Know Your Opponent: The Oklahoma Sooners

Welcome back to another week of WFNY’s Know Your Opponent, where we dissect what makes each Buckeyes Football opponent tick with detailed analysis of their failed alumni, racist traditions, NCAA recruiting rules violations, and disturbing mascots. This week we take on the Sooners of Oklahoma University for the second year, which is for how long these out-of-conference agreements go. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Let’s start things off with legendary Sooner Brian Bosworth and his one-time opponent Bo Jackson as they shill for Kia, in a riff on the legendary Monday Night Football matchup between Jackson’s Raiders and Bosworth’s Seahawks where Bo dragged Brian into the end zone like he wasn’t even there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03xnpYW5J68

Before we get any further, if you want to read up on the Sooners’ dumb traditions, horrifying mascots, and famous alumni, check out last season’s KYO.

FBS Stats: 5th in AP poll (stats from Sport Illustrated):

• Points per Game: 22nd
• Yards per Game: 5th
• Points Allowed per Game: 26th
• Yards Allowed per Game: 24th

Oklahoma has a high-powered offense and will test Ohio States defensive backs much like Indiana did, but I think the Silver Bullets have that figured out. Oklahoma is miles ahead of the Buckeyes in these stats after one measly week, but they played UTEP, and the Buckeyes played a conference foe, so I wouldn’t put much stock in these numbers at this point. It should be a great game. It’s too bad I can’t’t objectively enjoy a Buckeyes game even if locked in a contest of wills with a Vietcong commissar, the lives of my platoon on the line, the outcome predicated on my dispassionate viewing of a Buckeyes football game.

2017 Record: 1-0

The Sooners bested the lowly University of Texas at El Paso Miners in week 1, 56-7. Not much to take away from this contest for our purposes, except the Sooners get to pad some stats for a week.

Coach: Lincoln Riley

“Big Game Bob” Stoops, who over the last few years did everything in his power to turn that nickname into a joke, stepped down this summer after 18 years as the Sooners’ head coach, until then the longest-tenured coach in college football. Honestly, I was shocked to see him go. The story is he quit now to leave on a high note, likely to keep from dying on the sidelines coaching a game like his father did in the 1980s. I always hate to see coaches leave while on top, without having to cite “personal” reasons like health problems, alcoholism, adultery, NCAA violations, or running a massive campus rape coverup operation.

Stoops was replaced by Riley, the youngest head coach in college football at 34 years’ old. Riley is a full seven months younger than me, which makes me feel old. Sure, he’s the youngest coach of them all, but I don’t even know what I want to do with my life yet, you know? Earlier this offseason, Riley was given an extension through 2019 and a raise to $1.3 million a year, making him the third-highest paid assistant in the country. This was seen as a move to set him up to be Stoops’ successor, but the timing this summer was unexpected. Riley was highly touted when he came to the Sooners in 2015, seen as one of the top assistant coaches in the country. He walked-on as a QB to Texas Tech in 2002, earning a spot as a backup. After a year playing, he was picked up as a student assistant and stayed on as a graduate assistant and then receivers coach. In 2010 he moved to East Carolina where he was the OC, QB coach, and assistant head coach.

I hate to say this, but Riley seems like a normal, well-adjusted family man and young go-getter with no skeletons in his closet, and that makes it tough if your beat is malfeasance and willful negligence.

Sooners currently in the NFL (35 total):

Dominique Alexander, LB, Cleveland
Blake Bell, TE, San Francisco
Devante Bond, LB, Tampa Bay
Sam Bradford, QB, Minnesota
Aaron Colvin, CB, Jacksonville
Jordan Evans, LB, Cincinnati
Dorial Green-Beckham, WR, Philadelphia
Jermaine Gresham, TE, Arizona
James Hanna, TE, Dallas
Tony Jefferson, S, Baltimore
Lane Johnson, OT, Philadelphia
Landry Jones, QB, Pittsburgh
David King, DL, Kansas City
Gerald McCoy, DT, Tampa Bay
Stacy McGee, DL, Washington
Trey Millard, FB, Kansas City
Joe Mixon, RB, Cincinnati
DeMarco Murray, RB, Tennessee
Corey Nelson, LB, Denver
Samaje Perine, RB, Washington
Adrian Peterson, RB, New Orleans
Jordan Phillips, DT, Miami
Aaron Ripkowski, FB, Green Bay
Zack Sanchez, CB, Carolina
Sterling Shepard, WR, New York Giants
Donald Stephenson, OT, Denver
Kenny Stills, WR, Miami
Charles Tapper, DE, Dallas
Tyrus Thompson, OT, Seattle
Tress Way, P, Washington
Dede Westbrook, WR, Jacksonville
Trent Williams, OT, Washington
Damien Williams, RB, Miami
Daryl Williams, OT, Carolina
James Winchester, LS, Kansas City

What is it with Oklahoma running backs and assaulting the weak and helpless? There’s nothing in the public record to disparage the characters of Demarco Murray or Samaje Perine (besides playing for the Cowboys), but with monsters like Peterson and Mixon as their fellow ex-Sooner ball carriers, I think its best we keep them away from daycare centers and ladies’ nights for the foreseeable future. I had to autodraft in fantasy this season due to work, and of course I ended up with Mixon. I also have Perine, which I’m hoping cancels out some of my karmic debt, which will help because I already feel disgusting enough watching the NFL knowing the lengths the league goes to cover up crimes against humanity with zero repercussions from society or the law.

Noteworthy Players:

Najee Bissoon, RB
Joe Castiglione, Jr., FB
K’Jakyre Daley, DE
Ricky DeBerry, LB
Addison Gumbs, DE
Carlos Hishaw, WR
CeeDee Lamb, WR
Du’Vonta Lampkin, DT
Baker Mayfield, QB
Quinn Mittermeier, OL
Parnell Motley, CB
Reeves Mundschau, P
Dwayne Orso-Bacchus, OL
Charleston Rambo, WR
Isiah Thomas, DL

Baker Mayfield….I cannot get enough of this guy, despite his being named after the second worst Eastside town, just above South Euclid. Every year he’s touted as a Heisman contender, and every year he’s last in the voting. An expectations-to-failure disparity this great hasn’t been seen since….well, every single Browns QB drafted after 1999.

Mayfield is good, but he’s not Heisman quality, yet every season he’s in the mix. It’s absurd–almost as absurd as the perpetual JT Barrett Heisman talk, if you catch me in an honest mood. But this talk does keep him in the national spotlight, and all lovers of athlete bad decision making and worse facial hair are better off for it.

This last offseason our boy Baker was arrested in Arkansas for public intoxication and disorderly conduct, wearing a grey hoodie stained with soy sauce. While hilarious, if we’re being fair, this does put him ahead of 60 percent of Willoughby South High School graduates, as there was no DUI involved. Mayfield seems to be going for a late-stage John Travolta look, which took the actor 30 years of brain-rotting Scientology to pull off; Baker did it in a mere three years at Oklahoma.

Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Pop Culture Soul Mate: Kid Rock

You were expecting Oklahoma, or The Oklahoma Kid, or the Brian Bosworth classic Stone Cold, weren’t you? All of those are right on the nose, but they don’t embody the Oklahoma Sooners quite as well as Mr. Rock does. Kid Rock may be from Michigan, but he’s the spiritual embodiment of Oklahoma and its notorious state university. Like the students of the University of Oklahoma, Kid Rock is a spoiled rich kid from the suburbs pretending he’s a cowboy. Everyone rightfully laughs at Eminem and Macklemore fans, but all the affected bros in the world rocking to the man who thinks he’s the next Bob Seger and Johnny Cash get a pass, just because their preferred dickhead is posing as a white trash stereotype.

Kid Rock grew up on a million dollar-plus estate outside Detroit, but middle America loves it when he croons about life on the road or losing his woman, or how he’s a cowboy. If you have to tell everyone you’re something, it usually means you are not. Say what you want about Texas, and I have my problems with the Lone Star State, but at least they have that authentic cowboy flavor, if that’s your thing. Oklahoma has to constantly tell you how it’s full of cowboys, just like its big brother Texas, when its really full of fat, rage-addicted suburbanites just like every other godforsaken, white-majority place in this country. Oklahoma is no more full of cowboys than Ohio is full of Mohicans. Quit the cosplay and embrace your mediocrity, Oklahoma, just like the rest of us.

You may be aware that our man Kid Rock is running for Senate in his home state of Michigan, and has already potentially violated election laws, as if that matters anymore. He is going to win. There’s nothing I’m more sure of in the world. The worst and least qualified of us will soon wield all the power at every level of our society, and talentless hacks like Kid Rock will soon get to decide what our laws will be, instead of just paying politicians to do it for them. The veneer of fairness and the primacy of the law is finally going to be stripped away from this country like the Oklahoma topsoil during the Dust Bowl, and we’ll all soon be fighting for our next meal in a thousand little Thunderdomes. There’s no going beyond this fate. We just need to embrace the chaos, stockpile ammunition and canned tuna, and wait for the end. Watch The Road, if you need some pointers. Kid Rock can eat shit, and so can the entire state of Oklahoma, ya dig?

Prediction:

Last week I predicted the Buckeyes would beat Indiana 42-24, with the final score being 49-21. Not bad, if you’ll permit me the self-satisfaction. I’d love to have not watched that first half, as I had scenes of a lost season playing in my head, but man did they come back strong in the second. Twitter was excellent, watching the insane and spoiled Buckeyes Fans of Online call for Meyer’s firing and JT’s benching, then switching on a dime to talk of a national championship.

Against Oklahoma, an actually ranked team with actual national championship-contending caliber staff and players, I think the Buckeyes take the win, 31-24. Our boys needed a game to shake things loose, and didn’t have Bowling Green or Akron to shit on this year, but they pulled though and showed what they’re capable of when receivers catch balls and Barrett isn’t running every snap. They’ll keep it going and put the contest against Oklahoma into the W column.

That’s it for this week’s KYO, Buckeyes fans. Stay classy, drink responsibly, and smoke only in designated areas!