Sooners Knocked Off Perch

If for no other reason than to get my essay of Friday off the top of the blog, here are some random links from Saturday’s day in the sport:

Lebreton ponders the win in Norman for TCU …By the way, TCU rarely, if ever, makes Bob’s Blog. I am a sports elitest, and that means in a given sport, I only follow the top level of that sport(usually). Therefore, when it comes to college football, TCU, North Texas, and SMU don’t make the cut at the expense of the Big 12 schools. But, yesterday, since TCU whipped THE Big 12 program of record, enjoy your day TCU. You made us all proud. Finally, someone knocked OU off its high horse. Amazing that the Longhorns had to wait for the Horned Frogs to get it done!

The dusty archives show that it was the biggest TCU upset since the 1961 team shocked No. 1 Texas 6-0, a contest that precipitated Darrell Royal’s legendary quote about the Frogs being like cockroaches.

Stoops was far kinder Saturday. His team has a lot of growing to do, especially in the offensive line and at quarterback.

“They outplayed us and outcoached us as a whole,” Stoops said. “They deserved to win the game. They came in here and beat us and that is it.”’

That ’61 cockroach game was memorable, but this one is bigger, because it came at the expense of the Stoops-era Oklahoma, a perennial national-title contender and the unofficial measuring rod of the Big 12 Conference.

The Frogs, in the end, measured up Saturday in every way.
They dominated the time of possession. The defense held OU running back Adrian Peterson to 63 yards rushing. The Frogs, likewise, pressured Sooners quarterbacks Paul Thompson and Rhett Bomar into three sacks and only 128 passing yards.

And it all came in front of a partisan, increasingly restless Oklahoma crowd of 84,332, the third largest ever to see TCU play.

OU dude complains about the Sooners players …I really don’t care about this stuff, but I did want to make sure you saw it.

The Sooners displayed little class after Saturday's 17-10 upset loss to TCU on Owen Field.

No more than a dozen Oklahoma players shook hands with the Horned Frogs. The Sooners' remaining players headed straight for the locker room.

Those spotted offering congratulations included running back Adrian Peterson, quarterback Paul Thompson, tight end Willie Roberts, cornerback D.J. Wolfe, safety Lewis Baker, wide receiver Lendy Holmes and, the head classman, fullback J.D. Runnels.

TCU wide receiver Cory Rodgers forgave the Sooners' snub and said, "Me and (OU receiver) Travis Wilson are real cool. Me and (OU linebacker) Clint Ingram are real cool. I'm not holding a grudge against them for being upset, being mad and running off the field. I understand that, so I don't think we looked at it as an insult, a slap in the face or anything like that."

OU fans weren't much better.

Roughly 90 percent of Sooner supporters refused to chat when approached by Oklahoman reporter Brandon Chatmon after the game.

Aggies really, really bum out their faithful …

Somehow, somewhere, someway, Franchione lost his 2-point conversion chart on the trip from College Station to Clemson.

Last season, we marveled at Franchione gameday's genius as he called fake punts and field goals with a clairovoyant's touch, but he made his worst gameday call in 25 A&M games Saturday.

It's always a mystery when this stuff happens because to you, me, every Aggie fan watching on TV and every noisy one of 'em decked in maroon in the Memorial Stadium stands, it seemed so obvious.

A&M quarterback Reggie McNeal found Chad Schroeder for a 31-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter that put A&M up 23-22 with 9 minutes, 22 seconds left. The obvious call is to go for two - and for obvious reasons. Percentages say one more point won't do you any good in that situation. Two points puts you a field goal ahead, which means a field goal by itself can't beat you.

Imagine what hundreds of thousands of people screaming in unison sound like. We almost heard it in the Memorial Stadium press box as, about 1,000 miles away in Texas, every 12th Man Foundation member, former A&M student and Aggie football fan watching on TV and listening on the radio saw and heard A&M - to their horror - sending out Todd Pegram for the extra-point kick after McNeal's TD pass to Schroeder.

The 2-point call was just one of many annoying things of Aggies loss …

Against a backup quarterback. When Clemson had little choice but to run.
Is this the team that some thought was on the verge of a breakthrough?
Dennis Franchione will hear about this one, since he just added to his road failures. Death Valley is loud and large, every bit as impressive as anything College Station offers. But going 2-9 thus far on the road as the Aggies' coach suggests a pattern.

He also will hear about a decision, too. When Franchione elected not to go for the two-point conversion with just over nine minutes left, he opened up the chance he would lose exactly the way he did.

Baseball Prospectus asks why Edison has been rushed …

I know, Orel Hershiser commands respect as a pitching coach, because he's Orel Hershiser, and that used to mean something. It helps that he's articulate and intelligent, a man who's given more thought to pitching than I could ever hope to. I'm impressed that the decisions to first put Joaquin Benoit, Juan Dominguez, and Kameron Loe in the big league bullpen seems to have prepared them to step into starting roles and give the Rangers the first thing to resemble a top-to-bottom rotation in years.

But I'm little less sanguine about the point of having two pitchers barely out of A-ball up. Volquez has given up 4.5 runs per nine in a season split evenly between the high-A California League and Double-A Frisco. While the strikeout per inning he's logged is nice, and a 126-29 strikout to walk ratio over 125.1 IP is great, is he really someone you bring up now, to pitch in Texas in a hot summer? Feldman at least has more excuse, being a big reliever with sixty good innings at Frisco to boast of. I'm simply concerned that this could be like the Rangers of the mid-80s, forcing young talent onto their staff because they got tired of looking at used-up old men. (Which does sound awfully familiar, come to think of it.) Obviously, Benoit and Dominguez are reason for hope going forward, but so was Kid Correa once upon a time. Of course, that approach did give the Rangers the success stories of Jose Guzman and eventually Bobby Witt, so maybe throwing enough stuff at the wall might just be the answer after all.

Peerless Price: 1 year, $2.5 million …

Vollers, Walter cut …Quincy Morgan not…yet…