Awww Screw It, I'll Write About Football!

I have been holding off on writing about football on this blog because it's not really what this blog is about.  If you haven't guessed, this blog is about family, jobs, parenting, love, loss - in short, it's about life.  But the truth of the matter is that sometimes my life is about football.  So, although their are people that do a much better job of writing about football than myself, (Katie Hull Rathkey, in particular) I'm wound up, so I am gonna say my piece.

First of all, I am pissed off that my beloved 'Pokes lost to Iowa State and I will accept no excuse for it.

(For anyone in the dark, I am referencing Oklahoma State University, the OSU, not to be confused with the school that occasionally cheats it's way to the top of the Great Lakes League, you know, the one who always looks like it is playing in super slow-mo?  Don't adjust your set, it's just the Big Ten.)

But back to my rage:  "Why, Pokes, why?!"

Let's run down the list of excuses:

It was a classic trap game.
How was this a trap?  We won the previous game before halftime in a contest that was as even-sided as a Iron Chef match featuring Anthony Bourdain going spatula-to-whisk with The Cake Boss, Secret Ingredient:  Bone Marrow!  (Jeez, a Food Network reference?  No wonder I don't write about football very often.)  And as for the looking ahead distraction?  We have the week off!  What were we being distracted by?  Oyster dressing?

They had a new quarterback we were not familiar with.
Yeah, and he plays for Iowa State!  That's like saying the Marlins have a new ace on the mound.  Who cares?  The rest of the team is still Iowa State.  And last time I checked, OSU has a decent media facility, we should have been able to break down some game film.  Hell, we could have started working on it at halftime in Lubbock!

They had nothing to lose.
Yeah, and we had everything to gain.  So what?  When you are a championship caliber team you handle your business.  You were playing a team with an atrocious defense.  One of the worst in the Big 12.  This game should have been out-of-hand quickly, which would have forced the Cyclones to throw their game plan out the window and play catch-up.  That's how we win ball games against inferior squads.

We lost two coaches in a plane crash the day before.

I will not try in any way to diminish the loss of two very special people in our tight-knit Cowboy family.  This event, no doubt weighed heavily on the hearts and minds of every coach and player that evening.  Additionally, it was a real class move from the folks in Ames to assign a moment of silence in honor of our fallen comrades before the game began.  But the truth of the matter is, the only way that a plane crash should have kept us from beating Iowa State is if our starting offense would have been on it.

We blew it.

Chances like this don't come around often for Oklahoma A&M in the realm of real-deal championship football.  In fact, I have been alive for 38 years, and we have never had a legitimate title shot - not once.  We are the Andy Roddick of college football - we may not deserve to be in the hunt, but sometimes a perfect storm occurs and there we are.  Texas is down, aTm is out and the Sooners are short 3 studs and somehow have a defensive backfield that is full of holes rivaling the ones in Wal-Mart's Black Friday Preparedness Strategy.

We had to come from behind in College Station and needed the help of a earthquake to stop the Wildcats from upsetting us at home.  Rarely is a championship season built without some close calls.

But the debacle in Ames has turned is into spectators.  Now our hopes are pinned to the former A&M of Alabama to see if they can pull the upset in Jordan-Hare.  Take it from one who knows, Auburn may be the only other team in the country as unfortunate as the Pokes to live just up the street from such a storied and historically rich big brother of a football program.  The difference is that when the Gods smile on Auburn, they take advantage and win championships.  They are relevant.

In the end it doesn't matter that much what happens in the Auburn/Alabama game this afternoon if we don't focus on the only thing under our control:  Bedlam.

The Cowboys have had the singular goal of winning an outright Big 12 Championship for several years now.  Hell, one year we even had little bracelets made so that we wouldn't forget.  The Sooners could get caught up in a Cyclone today in a rainy contest at Memorial Stadium, which would hand us the title without even having to play for it, but I wouldn't count on it.  And I don't want it that way.

We need a Bedlam win and an outright Big 12 Championship.  That's our next step.  Forget Ames, don't worry about the SEC West and all the maybes and could-have-beens.  Just win your game against your in-state rivals and let the healing begin.

It's been said often this year that, "these are not your father's Cowboys".  Until last week, that was correct.  But on a Friday night we played like a high school squad and we looked just like my dad's Cowboys.

The players on this team are too young to remember Bedlam collapses having to do with walk-on kickers, unscripted onside kicks and Sooner Magic.  They don't even know the name Brent Parker.  But they need to win this one for all of us who lived through their father's Cowboys.  A Big 12 Championship, Bedlam win and a BCS bowl game are steps forward for Oklahoma State.

On campus in Auburn, Alabama today about 80,000 people will be rooting for a two teams that have so much football history that they often stumble over it.  They also have serious confusion regarding their mascots.  Alabama apparently is some kind of wave of blood or something to do with a pachyderm.  Auburn, like 15 other southern teams claims the official (and wildly imaginative) moniker, Tigers.  But what the fans will be chanting at the Iron Bowl (don't get me started) is "War Eagle".  Another sketchy reference to some wonderful event that happened pre-printing press at a game between Auburn and the University of Georgia.

Today, Pokes fans will be watching OU take on Iowa State.  Some rooting for the Sooners, the embittered and less informed rooting against them (it's not right, it's just in our nature).  But no matter what happens in that contest, many will be tuning in to watch southern smash-mouth football.  Teams with history, pageantry - teams with defenses.

Remember Pokes fans:  If all the storytelling, all of the gaped-mouth announcing, all of stroking of the SEC's ego starts to get disorienting (and it will), just root against the team in crimson.

"War Damn Eagle!"