Mr. Rational Weighs in on OU-Squared

So you have seen Mr. Boswell's comments. You have responded. Now I come before you to bring some rationality to the table. You see, I too am a Horns fan, but try not to let that color my every opinion too terribly much. Though, as writers such as Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky express, everyone has and operates from a bias. Some just can't admit it.

Like I said, I'm a Horns fan. Huge actually. Scott, however, is obsessed. When he reads a newspaper story on the web about Vince Young, he highlights Vince's words in red. You know like:

"Blessed are the gangsta, for they will win the Rose Bowl."

And he has serious trouble typing because he can only use the pinky and pointer finger on each hand. Seems he has a form of arthritis common in our homestate that causes the two middle fingers of each hand to curl permanently into one's palms. It's Longhornus Crampus.

And then there's the tourrette's syndrome or autism that's causing him to randomly utter, "OU sucks...definitely, definitely sucks."

But let's be honest here. Sooner nation got bent over by Pac-10 officials last Saturday. And like any Longhorn fan, they think every year is their next championship season, whether John Blake and John Mackovic are on the sideline or Darrell Royal and Barry Switzer.

So this a travesty to no end. Especially in light of OU's recent past. Perhaps you remember the Sooners' loss to Texas Tech last season. You know, the one that ended with Taurean Henderson's historic touchdown scored on the one yard line. That was the difference between the Cotton Bowl and the Holiday Bowl. Okay. Okay. I'm choking back laughter thinking what a prize the Cotton Bowl is.

So you have a history. Recent history at that. And it doesn't help you no longer have Mike Leach recruiting your quarterbacks. (Think I'm crazy. Josh Heupel, Nate Hybl, and Jason "Infinite Eliginility" White were all his.)

So you have that history. And every elite program must be thinking BCS at this point. Especially a program in the Big 12 where almost every team has a new starting quarterback. Especially in a year where the race for the top two BCS rankings are more wide open than any season in recent memory. So these calls are reason for righteous indignation. They are not reason to sit around thinking well, if I don't allow a decent team score some points on me then the failure of instant replay wouldn't have mattered.

Because that idea that you should have made the plays to win the game: well, I ain't drinking that Jonestown Kool-Aid. The Mavs made the plays to win game 5 of the finals and had it stolen from them changing the entire complexion of the series. I'd take Mavs in Game 7 at home any day. Just the same, the Sooners made the plays to win the game but had them negated by poor, or perhaps corrupt, officiating.

Bob Stoops had to take up for his team and demand action. His players have to know he won't quit fighting for them. Otherwise, they may quit fighting for him. Besides, from this vantage point, it wasn't that the ball seemed to not go ten yards or may have first been touched by an OU player (the final call after replay review) or that the ball on the pass interference may have been tipped but neither review revealed conclusive evidence. If you have a television, and you know the replay officials have the same data the networks do, you saw the conclusive evidence. As for reviewing pass interference, you can't review is a player interfered, as that's a judgment call, but I want to say it's very likely you could review whether a ball was tipped neagting the interference. But that will take some research. Besides the officials screwed so much, who's to say they didn't jack that up as well.

It was such a blatant mistake you had conspiracy theorists uniting. After all, the Pac-10 is the only major conference I know of that does not allow the visiting non-conference opponent to bring the officials. Such a blatant screw up that the Pac-10 acted swiftly to suspend the officiating and replay crews and acknowledge their mistake.

So Stoops has good reason. However, he also needs to move on to next week. Otherwise he gives his team a distraction it doesn't need in their preparation for juggernaut Middle Tennessee State.

Now for OU's president. He should have taken his sedation medication before he spoke. To demand the officials be suspended for a year. Okay, maybe. But to demand the game be wiped from the record books was outright nuts. Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg was wise in his statement that such a decision would open a huge Pandora's box, perhaps engulfing last year's Rose Bowl. But, don't worry. Unlike Matt Leinhart, I know UT was the better team last year.

So there you are. A rational voice. Bask in my wisdom.