Sooner fan really looking forward to the game

#1,151
#1,151
Sooner Redzone said:
Mostly agree but you won only 2 titles from 1998 to 2005. So I do think the Saban era is when it kicked in. But Les Miles won at LSU and Urban Meyer at UF so the Saban era marked the timeline. But it wasn’t just Bama by any stretch but yet the real dominance he was the leader of the pack.
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#WGWTFA
 
#1,158
#1,158
Sooner Redzone said:
Mostly agree but you won only 2 titles from 1998 to 2005. So I do think the Saban era is when it kicked in. But Les Miles won at LSU and Urban Meyer at UF so the Saban era marked the timeline. But it wasn’t just Bama by any stretch but yet the real dominance he was the leader of the pack.
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what about Alabama in 1991 and the Spurrier era? Georgia in 1980. and bear bryant with Bama in the 60s and 70s?
 
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#1,160
#1,160
#1,163
#1,163
Nicovfl8 said:
Your 15 spots ahead and the past 30 years we have been ahead of you most every year and OU still only one National title and so did TN.
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You obviously didn’t look at this rankings by year when combining their W/L record with SOS to determine the best team in the country. OU is #1 several times the last 15 years and Tennessee appeared in the top 10 rarely. It’s a solid argument OU with their final ranking with SOS factored has done extremely well.
 
#1,165
#1,165
OHvol40 said:
...Speaking of perceptions, most CFB fans I associate with view Oklahoma as the next Nebraska. They are making a desperate move to try to keep up in the money wars, but nothing will change the fact that they are a flyover school bereft of serious local talent, hanging out on the vine to wither and die a slow death after selling out and stepping up in competition. The slip into mediocrity will be a painful, and long process… but it’s happening.
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Let's assume you're a blue chip recruit pondering a school choice. Obviously player development and the chance to make it in the pros will matter -- more on that below. Perhaps you come from a big family with lots of cousins, aunts, uncles and so forth; you probably would like for them to be within driving distance of your home games. And obviously NIL is a big factor too. Unlike Nebraska, Oklahoma has been and will continue to be elite in all of these considerations:

• OU has more NFL draft picks than any other SEC school;
• OU is within easy driving distance of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, Oklahoma City and Tulsa (see this link for an indication of where high school football is king);
• OU has the third largest football operating revenue in the country (source: link);

Here's a few more musings about player development. One of my favorite movies is the sci-fi drama Gattaca. If you're unfamiliar with this movie, one of the underlying themes is can the capability of a person be reduced to a few easy to gauge metrics like IQ. I like to think that it's impossible to reduce people to a few such measurements. Two of my favorite NFL players are from Oklahoma City and Knoxville -- Wes Welker and Bill Bates. Neither of these players had the physical body measurements that you might expect from an exceptional pro football player. Welker was a WR that wasn't fast or tall, yet he was a 4 time all pro, 5 time pro bowl, 3 time NFL receptions leader. Likewise, Bates had an exceptional 15 year career in the NFL and won a pro bowl invite. They both had intangible leadership and intangible skills that set them apart during on-the-field play.

Today, I don't think either Wes Welker or Bill Bates would get the same career in the NFL. Welker wouldn't even get drafted. The game has become too much of a business. There's too much emphasis on 40 times, height, how far can you throw, how much do you weigh, and so forth. Perhaps you've seen Tom Brady's recent lament that franchises have "dumbed the game down."

Here's where I'm going with this. The NFL has become about instant return on investment and safe bets. Franchises are so risk adverse that I'm convinced that no team would give famous WR Jerry Rice a chance -- he went to Mississippi Valley State (so he was an unknown quantity against elite cornerbacks) and he didn't have elite measurables (4.71 sec forty yard dash). Instead, today's NFL flocks to the safe choice. In today's college football, a player that does well in the SEC is a safe pick -- even if there's a player at Mississippi Valley State that's actually a better player. Going forward -- it looks to me like college football is going to be to him that has, more shall be given. Oklahoma had to join the SEC whether they wanted to or not.

Make no mistake. Oklahoma has the culture and support of a blue blood. I think we're missing a few ingredients for a championship run this year, but we're trending in the right direction and we'll soon be there.
 
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#1,167
#1,167
OHvol40 said:
...Can we get a friendly score prediction for the game?
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Prior to this latest round of injuries, I predicted a dogfight with OU winning by 6.

I'm not sure when or if we will get some of our players back. For Tulane were missing our 1st, 2nd and 3rd string center, our 1st string guard, and six of our top seven wide receivers. Now our 4th string center, Joshua Bates, is a blue chip. Also, our 8th, 9th and 10th WRs, Zion Kearney, Zion Ragins and Brenen Thompson are all Blue Chips. (We're Oklahoma -- not East Handkerchief State.) But these players are mostly young and will be better with experience. There's a drop-off from the person above them in the depth chart. Next man up.

So I'll modify my prediction to this: a dogfight that's a toss-up.
 
#1,168
#1,168
MyAll said:
When football changed from big slow man vs big slow man to actual skilled athletes, the universities where all those athletes are born became the dominant conference. Oklahoma also didn't decide if it was allowed in and grace us with its extremely low standard school. Texas will do well in the SEC, Oklahoma will not.
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The Longhorns can only offer 85 scholarships. Even if the Longhorns had their pick of the state (they don't), they could only take a fraction of the blue chips. Oklahoma will continue to recruit among the top 3 in the SEC (as they have for years).
 
#1,169
#1,169
Voltopia said:
The SEC has the least "pedestrian" middle tier of any conference in existence, unless you want to define middle tier as being programs under 55% win percentage or somesuch.

If we only look at the 12 team SEC (or even the 10 team SEC), then half of the conference has lifetime winning percentages above 60%. Alabama 73.4% (thanks Nick Saban), Tennessee 67%, Georgia 67%, LSU 64%, Florida 63%, and Auburn 62%. Where's the pedestrian teams in that? You'd have to go past the first six to even get to the "middle of the road" SEC programs. We could do that, we could create a "mid" tier comprised of Arkansas and Ole Miss, then maybe throw in Scarolina, but we have to get past six programs to even assemble that "mid" tier.

The Big 10, when it was the Big 10, is the closest analog, and they are top heavy. Three big programs in Ohio State at 73%, Michigan at 73%, and Penn State at 69%, and then a big drop off to Michigan State at 60%. That's it for teams above 60%.

So maybe the Big 12? Let's check. Since we're being historical, let's wind the clock back a bit. Oklahoma at 73%, Texas at 70%, Nebraska at 68%, then A&M at 60% and the rest under 60%. Very similar to the Big 10.

The ACC was, historically, the FSU conference, and the numbers bear that out. FSU at 67%, Miami at 63%, Clemson at 62%, and Virginia Tech barely hits 60% - thank you Frank Beamer, I suppose.

Oh and the Pac-10 was mainly USC at 70%, then Washington at 62%, and the rest don't even reach 60. Oregon is certainly big time now but only around 55% even with all the recent winning. Not a surprise. College football's not as big out there so.

If anything, what we really see is the SEC has a top heavy half, then Arkansas and Ole Miss in the middle, and a group of far less competitive programs at the low end. If we want to define that low end as the "mid" tier for the SEC, then okay, sure, that is pedestrian, but you have to go past a lot of non-pedestrian programs to get there.
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Interesting perspective. I'd argue that any results from leather helmet days have zero impact.

Going back 20 years, Oklahoma trails only Alabama in winning percentage (81.6% to 79.0%).

For 20 years, the Big XII has Oklahoma, TCU, Texas, Oklahoma State and West Virginia above your 60% mark. (Mizzu was in there about half the time)

For 20 years, the SEC has Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Florida, and Auburn. (Mizzu was in about half the time).

Both conferences had 5 teams plus Mizzu.
 
#1,170
#1,170
VFL-82-JP said:
You need to dial back to 1998. The start of "sorting the championship out on the field." The first year of the BCS. That was the sea change that revealed the SEC as the premier conference in college football. Might have been the best conference prior to that, but we mostly weren't "sorting it out on the field," so every sports writer and coach got to vote as they (objectively or subjectively) wished.

So in the BCS/CFP era, 1998-present, the SEC has won 15 national championships. The next nearest conference is the ACC, with 5. The B10 has 3, and the B12 has 2. The PAC got none.

Not only that, but six different teams from the SEC won those 15 championships. That is unprecedented.

You want to try to define it as Nick Saban and the 13 dwarves, because that's what made you feel warm and fuzzy when you were in another conference. But Nick Saban isn't the sea change. It had already happened by half a decade when he arrived on the national championship scene in 2003.

As for the question you spent most of this post pondering, why do the lion's share of the most talented players choose SEC teams? Well, that one is simple. No mystery. They want to (1) compete for championships in college, and (2) have the best shot at an NFL career. And the SEC provides both.

Will Oklahoma compete for championships now that you're in the SEC? Maybe. I would be shocked if you didn't try. And by try, I mean spend TONS of $$$ to get the right coaches and support staff to have a shot. I don't think you have that now, but I fully expect you to try. It may take you a few rough years to figure out you're behind the power curve.

As for whether you succeed, well...there's a LOT of competition at the top (and at the middle) of the SEC. You're not used to that. That's another culture shock you can only adapt to with time. I don't know if you'll ever pull it off. But I wish you luck trying, except when you face us.

Go Vols!
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Disagree. I'd say the ACC and Big XII owned much of the 1990s with Miami, Florida State and Nebraska. Florida State had an incredible run under Bowden. Nebraska had some phenomenal teams too.
 
#1,172
#1,172
trj said:
Disagree. I'd say the ACC and Big XII owned much of the 1990s with Miami, Florida State and Nebraska. Florida State had an incredible run under Bowden. Nebraska had some phenomenal teams too.
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That Bobby Bowden led FSU team you're gushing over?

Yah. We beat them for the national title. 1998.

More generally, you should read my post again--you missed the point.
 
#1,173
#1,173
trj said:
Even though OU is now in the SEC, it's easy to look at the SEC as an outsider. After all, Sooners were an outsider until a couple of months ago. I think the common perception of the SEC is that the top tier of the conference has been elite over the last 20 years. However, the mid-tier and the lower-tier of the conference has almost always been pedestrian.

One of the things I find most interesting about the SEC is how much coattail riding the mid-tier and lower-tier teams indulge in. If Oklahoma is having a down year for whatever reason, you will NEVER hear a Sooner say "yeah, but Texas was elite this year", or yell the equivalent of "SEC, SEC, SEC" unless it's done in a mocking way of a rival conference mate.
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Got news for you, if you don’t sort out that Oline you are a lower tier team this year. I’m with you though on your last point piss on the rest of the conference. I will root for you guys after we play bc I hate everyone you play more than you.
 
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#1,174
#1,174
I'm looking forward to it too. And I'm sure it's been discussed heavily over the past 40-something pages or so but the matchup that stands out to me is OU's injury plagued O-line vs a strong and deep Vol D-line. I think that's the difference in the game. I'll also add that even if they were healthy, aren't they a completely new line? That's usually not the best recipe for success.
 
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#1,175
#1,175
VFL-82-JP said:
That Bobby Bowden led FSU team you're gushing over?

Yah. We beat them for the national title. 1998.

More generally, you should read my post again--you missed the point.
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I don't want to take anything away from the 1998 Vols -- congrats to Tennessee on that special year. But FSU had a much stronger decade.

As for BCS sorting it out -- the SEC had their chances. Tell me had the SEC champion Gators did against Nebraska.
 
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