Mailbag: Readers offer thoughts on Landry Jones, OU’s talent and the need for playoffs

LUBBOCK, Texas — I would like for my weekly mailbag blog post to be a Thursday feature; after one week, I’ve already blown my own deadline by two days.

Yikes.

I apologize for the delay; hopefully this will be the last one. I’ve got lots of emails to respond to, and on a variety of topics and/or stories I’ve written over the past week.

I’ll include links to the original stories that each reader is responding to as part of this post.

We are mere hours away from the Oklahoma-Texas Tech kickoff inside Jones AT&T Stadium, so let’s get started with the mailbag.

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Red Boomer frequently emails when he feels I’ve somehow slighted Texas Tech. Here was his note after my content in Monday’s newspaper; I think he’s referring to my OU-Texas Tech glance, in which I refer to superior talent as being a possible difference in OU’s favor Saturday. I got a pretty good kick out of this one.

I’m going to award you the Mr. Predictable award for saying that Oklahoma has more talent than Texas Tech, since the Red Raiders, as all the world knows, are a motley collection of undersized, unrecruited West Texas scrappers who couldn’t make the grade anywhere else.

Fact: None of Tech’s players was offered a scholarship to any other D1 school.

Fact: Most of Tech’s linebackers and DB’s are actually bulldoggers recruited off our nationally ranked rodeo team.

Fact: Our QB, Stump Dogie, never played football before he came to Tech.  He’s actually a champeen calf roper from Lone Star Beer, Texas, which didn’t offer football.  Coach Leach saw him roping and talked him into trying out for football.

Fact: All our WRs and RBs are little, slow white boys who played for tiny little W. Texas Class A towns.

Fact: No Tech player has ever played in the NFL, but several went on to be enshrined in the Rodeo Hall of Fame.

Fact: Tech has never really beaten OU.  Either Tech cheated or it wasn’t “The Real Sooners.”

Fact: Tech doesn’t even hold spring training because most of its players have to leave school to go home and help with spring roundup.

Sooner fans can relax.  It shouldn’t even be close.

Red Boomer: Well done. I don’t know that there’s much I can say to make you believe that I don’t have any deep-seated animosity toward your beloved Red Raiders. As a matter of fact, an old family friend from my home town  — Colby Whitlock from Noble, Okla. — played for Tech, and I even went to SMU and cheered for the Red Raiders in the first game of Colby’s freshman season. That’s about the only time in recent memory that I’ve taken sides in a Texas Tech game, and it was only because of Colby. Trust me, I’m not for or against Tech; nor am I for or against the Sooners. I think OU’s talent level is higher, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think there’s a good chance Texas Tech wins Saturday. Talent is only part of it; Tech has been the better team in many of these games against OU, no doubt.

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David wrote in response to my fun look at OU fans’ five stages of grief after losses. He is upset that OU’s early-season loss to a ranked team all but ruins the Sooners’ chance at a national title.

This is why college football is ridiculous. One loss early and your season is over. The BCS idiots say they want meaningful games in the context of the national championship picture. Their argument is crazy because now none of OU’s games are meaningful for the remainder of the season in this context. A playoff where all conference champions are involved would make for more meaningful games during the course of the season. This is why the NFL is far superior to the joke that college football has become.

David: I agree that the “regular season matters in college football” argument against a strong playoff system is silly. If that were true, LSU-Alabama 2011 would’ve decided which team played for the national title; instead, LSU unfairly had to beat Bama twice to be champs, where Bama only had to beat LSU once. I think the four-team playoff coming soon is a step in the right direction, although I’d like to see it expanded. Not sure I agree, though, that it should only be conference champs in a playoff system. If teams have to win the title by fighting through a tough playoff system, the arguments against postseason rematches go out the window, in my opinion.

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Jason wrote in response to my last mailbag blog post, and he is a strong believer that replacing Landry Jones with Blake Bell is the answer to the Sooners’ offenseive woes.