When a column is written under doctor’s care…
I have spent much of the last nearly three months in beautiful Port Orchard, Washington, walking the quiet forest floors, looking up at 300-foot pine trees while the cool Pacific Ocean breezes waft across the bay straight into my youngest daughter’s hill-top home.
Here the eagles, fly, the seals frolic and the porpoises jump for glee.
I definitely think I can see Russia from here!
I also have been dreaming all summer long of Jennifer Connelly and Diane Lane, but in the last few days before my departure back to Sugarland, Texas, where I will return to lock-up, I have had the painful displeasure of joining several SEC College Football fan sites.
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Those in-bred mutants make Texas and the old Big 12 look absolutely like decent human beings. Even the Cow-Pukes seem more intelligent!
According to fans of Alamaba (especially), Georgia, and a few of their second-and-third-tier SEC bottom-dwellers, there is no college football north of the Mason-Dixon Line that is any good, and while frequently admitting that it is often true they sleep with their sisters and grandmothers, they believe, en banc, any state west of Louisiana and north and west of Corpus Christi is a wasteland of midgets, pee-wee football and leftist Kamala and Tim Haters (VOTE BLUE, BY THE WAY).
Lord, please help me!
While these offspring of hood-wearers proclaim their superiority of Georgia and Alabama (rightfully so), they want to say every team in the SEC is far better than our Sooners and the Longhorns.
Please allow me time to enlighten, at least to some degree, these dimwits.
Let’s start with their proclamation of how Missouri is better than Oklahoma and Texas and will beat our backsides. They overlook the fact that, while Missouri is improving, seemingly, that the Tigers have had about as much bite and fur-flying as a year-long runover cat still laying dead next to the road drain.
Texas A&M? Things have gotten so bad for them, they are begging to be taken in by the Big 10, or whatever it’s calling itself these days. The last time A&M was great, I was a still in college. So, what if they had a good season last year. Have the uniformed Aggies had a winning season since my now-driving granddaughter was born? I can’t remember.
Yes, Georgia is big-time and that is dicey at best.
Alabama was prior to Nick Saban bowing out, and who knows what might happen there.
However, they have the players to be ragingly tough. Georgia and Alamaba, the two teams at the top of the SEC trash-heap and in college football. Tough wins if we can get them, but, as this kills me to write, I don’t think we can get there. ‘Bama, maybe. Georgia. No way. One or two losses. None would be a miracle and guarantee us a trip to the playoff as the number one seed.
Yes, there are some solid SEC teams lower on the yardstick. Yes, it will be hard for OU and Texas, especially since the SEC gave Oklahoma the hardest schedule of any team in the expanded league. Tryin’ to put us in what they think is our place as bottom-feeders.
Well, all I can say is Boomer Soooneerr Baby! The Sooner Schooner is going to leave wagon tracks all over your backsides.
Let’s take a look at why I think the truth is about to be told.
In reviewing NCAA football expert sites and prognosticators on the web, and factoring in our schedule it truly is a gauntlet.
The Crimson & Cream are ranked 13th nationally headed into late August. The AP Poll has us at 16th.
Pundits proclaim we have improved significantly, if not drastically, all across the board.
OU’s defensive new defensive line is drawing high praise. Outstanding safety Billy Bowman and linebacking-Kamikaze Danny Stutsman hanging around for a final season, means this defense could be significantly more killer than last year, and possibly as great of some of those in the Stoops era.
Defense isn’t really the Sooner’s biggest concern, though. Offense is.
We’ve got a young gunslinger behind center in Jackson Arnold, but outside of some iffy performances in mop-up last season, we aren’t sure this alleged QB guru is as good as the experts say he is. However, it won’t take long to find out.
It’s the offensive line that is in question.
If Arnold is as good as he’s painted to be and our offensive line pulls it together, we could be good for liftoff, but we have had some camp injuries.
We’ve already lost wideout Jayden Gibson to a torn ACL. Big loss, but Sophomore Jalil Farooq and Jaquaize Pettaway will be called upon early and often to fill the loss. A few other minor injuries also have been reported.
The schedule is tough, to put it mildly: Auburn, Ole’ Miss, Missouri and LSU on the road (I hate LSU and their stadium), along with the Longhorns in Dallas.
The truth, is if OU doesn’t play well beyond expectations…middle of the road is distinctively possible in the 7-8-9 finish area.
I think we can do much better.
I’ll give you my game-by-game picks in Part 2.
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