. In my experience, the top Tulsa kids who want to stay in state mostly go to OU or even Tulsa, not OSU. Your Tulsa buddies are definitely unreasonably biased. But aren't we all?

    Another factor that might be relevant in your case is in my experience at OU, the Texas kids who went to OU went there because they couldn't get into UT. Nearly all of them then return to DFW, Houston, Austin or San Antonio after they graduate. So, if you're recruiting in Texas, I am assuming the OU grads are mostly Texas kids who weren't smart enough to get into UT, which means of course they're going to be lesser than the UT grads because they were lesser before either of the candidates even set foot on campus.

    Same was true in law school, by the way. The highest ranked students at OU were nearly all from Oklahoma. The out of state kids only came to OU because it was the highest ranked school they could get into and/or OU offered them the most scholarship money. Most of the top students got accepted into T14 schools but decided to stay home to save money or for family reasons. I bet it's similar at UT's law school.

    Ultimately, there's always someone who can look down on us. I'm sure Harvard and Stanford and Oxford grads view a UT grad similarly to the way a UT grad views an OU grad which is similar to the way an OU grad views a directional school grad. Sometimes you just have to shrug and say c'est la vie to our human predilection for ego stroking dick measuring competitions. If we're all rich enough to sit around on a Wednesday afternoon and discuss such matters, we're all rich enough.

  16. 30 minutes ago, Scholz said:

    Any education is inherently worthwhile for both the individual as well as society and there are definitely gradations of difficulty in fields of study.  Mostly it's what the individual does with their education that ultimately counts.

    Amen, my brother. Universal uplift for the betterment of humankind!

  17. 1 minute ago, closetojumping said:

    Also, I don't really consider an OU degree as anything more than toilet paper anyway, so they're all t-shirt fans to me. Sorry, might have buried the lede in this post.

    Ah, dumb fucking Okie and worthless degree in the same day. You're only a meth reference away from describing every person in the state!

    Interesting rhetorical thought experiment: What's more valuable as far as actual knowledge and intelligence gained (not economic or social benefit), an easy degree from UT (e.g., communications) or a difficult degree from OU (e.g., chemical engineering)? Or we could take it a step further and make it a comparison between an easy degree at an Ivy League school and a hard degree at a directional school. Or push it even further and compare an easy degree from an Ivy League school to a difficult graduate degree from a directional school.

    I'm eternally curious. Left to my own devices, I would practice the Jewish art of midrash on any topic put before me. Please ignore my curiosity if you are not so inclined.

  18. 4 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

    1) It's a psychological phenomenon. 

    2) T-shirt fan complaints are fundamentally bizarre. Give me as many t-shirt fans as we can possibly get. I don't give one flying fuck that somebody chose to start rooting for UT for reasons other than having a degree from the school. We are hated by a shit ton of mouthbreathing shitheads across the nation who I've also never required provenance from for their behaviors, so we'll take the groundswells of support whenever we can find them. 

    1) It's certainly psychological on an individual level, but I was commenting on it from a societal level (i.e., how a similar small group of contrarians tends to develop across different societies and geographic regions). Individual psychological responses lead to sociological trends. So I believe you are right on an individual level and I am right on how that individual psychology leads to a sociological phenomenon. But I'm an attorney, not a psychologist or sociologist, so I'll defer to you if you're more educated on the subjects than I am.

    2) Are you not annoyed by OU t-shirt fans though? "Most OU fans didn't even go to OU" is a common retort I've heard from UT fans. I think every school is fine with their own t-shirt fans but annoyed by other teams' t-shirt fans.

  19. 1 hour ago, SydneyCarton said:

    The irony of an OU fan who’s school traditionally has had to feast on Dallas talent whining about guys leaving their state to “be edgy” is lost on no one here except the dumb fucking okie. 

     

    My comment about fandom was intended to be a macro comment on the trend, not a micro comment complaining about Sexton or his family, hence why I left open the possibility that he has UT alumni in his family. I don't remember reading that his family is from Texas, but of course that is a reasonable possibility too.

    I was referring to the sociological phenomenon in which some people, almost always those who have no college degree themselves or family collegiate affiliation, decide to choose a random team to support for no apparent reason other than to try to piss off those who live around them. Usually they act like an A&M fan by being incredibly obnoxious and unrealistic about their fandom. Think of an angsty 14 year old who becomes religious because his parents are atheists or becomes an atheist because his parents are religious. In Oklahoma, this means the person becomes a UT or Bama or tOSU fan. I presume there are those in Texas who exhibit the same behavior by becoming an outspoken OU or Bama or tOSU fan. They're annoying as hell, right?

    I fully acknowledge OU football has benefited from the phenomenon. That doesn't make those people any less annoying to be around though.

    But I admittedly am a really dumb fucking Okie, so everything I write should be taken with a large grain of Himalayan salt.

    • Haha 3
  20. 2 hours ago, rvm96 said:

    No. If my memory serves me correctly, OU never pushed for Boomer because they preferred Stogner. It seems like OU might have maintained some contact with Boomer after Stogner committed but then cut it off at some point during his underwhelming senior year.

    Also, I think I remember OU TFB saying Sexton comes from a family of UT fans. I don't know if there are some alumni in the family or they're just the annoying kind of people who choose to be outgoing fans of a rival school to try to be edgy. Either way, that likely gave UT the boost over OU.

  21. 3 hours ago, Tex Pete said:

    Ah, redshirting.  

    They've both been charged by the DA with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, robbery and conspiracy. All felonies, I believe. I think it's fair to say their football careers are over unless they go the JUCO route. Though Trejan was a Rivals five star, and five star means five strikes in the SEC. Weed suspension plus three felonies only gets him to four...

    https://www.oscn.net/dockets/GetCaseInformation.aspx?db=cleveland&number=CF-2021-635&cmid=2376654

    https://www.oscn.net/dockets/GetCaseInformation.aspx?db=cleveland&number=CF-2021-636&cmid=2376657

×
×
  • Create New...