The results of the Second quarterfinal:

The OSU side of the bracket again, played out pretty much how I thought it would.

Oklahoma State rolled Arkansas 92-8, despite the efforts of a certain Arkansas graduate friend of mine who probably went to half the Best Buys and Apple stores in Dallas to vote on every computer he could get his hog hands on.

Alabama took down Boise State 69-31 in a game I actually expected to be a lot closer, you know, because of that whole .009 thing.

Now we get to the good stuff. The LSU-Oregon rematch and the Alabama-OSU showdown Gundy has been clamoring for. I’m pretty sure I know how these are going to play out but I’m interested to see how close the Alabama-OSU game is. Remember, the semifinal games are at neutral sites.

Happy voting and dreaming of a playoff!

If you need a refresher on what the rules are, take a gander here.

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Anybody nervous yet?

Gundy has four years and a little under $10M left on his current contract, but the twitters were all a-flutter last night with talk of the new deal he’s been negotiating for a week. It started with a few not-so-innocuous Dave Sittler tweets then DeShazo and Pokelahoma started the #GundyContractDemands hashtag and we were off to the races.

Here’s how Sittler kicked things off at the end of the work day yesterday:

But that seems to be where the incongruities end. Everyone I’ve talked to (and to be fair I haven’t talked to that many people) and/or read in the last few days has said some variation of the following two tweets:

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Photo Attribution:Emily Nielsen

I believe the kids these days refer to it as “stacking paper” and Gundy is about to be doing a lot of it.

Bill Haisten reported late on Sunday that contract negotiations were underway between Jimmy Sexton (Gundy’s representation) and Oklahoma State for a revised contract (Haisten pointed out he’s currently in year three of a seven year deal that pays significantly less than Travis Ford’s deal.

To me that’s where most of Gundy’s leverage lies. He can point to Gene Chizik and his one conference championship and laugh at the $3.5M he’s making. Or he can curve his visor towards Norman and peer in at the $4.08 Bob Stoops is being paid to finish in the top five of the Big 12. But all he really needs to do is jerk his thumb a few hundred yards to the east and ask, “how much am I worth compared to that guy?”

Ford is in year three of a ten year deal that pays him, on average, $2.03M per year to coach what has been, at best, a mediocre basketball team. Gundy’s current salary says that he is paid $2.1M per year.

The most staggering stat in that Haisten article is that home revenue for each football game has increased from $1.2M in 2005 to $3.2M this year, a 166% increase over that time. Obviously that has as much to do with Dez and Zac and Weeden and Blackmon as it has to do with the head ball coach, but just like somebody has to be the fall guy when things go badly, somebody has to get the credit when things go well.

College football’s upper echelon pay for head coaches is basically broken down into these three tiers.

The $4.5M+ Range
Mack Brown – $5.1M
Nick Saban – $4.8M

The $3.5M to $4M Range
Bob Stoops – $4.08M
Les Miles – $3.89M
Kirk Ferentz – $3.79M
Bobby Petrino – $3.64M
Gene Chizik – $3.5M

The $2.5M to $3.5M Range
Brady Hoke – $3.25M
Will Muschamp – $3.22M
Mark Richt – $2.94M
Steve Spurrier – $2.83M (not sure what the Augusta membership is worth)
Chip Kelly – $2.8M
Bo Pelini – $2.78M
Jimbo Fisher – $2.75M
Gary Pinkel – $2.7M
Bret Bielema – $2.6M
Dan Mullen – $2.5M

Then it falls off and you start getting into coaches who run the option and all kinds of weird stuff.

So where does Gundy fit in? It’s pretty hard to imagine little ‘ol #12 making more money coaching college football than Mark Richt and Steve Spurrier but it’s probably about to happen.

He has more wins than Farentz over the last the last five years, the same number of conference titles as Richt and Spurrier combined (1-1), and is 4-2 against coaches on this list since the beginning of last year.

He has become a premier coach in a big-time conference at one of the most unlikely destinations in the nation.

I think he probably falls at the top of list #3 in the $3.25M range because, let’s face it, this ain’t the SEC where the money flows like corruption from the mouth of Craig James. Boone’s money comes when Boone’s money comes, but you have to operate within the budgeted framework you were handed at the beginning of the year.

That’s one of the more fascinating things to me too. What is Boone’s role in all of this? Is he backing up the Brink’s truck to Gundy’s house off of Range Road? Is he texting Holder cryptic things like “that pond on #12 at Karsten sure is deep, Mike. Do the right thing xoxoxo”? Is he involved at all? Does he want to be involved all?

If I could step foot inside the situation for just a moment, I would want to know if Boone is there and what he’s doing.

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Big thanks to the 300+ of you who voted on the first quarterfinal.

The results of the first quarterfinal:

The LSU side of the bracket played out pretty much how I thought it would.

LSU lit up Kansas State 91-9. Kansas State doesn’t turn the ball over (13 on the year) and LSU thrives off of turnovers, so I think this would be a lot closer than a lot of people think. We’ll actually see something somewhat close to it in real life at the Cotton Bowl when K-State takes on Arkansas. I’m probably more excited about that game than any other non-BCS affair.

Oregon downed Stanford 91-9 as well. I wonder how much of this is “they played before, why should I expect any different” and how much was “OSU is playing Stanford in real life so I’ve got my ‘I hate Stanford’ glasses on for the next month.” My guess is the majority is the former, as it should be.

I’m pretty stoked about these next two matchups. Alabama-Boise would be an absolute slugfest. You can probably make the case that Boise is the most physical non-AQ team in the country and we all know Bama isn’t backing down from anybody.

OSU and Arkansas would be an unbelievable bowl game. Arkansas and Oregon might be the only two teams in the nation with more skill position speed than the Cowboys. First one to 95 wins?

New matchups below ready to be voted on. Happy voting and dreaming of a playoff!

If you need a refresher on what the rules are, take a gander here.

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Photo Attribution:Emily Nielsen

In my lifetime, and I grant you it is not one of considerable length, only twice has a Heisman winner and Heisman runner-up fallen to the same team in the same year.

The first time it happened was in 1986. Penn State, whose defense only allowed 11.1 points per game that year, shut down Temple (and eventual Heisman runner-up, Paul Palmer) 45-15 in the season opener. It took them four more months to complete the feat when they took down the freshly minted Heisman winner, Vinny Testaverde and his ‘Canes in the Fiesta Bowl, 14-10.

The only other team to do it since my date of birth in 1985, and I don’t know why I expected anything else here, was Florida’s Tim Tebow-Chris Leak duo in 2006. They beat Arkansas (and eventual Heisman runner-up, Darren McFadden) before besting Troy Smith (Ohio State), and his inexplicable widest margin of victory in the history of the award, in the national title game.

This means that Brandon Weeden and Oklahoma State have the opportunity to do something only two teams have done in the last 25 years: roll through the two best players in the country (if that’s what the Heisman still represents) in the same academic year.

The Cowboys already lambasted the Bears to the tune of “we have to take our starters out at the end of the third quarter so this doesn’t get embarrassing” back in October. This defeat naturally led to some vitriolic backlash from OSU fans towards Bob Griffin and the Superman socks he wore to receive his trophy last Saturday.

Backlash that, while not unwarranted (because what Heisman winner in recent memory has been that badly embarrassed in his own league?), is probably undeserved. Griffin and Weeden had essentially the same numbers: Weeden threw for more yards, Griffin ran for more, and they basically cancelled each other out statistically.

To say that Griffin meant more to his team than Weeden is to say that Ron White means more to the liquor industry than a casual drinker. Griffin was his team this year. Now that doesn’t excuse getting stroked in Stillwater while laying prostrate on the field turf literally begging for yellow laundry to flood the field, nor does it devalue what Weeden did all year, but it warrants mentioning.

It’s a shame too, that Weeden gets penalized because his receivers are good and his defense was strong and he had the best running back in the country that nobody really talked about. He was everything you could ever want from your incumbent All-Big 12 quarterback in his swan song: poised, gutsy, unselfish, smart, and icy.

Lord, was he icy.

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Since it’s finals week at Oklahoma State, and a lot of my readers are students, I thought we could do our own little finals week here on the blog. Instead of studying for organic chemistry and diff eq though, we get to talk touchdown passes and turnover differential.

Happy testing.

To those wondering, you can answer questions even after you miss them for partial credit (better than real life finals!)

(editor’s note: scantron not necessary)

[mtouchquiz 1]

Post your scores (first and without looking answers up) below…