Blackmon soaring up the draft boards
It’s a bit starling to see Justin Blackmon’s name on these mock draft boards.
No. 9 by Scouts Inc.’s Todd McShay.
I mean, we all know that the former Oklahoma State wide receiver is a superstar. We saw it with our own eyes these past couple of seasons. This past fall, in particular, you could just see how Blackmon was playing at a different level, a higher level than the other 21 players on the field.
It was the whole man-among-boys phenomenon.
And yet, to see him as a consensus top-10 draft pick with a legitimate shot at being a top-three pick?
It’s wild.
Blackmon, in my mind, will always be the kid from Plainview High. He was a small-school standout, but despite some eye-popping stats, he was still lightly recruited. He definitely wasn’t the marquee player in the Cowboys’ 2008 recruiting class. On Signing Day 2008, here’s what we wrote about Blackmon’s possible long-term impact:
After he adds some weight, he could blossom into a 205-pound target with good speed.
He blossomed all right … into a pass-catching, game-changing, defense-terrorizing monster.
And now, he is on the verge of pro-football riches and draft-day notoriety.
Being the second or third player picked in the draft would be amazing end to a meteoric rise. Players who’ve been selected in those spots during the past few years include Von Miller (No. 2, 2011), Ndamukong Suh (No. 2, 2010), Jason Smith (No. 2, 2009), Chris Long (No. 2, 2008) and Matt Ryan (No. 3, 2008). Those guys have all had big-time impacts even in a short amount of time.
Blackmon could have a similar imprint on whatever team selects him.
Even if he “falls” to the eighth or ninth, there are still plenty of impact players who’ve been picked in that neck of the draft woods. Three years ago, Texas Tech wide receiver Michael Crabtree was drafted 10th by the San Francisco 49ers. This weekend, he’ll be playing for a spot in the Super Bowl.
It’s pretty awe-inspiring to consider where Blackmon’s career may be headed.
And the truth is, he gave himself this opportunity. He committed himself to the workouts and the conditioning regimen when he first arrived in Stillwater, adding the strength and the speed to the skill that he already had. He made the most of practice, including those days on the scout team when he was catching passes from some third-string quarterback named Brandon Weeden. Turned out to pay pretty big dividends, huh?
I hate to sound like those commentators on TV who say, “Now, young players need to watch how this player does this”, but the truth is, there’s a great lesson in what Blackmon has done. Here it is, kids — Blackmon put in the work to make this whole thing possible.
Who knows where Blackmon will ultimately land? St. Louis? Minnesota? Jacksonville? But no matter what NFL hamlet he ends up calling home, this much is sure.
He’ll have earned his spot there.
Super Day for Justin Blackmon’s Super Fan
Olivia Hamilton has completed treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
This isn’t a blog post about sports.
But it is about triumph.
Today — Jan. 11, 2012 — marks the last day of chemotherapy for Olivia Hamilton. The sports world knows her as the cancer patient who has become buddies with Oklahoma State receiver Justin Blackmon. We’ve told her story. ESPN has told her story.
No doubt she’s the best-known fourth grader in Sperry.
But all of that is a side note today. Olivia is finally done with treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and when I say finally, I mean finally.
She did 108 weeks of treatment.
One hundred and eight.
That’s more than two years of treatment, of going to the hospital once a week for radiation or chemotherapy, of having to endure the side effects of the drugs that were killing the cancer but that sometimes nearly did her in. There have been dozens of stays in the hospital, these past few years for everything from kidney failure to mouth sores to broken bones.
It’s been hell for a little girl who has faced it all with an iron will and a smile as big as the Oklahoma sky.
(She posted a picture on her Facebook page early this morning flashing that smile. She also had a hand-painted sign: Last Chemo.)
And now, the treatment is done.
Sometime this afternoon, Olivia will ring a bell at the pediatric cancer unit at Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa. Every patient who completes their treatment gets to ring that bell. It’s a celebration of what they’ve accomplished. It’s a moment that everyone has a chance to enjoy.
Here’s hoping that Olivia, with that big smile on her face, rings that bell as loud and long as they’ll let her.
You deserve it, Liv.
Predictions: Who was right, wrong about ’11?
Since predictions for the 2012 college football season are already out, I figured now might be a good time to look back on some of the prognostications for the season that isn’t even 24 hours in the books.
The prognosticators?
Us here at OPUBCO headquarters.
Every year, we do a football preview section, and this year, our college football coverage team picked all sorts of things. Best players. Best games. I got a kick out of going back through some of them.
None of us picked Alabama and LSU to play in the national championship game. Then again, who could’ve seen a rematch in the title game?
Good news is, six of the eight us had one of the two teams in the title game. Alabama was a pick for OU beat writer Mike Baldwin, OSU recruting writer Jason Kersey, sports editor Mike Sherman, assistant sports editor Ryan Sharp and yours truly. OSU beat writer John Helsley had LSU in the game.
Only my fellow columnist Berry Tramel and OU recruiting writer Ryan Aber had neither SEC school in the game. Berry liked Boise State vs. Virginia Tech while Ryan went with Oklahoma and Oregon.
Four of us actually had the Crimson Tide winning the whole thing — Baldwin, Sherman, Sharp and I.
Maybe we do know what we’re talking about occassionally.
It was interesting to see what teams everyone picked to play in the BCS bowls. Everyone had at least five of the 10 teams, a pretty good batting average if you ask me.
The best?
Well, I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I picked eight of the 10 BCS teams. Alabama. LSU. OSU. Stanford. Wisconsin. Oregon. West Virginia. Virginia Tech. I only whiffed on OU and Boise State.
Of course, I also said Roy Finch would be the Sooners’ most thrilling player and that former OU offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson would win seven games in his first season at Indiana.
Finch struggled to get on the field the first half of the season, and the Hoosiers struggled to one win.
Hello, humble pie.
It’s just interesting to look back at predictions and remember that they all have to be taken with a grain of salt. And hey, we did ours in August. These predictions that are coming out now are being made before we even know all of the players who are headed to the NFL. The deadline to declare isn’t until Sunday.
I love predictions as much as the next person, but really, it’s more fun than serious.
Looking for leaders doing for others like MLK
Martin Luther King Day is just around the corner.
In honor of this holiday, I am looking to shine the light on a community hero who may be largely unknown to the world.
There is a quote attributed to Dr. King — “What are you doing for others?” — and I am looking to share the story of someone sports-related in the Oklahoma City metro area who is doing for others in our black community.
Men like Leotis Robinson and Varryl Franklin initially spring to mind. I’ve written about both of these men in the past few years. Robinson was the former legendary football coach at Millwood High School who died a couple years ago, and Franklin is the current legendary basketball coach at Millwood. Both are coaches by profession but builders of young men at heart. They live to do for others.
There are others like them.
But I need your help finding them.
If you know of someone, they don’t have to be involved in high school sports. Perhaps there’s someone you know who’s involved in youth sports or middle school sports. As long as they’re doing for others in the black community and doing it through sports, I want to know about them.
You can comment on my blog or email me at jcarlson@opubco.com.
Be sure to include a phone number where I can contact you.
Jenni Carlson’s Power Lunch Chat Recap
Jenni Carlson’s Power Lunch Chat Recap
OSU fans, let’s hear your stories
Oklahoma State football fans, you have experienced a lot over the years.
There have been highs. There have been lows. There have been near misses and bizarre endings that have made even the diehards among you scratch your heads.
But there has never been anything like this season.
Beatdowns of Oklahoma and Texas and so many others.
A first-ever outright Big 12 title.
A first-ever BCS bowl.
This season has meant so much to so many, but we want to hear what it has meant to you. Maybe you have a heartfelt story of devotion to your Cowboys. Perhaps you have a funny tale of orange-tinted passion. Whatever the case, we want to hear your stories.
Tell us what this season has meant to you and why.
You could send a “thank you” to the Cowboys, or you could let us what you would tell the team or your favorite player or favorite coach if you had the chance.
Email Jenni Carlson at jcarlson@opubco.com. Be sure to include your name, your city of residence and a phone number where we can reach you.
Power Lunch Chat Recap
Saban quote making the rounds? It’s a fake
Did you hear what Nick Saban said about how not winning a conference championship should disqualify you from BCS title game consideration? It's something Saban allegedly said when he was coaching LSU and about to face Oklahoma in the 2004 BCS title game. Trouble is, there's little evidence he actually said it. Staff photo by Bryan Terry.
I know it will be hard for some of you to believe, but everything you read on Twitter isn’t necessarily true.
Shocking, I know.
But that is definitely the case with an apparent Nick Saban quote making the rounds on the social media site. The quote is supposed to be from 2003 when Saban was the coach at LSU and a brouhaha was boiling around who should play in the national championship game. (Like there’s ever been any of squabbling about that!) LSU, Oklahoma and USC all ended up with one loss, but the Tigers ended up playing the Sooners for the title even though Kansas State beat OU in the Big 12 title game.
Saban is quoted as saying, “Anyone who doesn’t win their conference has no business playing in the national championship game.”
It’s a juicy quote now since Saban is at Alabama and the Crimson Tide didn’t win their division much less their conference, and yet, it finds itself with an inside track to the national championship game.
Oh, the drama.
Thing is, Saban didn’t say it.
Several of us here at headquarters went looking for evidence of the quote. We used Nexis.com, a powerful and wide-reaching search engine that has hundreds of newspapers and other media sources in its archives. We used Google and just about any other search engine we could think of online. We used our own archives since we were intently focused on Saban and the Tigers in 2003 as an opponent of the Sooners.
Nada.
The closest that we came was something Saban said about Alabama and OU, both of whom played in conference championship games.
“We’re the only two (contending) teams in the country that had to play a 13th game,” he said. “We had to do a little bit more to earn the right.”
That’s the most scandalous thing Saban said then, and really, that’s not exactly bulletin board material.
Not then.
Not now.
And really, it seems pretty unlikely that he would’ve said a team that didn’t win its conference championship had no business playing in the national title game in 2003 in the first place. After all, his team was getting ready to play the team that didn’t win its league title. Why would he say something like that and give the Sooners some extra ammo? That isn’t Saban’s style. He’s too slick, too savvy to say something so inflammatory.
So, while that quote makes for fun fodder as Alabama sits at home and LSU, Oklahoma State, Virginia Tech and Houston play for conference titles, it just isn’t true.
I hope this doesn’t destroy your belief in Twitter.
Timing perfect for NBA lockout’s end
I don’t know about anybody else, but I was starting to get a little worried that we weren’t going to have any NBA once the college football season ended.
But in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the players and the owners came to a tentative agreement to end the lockout.
Just in the nick of time.
It’s only a week until the end of football’s regular season, and while the games won’t start until Christmas, the prospect of getting to the end of football without the promise of pro hoops was not a good one. Sure, there would be college and high school hoops. Yes, there would be hockey and wrestling and all manner of other things that keep us entertained during the winter months.
But no NBA? No Thunder? No Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook or Kendrick Perkins?
This month or so that we’ve already lost didn’t seem so bad because we had football season to distract us. Oklahoma State’s amazing run to the top of the polls. Oklahoma’s flirtation with a national championship run. Brandon Weeden and Justin Blackmon. Ryan Broyles and Frank Alexander.
It’s all be grand fun.
But after next week’s Bedlam game, it will take a hiatus before bowl games. Looks like the Cowboys and Sooners won’t be playing bowls for several weeks.
Now, we’ll have something to help pass the time.
There’ll be players who need to be signed, primary among them for the Thunder is Westbrook. There’s be training camp. There’ll be talk about who looks good and what the revamped schedule does for the team’s chances and where this bunch might finish the season.
Ah, I can hardly wait.
Going from the end of football to the start of basketball — suddenly this lockout doesn’t seem like it was so bad after all.
