Photo Attribution: US Presswire
1. I ride with Gundy in that I think scheduling non-conference powerhouses is a pretty dumb way to play the system1, but if you’re going to play a big one on a neutral field — this is about as good as it gets.
2. Jimmy Sexton is the agent for both Gundy and Jimbo Fisher and, as you all have noticed, he has become notorious for going to the salary database well quite often in any given off-season. He’s going to rent out like 10 suites from Jerry and make the jumbotron operator play this clip over and over again during the game…
3. We’re 100% sure this won’t be a conference game by 2014, right?
4. A point that nobody has mentioned yet: in 95% of seasons, OSU isn’t going to have a realistic shot at the national championship anyway, right2? So why not play a sweet game like this? It doesn’t hurt your chances of winning the Big 12 and it makes for some great theater.
I’m not contradicting my point from #1 because I still think it’s a dumb thing to do if your goals are Gundy’s goals (winning it all), but is that realistic for us? No…so let’s go ahead and play the thing. It’s way better than most bowl games anyway.
5. It’s too bad Mark Stoops bounced for Lexington this year — I was looking forward to Mike giving him pointers on how to stop our offense.
- I keep hearing the “but it brings in a ton of money” argument…since when have we worried about that?? ↩
- If Holder had scheduled this game last year he would have deserved a 3-wood to his knees on the range at Karsten…and yet it still wouldn’t have mattered, though you could argue that it would have mattered if the four-team playoff would have been in place like it will be next year. ↩
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I like big non-conference games, its like you pointed out even if you start the year with a loss you can still win the conference! The bold 95% statment is true as much as my orange heart doesnt want to believe it….but maybe that percent keeps dropping as our program keeps gaining ground
Re: 1.I keep hearing the “but it brings in a ton of money” argument…since when have we worried about that??
Could it be since we started paying our Head Coach $3.275 million a year? I’ve wondered if there was a coorelation between scheduling these big-payout / neutral site / non-conference / season-opener games and Coach Gundy’s new contract last year.
No kidding. The operating budget for the OSU Athletic Department is still really tight. It’s not like we are awash in operating cash. Games like this help support all sports (and coaches’ salaries…ahem Gundy). Obviously home game ticket sales do too, but I’m assuming this game will bring in significantly more money, which is the whole point.
Well, one of the issues is what this does to the economy of Stillwater! I like these types of games on occasion but this means Stillwater will lose, I believe it was, $2~3 million that is generated by fans going to a home game. Of course this is generated through food, accommodations, money spent at the stadium, for parking, etc.
So I’m not sure you want to lose a home game every year for this.
Coach Gundy has another, yet little discussed, objection to playing marquee non-conference games is to avoid the injury bug that becomes likelier when playing big, physical teams.
If the goal is to win the conference, why risk shooting blanks in the games that matter most (2009)?
Ok, if we had beaten a mid-major school instead of losing to Arizona, do you think we’d be in a better bowl than the Zombie Cotton Bowl? I think I do. An “8″ in the W column looks a lot better than a “7″. I don’t know the numbers, but are you REALLY making more money if you play big non-conference games and then go to a (way) worse bowl? What if we had a slate of four powerhouse non-con games and missed a bowl altogether?
This is a good argument. And yeah, we’d probably be in a better bowl if we’d played Tulsa instead of Arizona…but we also wouldn’t have had that Thursday night game on ESPN last year because Arizona wouldn’t have come to Stillwater.
Tradeoffs. I think I fall on the “let’s play one or two good non-con games” side of things but I definitely understand the other side as well.
What the hell is wrong with you? We won’t win a championship 95% of the time anyway, so what does it matter who we play? But it will be fun to watch. What a crappy attitude to have.
This game will help us build a brand, which from your comments I’m not sure you care anything about.
We’ve had one or two realistic shots at the title in 100 years of football so I was actually being generous.
I don’t have a problem w/ this game. But oSu would do well not to play three tough non-conference games in any one season. Take notes from SEC teams, they play some scrubs, but playing Miss States and Flo States are a good thing, puts Ok State on a big stage early. Great for recruiting and I think they have a good chance to win both of these games.
Your statistics are correct, and therefore logic is correct. I had a problem with the attitude of it, but that was probably too strong of a comment to make on my part. I like your website, but sometimes I wish your glasses were a stronger colored orange.
But it’s your blog and you seem to be a realist, so I can’t fault you for saying how you feel.