Burnt Orange Nation

Just a reminder...

The Sooners are not happy.

Prominently displayed on a wall inside Texas' Moncrief-Neuhaus training facility is a list of the Longhorns' Big 12 and South Division championships.

According to Tim Griffin of ESPN.com, the Longhorns have included 2008 among their Big 12 championships — with an asterisk.

Apparently, that victory is still not being acknowledged in Austin.

Justin Tucker is involved in an experiment.

The Longhorns coaching staff may be out to, if not revolutionize college football, at least improve upon it. A year after introducing the rugby punting style to its game, Texas is adding to that repertoire.

It's trying to get the right-footed Tucker to punt left-footed.

ESPN's Tim Griffin has some notes on the scrimmage.

Your opinion really doesn't count. Some guy named Mack in Indy thinks we need to dump Rick Barnes.

Checking on the Aggies... It looks as if the A&M defense had a tough day last Thursday.

A&M's receivers weren't held in check all day, however. On one play, Fuller was able to get behind the defense and Johnson hit him on a 45-yard pass that he caught in stride at the goal line. Johnson was also able to find Howard Morrow on a crossing route.

The pass to Morrow left the Aggie offensive coaches cheering and the defensive coaches screaming.

They should be used to lopsided scores by now. On Friday, the offense had issues.

The defense won the day by a large margin, the final score was 84-47, as the offense sputtered throughout the afternoon.

The Aggies will be competing for a national title. In Polo.

Losing stinks, especially when you just miss out on the Final Four.

Sam and Blake. Two kids from Oklahoma City make good.

Bradford and Griffin's 2008-09 school year has been very much alike — so much, in fact, that they have made the University of Oklahoma the first major college to produce in the same academic year the top individual award winners in both football and men's basketball.

Bradford won the 2008 Heisman Trophy as the most outstanding college football player in America, and Griffin so far has swept three major college basketball awards (Oscar Robertson, Adolph Rupp and the Associated Press). The Naismith will be presented Sunday; the Wooden goes out on Friday. Griffin is a virtual lock for both.

The Sooners have another top QB lined up.

It is good to have a dream. This one just happens to be out of your reach. Jacob Jones, The OU Daily, laments the quality of an OU education.

I, along with many others, have been caught up in enthusiasm of the recent years and subconsciously accepted the idea that all these actions will result, one day, in a university that can match up with the North Carolinas, Texas’, Michigans and Berkeleys of the world.

I now think that outcome is unlikely given OU’s apparent strategy.

I came to this conclusion after looking through the changes in the student body makeup, courtesy of OU’s annual fact book... I think the best explanation is the most obvious one. OU football re-emerged as a national powerhouse and Texas (enrollment from other states appears to have been unaffected) high school students flocked to secure their season tickets.

In response to a surge in applications following the 2000 championship, OU raised ACT requirements for out-of-state applicants to 26, and the metrics stabilized as the surge of out-of-staters admitted under the more rigorous guidelines leveled off.

This was a good thing for OU, but the numbers – and anecdotal evidence – do not suggest OU is stealing students away from the region’s more acclaimed universities, which must be happening if OU’s freshmen are indeed getting smarter each year.

Tough news. Jason Hannan, once considered the top center prospect in the country, is leaving the Sooners.

So how much is worth to you to have lunch with Bob Stoops? Someone at a charity auction was only winning to shell out $275. That is $5 less than the winning bid for lunch with the OU women's basketball coach.

Big 12 teams may not be in the Final Four, but the conference cleaned up in national awards. Sooner Blake Griffin is the Associated Press' college basketball player of the year and Kansas coach Bill Self is the coach of the year.

OU has been pilfering Texas football talent for years. And now Arkansas?

The Big 12 future. There was an Elite 11 regional workout Saturday at Texas Christian University featuring quarterback prospects currently committed to Big 12 programs.

Husker Locker has the six easiest and six toughest football jobs in the Big 12.

Mike Gunday just likes to have fun.

Coach Mike Gundy seemed mostly encouraged by the results of Oklahoma State's first major scrimmage of the football spring-practice period. Wednesday's two-hour, 140-play exercise was conducted at Boone Pickens Stadium. "The effort and the physical part of the scrimmage were good," Gundy said. "I wanted to fatigue both sides of the ball, to try to see who would step up and perform unlike we did in the (Holiday Bowl loss to Oregon). "I just wanted to see if guys were tough enough to hit and tackle and line up (correctly) and block somebody and take care of the ball.

That's what we didn't do in the fourth quarter of the bowl game. I wanted to see that today, so that's why we extended it a little bit. Today was a fun day."

Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff just may have a case against the BCS.

"There is no doubt that the BCS is a near monopoly," said Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College who has focused his research on sports monopolies. "There is no doubt that it uses its power to make unequal payoffs to conferences and schools. And there is no doubt that its opportunities for rewards are not equal. There is a good case to be made."

Gary Roberts, a law professor at Indiana University who is the editor of the leading text on American sports law, agrees.

"It will be complicated, and it will be a close call," Roberts said. "But a state attorney general can win it if he files it in the right place."

Both Zimbalist and Roberts warn that antitrust litigation can be protracted, difficult and uncertain.

The Dating Game, college football style. College athletic conference realignments have taken place because of similarities and TV market appeal.

Several college athletic conference realignments have taken place over the past 20 years in a process not unlike Match.com. Different parties size each other up based on similarities of athletic programs and TV market appeal. Many matches make sense, such as Florida State, BC, and Miami "hooking up" with the ACC, Oklahoma and Texas matching up in the Big 12, or Louisville and UConn joining forces in the Big East. Just as with dating, this process leaves some players out in the cold such as Rice, SMU, Temple, and others.

One interesting result of the matching and leftovers is that sometimes being left behind works to your advantage and sometimes getting a date works against you. Memphis has benefited and may continue to benefit by its exclusion from the C-USA schools that went to the Big East. Instead of scratching and clawing just to keep their head above water in the Big East anarchy, their dominance of C-USA provided them with nice seeds and a run to the finals and the Sweet 16 over the past two seasons.

A rich man's game. College ADs are doing okay in this economy.

A little bit humor for Monday... and no one does humor better than The Onion. Cheering Fans, Thrilling NCAA Tournament Disgust BCS Officials.

And finally...

Condolences to the Bears. Kyle Woods, the former Baylor defensive back who was paralyzed from the neck down during a 1979 Bears practice, died Thursday. He was 49.