Divided Windows

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm just reporting what the Rivals guys said. They're generally accurate with their insider information, but if you have better info, by all means believe that instead.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.