Is Strong off the Hot-seat?
After watching Charlie Strong’s Longhorns take care of the Sooners last Saturday, a couple thoughts popped into my head. First, they better not let their horns get too big and their celebrations go too long as Bill Snyder’s Wildcats come to Austin Saturday (I saw the game they gave my Horned Frogs last weekend), and two, has the seat of heat shifted from under Charlie’s bottom and now placed itself squarely under Bob Stoops’ rump?
The Sooners, although still sitting at 4-1 this season, finished last season going 2-3 (with the only wins coming against Texas Tech and Kansas) – and getting blown out by Baylor 48-14 in Norman, losing Bedlam to in-state rival Oklahoma State in OT (also in Norman), and getting shellacked by Clemson in the Citrus Bowl 40-6. The Sooner Nation, with their very lofty expectations, surely can’t be thrilled losing all these marque games. Hey, maybe the answer is as simple as lowering their sights by finding Big Game Bob a new nickname…
Road Warrior Frogs
And speaking of my Horned Frogs, I’m not sure how many more road games my nerves can stand, or when they’ll run out of whatever stash of lucky charms they must be hording. The wins this year at Minnesota (23-17), Texas Tech (55-52) and K-State (52-45) might be considered instant classics to some, but to me its more like instant heart failure. Go back to last season and you can include the 34-30 squeaker in Lawrence against the Jayhawks, the final-second field goal to win 31-30 in Morgantown against the Mountaineers, and of course their only loss in all this time…the 61-58 heart-breaker in Waco. Just saying they might want to practice putting together a more complete road game in Ames this weekend before they pack up for their final two travel games in that state just north of the Red River…
Help Me MLB
As I’m coming off my Cubs high from last night, and getting fired up for the Rangers this afternoon, I have to pause a second to take Major League Baseball to task. While the games have been great (Cubs winning helps cloud that opinion admittedly), the scheduling of games is like a bad joke. Trying to find when and where games are being televised during these divisional series is a bit like looking for an honest man – you want to believe you can eventually find one – but it sure helps if you don’t have a time limit on how long you’re allowed to search.
Start surfing through your 1000 or so channels and see if you can find your game of choice. Shouldn’t take more than 4 or 5 minutes if your thumb is in shape. Fox Sports 1, TBS, Fox and of course my favorite…the MLB Network. That’s the one I realized isn’t even carried on U-Verse expanded cable after about 2 lost innings of searching for the Rangers game Monday afternoon. Hello computer screen. And oh, about all those afternoon games. If you happen to work for a living or attend school…sorry. At least half of these game aren’t for you. I admit I played hooky yesterday afternoon to watch the Cubs clinch a playoff series at home for the first time in the history of Wrigley Field, but should one really have to fake-cough their way through a morning of work, just so one can skip out early to witness an event that happens once every 99 years or so? I think not.
I get it that the powers that reside in the MLB castle don’t want to run games simultaneously, and a major network like Fox wouldn’t dare bump quality weekday prime time programming such as Bob’s Burgers or Bones for a mere divisional series, but mid-week afternoon games on hardly-existent channels are ridiculous. Try to imagine a Cowboys playoff game airing at 3:00 on a Wednesday afternoon on secondary cable – exactly where the Rangers are slotted again today. For all those unemployed or infirm – congratulations, looks like this time you’re the lucky ones…
