Saturday

For those who know me In Real Life, the fact that I have managed to keep my proclivity for Oklahoma Sooner football off of this page since last year's Orange Bowl should be very impressive. Of course I've been busy, but I haven't wanted to show the rest of my intellectual friends who read this that I am still gung-ho, crazy, nuts about college football. I gave up on the NBA after the lockout; the team aspect went to the toilet and the quality of play disappeared. I never really got back into baseball after the strike, although I follow it enough to know that the Yankees should have been knocked out, and the fact that they didn't probably proves that the sport is fixed. I still watch an NFL game now and again, but with my time short, other priorities keep getting placed above watching the erratic Vikings play (although I did see the eminently satisfying win over the Packers last week). Despite living in Minnesota and having a wife who works for the Wild, I never have really gotten into hockey. But college football...


College football remains the sport that I like the best. It's the most pure, interesting sport to watch. With 22 people on the field at a time, there is strategic maneuvering to watch literally every play. It's like a human chess game with a lot more violence. College is better than pro football. The percentage of players who go on to the NFL is negligable, and so you know that the players are motivated by something other than money. Yes, college football is a game of pride, and honor, and strategy. And the best rivalry in college football is OU-Nebraska.


Sure, OU's program went into the tank for ten dark years of the 90s, but my memories of this game extend farther than that. Virtually every game with Nebraska during the '80s featured both teams entering with top ten national rankings, and each game was close (I have particularly vivid memories of the stunning contest in 1986, which I regard as the best game I've ever seen). Nebraska writer Steve Sippey remembers the way it was and is again:

The swagger's back. Man, we missed that swagger. You endured your dark years. The 1990s were particularly horrifying, especially that stint under Schnellenberger. Then Blake. Ugly. But now, alas, you sparkle again. And we think some hearty Midwestern thank-you's are in order.

Thank you for your swift and stunning revival. Without it, this week - this wonderful week, so filled with anticipation and intrigue and mutual respect - would be impossible.

We in the Sooner Nation -- Oklahoma and its diaspora -- remember too. Thanks for saying so.

Snow?

It snowed yesterday. Just a dusting, but the 50 MPH winds and the below zero wind chills are a brutal wake up call. The lakes just iced-out at the end of April; we've had only six months of outdoors weather. It just isn't fair.