SOONERGUYS Blog

About the time we get all warm and fuzzy over the 27-0 Bedlam trouncing and then these internet trolls roll out the “Stoops is going to Notre Dame” rumor.

They had him flying to South Bend on Sunday. Never mind he was in Norman taping his game replay show. Are these the same folks who had Stoops going to the Atlanta Falcons a couple of years ago? Or to Florida before that?

Stoops said this weekend he was not interviewing for the Notre Dame job and neither he nor his agent have been contacted. Not even Dean “there is a 67 percent chance” Blevins thinks Stoops would entertain the Notre Dame job.

I am sure there are a number of rust belt Catholics who think Stoops’ roots at Youngstown, Ohio’s Cardinal Mooney High School (that’s “Cardinal” meaning Youngstown native Edward Aloysius Mooney, the Roman Catholic Cardinal from 1946-1958, not the color “Cardinal”, ala Leland Stanford Junior University) will lure him to the Golden Dome.

These Irish have obviously been kissing the Blarney Stone.

Notre Dame has become a dead-end job. It’s where promising coaches go to ruin their careers. Just ask Gerry Faust, Bob Davie, Tyrone Willingham and soon Charlie Weis.

For Stoops it’s not just a lateral move, it’s a step backward. And he knows it.

For those awash in the old “storied” Irish program of yesteryear, here are some facts:

At the end of the 2008 season Notre Dame had the third most wins in NCAA history (831). That’s pretty good, thanks to Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy (from your great grandparents’ generation). But the Fighting Irish record in the last 13 years is 91-68. That’s poor enough to get their two coaches fired and a third, Charlie Weis, about to be booted. Even including Lou Holtz’s 11 winning years from 1986-1996, the Irish are 221-124-2 since 1980. That’s a 63 percent winning record. Ho hum.

How does that compare to Oklahoma? During the same time the Sooners have won 251 games and have a winning percentage of 70 percent. That’s including the Gibbs, Blake and Schnellenberger disaster years.

Notre Dame has not won a national championship since 1988. And, you think Oklahoma’s bowl record is bad? The Irish have lost nine out of their last 10 bowl games, none of them being BCS Championship games. Their win in the Hawaii Bowl last year was the first bowl victory in 15 years.

Frankly, the college recruiting game has passed Notre Dame by. Next year they will have no four or five star recruits on their team. The idea they are a national university may sound good, but it means the school has no specific recruiting base from which they can draw to provide a consistent level of talent.

Texas and Oklahoma can always count on a solid recruiting base from the ripe state of Texas. Florida and even Alabama can always get recruits from their base in Florida and the Gulf Coast. Louisiana is a hot bed of talent for LSU. And on the west coast USC and the Pac-10 schools need look no further than California. In the Midwest, Ohio State University and Penn State have strong recruiting bases there and in the Northeast.

That doesn’t leave much for ol’ Notre Dame. Which means it will be important for the next Irish coach to already have a foothold in a regional recruiting area. That makes their best candidate for the next ND coach to be Brian Kelly, an Irish Catholic guy who has Cincinnati in the Top 5, coached two Division I-AA championships and is a defensive master mind. He’s successfully recruited Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

But here’s another reason Stoops won’t go to Notre Dame: The Irish ended the Sooners’ NCAA record winning streak of 47 games in 1957. Coincidentally, Oklahoma’s loss to Notre Dame to open the 1953 season was the last loss before the streak. We don’t like them. At all.

It would be like a Sooner going to coach the rival Texas Longhorns. Oh, wait….

Certainly, Oklahoma’s football team has been riddled with injuries this year. The loss of Sam Bradford and Jermaine Gresham is the reason the Sooner are not repeating as Big 12 champions.

But the reason the Sooners are on the verge of a possible losing season (if they lose to OSU and in a bowl game) rests with the inability of the Oklahoma coaching staff, including head coach Bob Stoops, to prepare the surviving players to play competitively on the road. The Sooners have lost 17 of their last 33 games on the road.

Saturday’s offensive performance in Lubbock was abysmal. Never did it look like the Sooner offense had much chance of making first downs, much less touchdowns, against a Red Raider defense that gave up 52 points to lowly Texas A&M in the same stadium three weeks prior.

The huge difference between OU’s performances at home with their lack of performance on the road shows a lack of leadership, which we are sure Stoops has been concerned about ever since Labor Day weekend in Arlington when team leader Bradford went out. But, it also shows lack of leadership on the part of this coaching staff.

Next year’s success will be contingent upon these same coaches developing Landry Jones into an effective quarterback – not just an occasionally good passer. He has not been effective this season when faced with adversity. Part of that is the failure of seniors Chris Brown, Trent Williams, Adron Tennell and Matt Clapp to rally the troops and make big plays.

But the coaching staff’s job is to develop players from day one into leaders who have the mental toughness to play on the road.. This senior class is an example of their failure to do that.

The good news is this offense is a bunch of freshman and sophomores who will not forget the lay down which occurred against an inferior team in Lincoln and the butt-kicking they experienced by a seasoned and well-prepared team in Lubbock. But it won’t matter if they don’t step up.

So Kansas players and former players are all upset because Coach Mark Mangino poked a player in the chest because he was laughing during practice and yelled to a player that he would send him back to a violent life with his “homies” if he didn’t stop talking back.

One former player alleges Mangino gave him a speech asking him whether he was going to become a lawyer like he planned or become an alcoholic like his father. A former player at Kansas State said Mangino pushed him out of his seat because he was sleeping in a team meeting.

And now KU Athletic Director Lew Perkins is investigating alleged “abuse.”

See:  http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4669621

Well, Jayhawks, if Mangino’s actions constituted some “abuse”, then wait until the Texas Longhorns get a hold of you on Saturday.

Mangino may be out as KU coach. Mostly because he’s lost five games in a row. Saturday night in Austin will make it six. The purported “abuse” of his players is a pretext to the AD wanting Jabba The Hut Mangino to pack up. It’s just now Perkins has some other reason to boot the 2007 Associated Press Coach of the Year.

What this really says, though, is that the complaining football players on campus in Lawrence are weak. Their response to adversity is to whine about it. These are the guys who got into a physical fight with their own basketball team (and likely lost).

It also says these players aren’t taking their “job” very seriously. Yes, I said “job”, because that is what they do in return for a free education. Laughing? Sleeping? Talking back at coaches?

And, who is to say that a college football coach, who may well be the first person to challenge a ghetto kid to make something of himself (like becoming a lawyer) rather than repeat the steps of his father and wallow in a world of alcohol and despair, is not doing the right thing for that youngster in the long run?

Of course it may well be that Mangino is a time bomb about to explode. He may have some anger management problem. But, has this just developed? As Mangino said this week he is not doing anything he hasn’t always done.

The KU athletic director wasn’t eager to investigate his coach when KU was 5-0 and 16^th in the AP Poll earlier this season. I guess yelling at players is only bad when you’re losing.

And, don’t forget, those effete national sports writers (Eg., Jay Mariotti) who are all aghast at the alleged Mangino antics are the same ones who crowned Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame member Robert Montgomery “Bobby” Knight the “General”. Now you want to see anger issues?

Oklahoma became bowl eligible Saturday with its sixth win. Before you mutter “so what?” let me just say this qualification obtained against Texas A&M was the most important the program has had in several years.

It allows this football team – wrecked by injuries and inconsistent play from young talent – to get another mini-season of practices in before returning in the spring to begin the 2010 campaign. And, boy, do they need it. (Practice must help – Travis Williams had no illegal procedure penalties against him Saturday).

So don’t get any idea that the Sooners will turn down an Independence Bowl invitation – the equivalent of the former Poulan Weedeater Bowl. Extra practices in Shreveport are a lot more beneficial to these Sooners than sitting around with mom and pop watching the 34 post-season bowl games on the living room TV set.

Besides, a Holiday Bowl bid seemed more likely after Saturday night.The Sooners became bowl eligible with a bang. QB Landry Jones moved closer to rebuilding his reputation that was gutted by five thrown interceptions a week before in Lincoln. He threw for a career high 392 yards. Meanwhile, RB Demarco Murray looked like a Heisman Trophy candidate with 224 all-purpose yards and two touchdowns.

The Sooners finished the game with 51 unanswered points. The nation’s longest home winning streak was extended to 29. And in so doing, some of the funk in which Sooner fans have engulfed themselves has eased. Sure, a 6-4 mark at this point in the season is a huge disappointment. But, after the crash that the Nebraska loss represented we wondered if the plane was going to burn.

It didn’t burn on Saturday – although there was a little flicker in the first quarter – and the Sooners are a little more optimistic about traveling to Lubbock next week to face a stubborn but equally disappointing Texas Tech Red Raiders. In the meantime, who is this O’Hara guy kicking extra points?    — Mike

Needless to say, that thing called “Sooner Magic” is something that OU had in your grandfather’s day.

On the field where Sooner Magic first materialized, the Sooners lost 10-3 on Saturday to Nebraska in what may be the most pathetic performance since some guy named Blake was coach. Only difference is, Oklahoma didn’t play four different quarterbacks like then.

One was enough. I don’t want to beat up on the young Landry Jones, who is still a redshirt freshman thrust into the job because the Heisman winner has a bum shoulder, but he stunk up Memorial stadium in Lincoln – throwing five interceptions.

We can start calling him record-making Landry. He owns the school record for most touchdowns in a game AND the most interceptions thrown.

Oklahoma went without scoring a touchdown for the first time since 1998.

With this loss the Sooners season is officially crashed. Whether it burns depends on whether Stoops and the gang can figure out how to turn an inept offense into one that can score in the red zone. Moving the football wasn’t the problem. OU out-gained NU 325 to 180 yars. And, the Sooners had plenty of opportunities, thanks to an outstanding Oklahoma defense and a pedestrian Nebraska offense. They just threw them away. Literally.

Texas A&M comes to town on Saturday. I suspect the home crowd will support the offense to four or five touchdowns and the Sooners will win easily.

But then comes another road trip to Lubbock (play the doom and gloom music every time the Sooners have to get on a bus). Despite the Red Raiders’ woes this season you know their villagers are lighting the torches already to set fire to the rest of the Sooner season.