Wanted: Thoughts on Bob Barry Sr. retiring
Longtime play-by-play voice Bob Barry Sr. has announced that he’s retiring after this season.
He has called both Oklahoma and Oklahoma State games during his legendary career.
So, fans, what are your memories of him? What will you miss? Will Saturday’s be the same without his call? I want to hear from you.
Insurance for Polamalu’s hair? What’s next?
No doubt you’ve heard the big news of the day — Troy Polamalu’s hair has insurance.
Yep, the Pittsburgh Steelers safety has a $1 million insurance policy on his hair. Head and Shoulders, the shampoo brand that uses Polamalu as a pitch man, secured the policy from Lloyd’s of London.
Granted, Polamalu has a nice head of hair. The long, wavy black hair is about three feet long and is a nod to his Samoan ancestry. It poufs out the bottom of his helmet. It flows down his back. It is his signature look.
But this whole bit about the insurance policy got me thinking about a fun question — what other sports figures might be in need of a special policy?
What about Dennis Rodman’s tattoos? Or Chris “The Birdman” Andersen’s mohawk? Or Manny Ramirez’s dreadlocks?
Heck, Manny’s do-rag might need insuring while we’re at it.
There are other athletes with distinctive traits. Tom Brady has that cleft chin. Drew Brees has that birthmark under his eye. Randy Couture has those ridiculously large cauliflower ears.
Couture, the former Oklahoma State wrestler turned mixed martial arts star, isn’t the only athlete with local connections who might be in need a special insurance policy. What about former OSU golfer Ricky Fowler’s outrageous outfits? Or Spiro native and St. Louis Cardinal pitcher Ryan Franklin’s scraggly goatee? Or Thunder guard James Harden’s beard?
Speaking of hair, we’ve got other candidates there. Landry Jones has his signature mustache. Ditto for Doug Sauter.
And what about these famous heads of local hair? Mike Gundy. Sherri Coale. Kurt Budke. Put any of those folks in silhouette, and there’s no doubt that folks in this state would be able to figure out who they were.
Listen, Troy Polamalu may have insurance on his hair, but he isn’t the only one in sports who’s got a signature look.
OSU, Uihlein both win big at U.S. Amateur
Peter Uihlein scored a major victory Sunday for himself and for Oklahoma State.
The Cowboy golfer won the U.S. Amateur, a heck of an accomplishment that comes with exemptions to golf’s majors as long as he remains an amateur. Here’s guessing that as well as Uihlein plays the game, he won’t stay an amateur much longer. But regardless of that, he has joined an esteemed group of amateur champs that includes the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods.
He also joined a growing group of Cowboy golfers who proudly sport the orange and black — though mostly orange — on the golf course.
Uihlein didn’t go all Ricky Fowler on us and wear head-to-toe orange. Fowler, in his second year on the PGA Tour, goes all orange on Sundays. Orange hat. Orange shirt. Orange pants. Orange shoes.
Uihlein wasn’t wearing quite that much orange, but he wore a hat with Pistol Pete, an orange shirt with more OSU insignias and a belt with an O-State buckle. He was a walking billboard for all things OSU.
It’s the type of thing that’s becoming a familiar sight during golf tournaments. This latest generation of Cowboy golfers proudly wear their orange on tour. Fowler is the most obvious, but Hunter Mahan and Charles Howell aren’t shy about their orange passion either.
It’s quite a coup for OSU, and not just for the golf program. It benefits the entire university. Here are these guys, who are among some of the best in the world at what they do, proudly sporting their school colors.
You don’t see it much from other golfers. Phil Mickelson doesn’t go around wearing his Arizona State maroon. Jim Furyk isn’t constantly in his Arizona red and blue.
But like many of these other golfing Cowboys, there was Peter Uihlein on the biggest day of his golf career wearing his orange.
He scored a big win at the U.S. Amateur, and so did Oklahoma State.
Power Lunch Chat Recap: Jenni Carlson
Jim Furyk: Golf’s latest victim of inequality
The rules of golf have reared their ugly head again.
Only a couple weeks after coming under fire due to Bunkergate, the rules are taking it on the chin one more time. This time, the circumstances revolve around Jim Furyk, a dead cell phone and a missed pro-am tee time.
Wednesday morning, Furyk overslept when his cell went dead and the alarm on his phone didn’t go off. As someone who uses their cell as their alarm, I can only imagine the horror when Furyk woke up and realized he was late.
He only ended up being six minutes late for his tee time at The Barclays, but under PGA Tour rules, being late for a pro-am tee time carries a one-tournament penalty in the FedEx Cup playoff events. Furyk is ineligible for the first of four tournaments that will determine who wins the cup and its $10 million prize.
Furyk, by the way, is third in the standings right now, so he has a legit shot at the title.
Or at least he did.
Now, he’s unlikely to win and the rules of golf are getting blamed again.
Listen, I’m all for rules. They keep the world from spinning off its axis. But here’s the thing — the rules are penalizing players differently.
Take Dustin Johnson. If he wasn’t at the top of the leader board in the final round of the PGA Championship, all eyes and cameras wouldn’t have been on him and he might not have received a two-shot penalty for unknowingly grounding his club in what looked nothing like a bunker on the final hole.
And what about Furyk? Only half the field at The Barclays was playing in the pro-am. That means only half the players were subject to the miss-the-pro-am-be-disqualified-for-a-tournament rule.
Rules need to apply to everyone in the same way. Golf, like every sport, needs its rules, but it also needs to figure out how to make their enforcement equal.
OSU football: Don’t forget about the big guys
With the implementation of this new offense at Oklahoma State, there’s been a lot of talk about the skill positions.
Quarterback. Wide receiver. Running back.
Talk about those spots all you want, but the position that might have as much to do with the success of this offense — and in turn, this season for the Cowboys — is the least ballyhooed and most inexperienced.
It’s the offensive line.
Now, talking about offensive linemen is about as sexy as talking about paint drying. But the truth is, these guys will be darn important in how this whole offensive shift works out.
The Cowboys are replacing four starters from last season, including Russell Okung and his four seasons as the starter at left tackle. Lane Taylor is the only returner, and while he’ll be joined by guys like Nick Martinez and Anthony Morgan who’ve seen some playing time, this is a brand new line.
That always brings challenges, but when you add learning a new offense, it ups the degree of difficulty.
Tuesday night after OSU’s practice, I asked quarterback Brandon Weeden about the biggest changes for the big guys protecting him. He said that they don’t have to hold their blocks as long, which is a plus, but that they have to play much faster than most of them are used to playing.
That higher tempo has obviously been an adjustment for every offensive player, but those offensive linemen are the only ones carrying around 300-plus pounds, too.
As it turns out, the biggest challenge for the offensive linemen may be what happens from the whistle to the snap instead of what happens from the snap to the whistle.
It’s an interesting challenge for any offensive line, but for this bunch, how it responds to the challenge may have quite an impact on the success of this Cowboy offense.
OU football: WRs still a concern
Seeing the latest version of Oklahoma’s depth chart has given me flashbacks to last season.
The Sooners have listed Ryan Broyles, Kenny Stills and Cameron Kenney as their starting wide receives. Broyles is a slam dunk, of course, and Stills was expected to make a push for a starting position.
But no Dejuan Miller? No Jaz Reynolds? No Brandon Caleb? Those guys were supposedly making strides. Caleb had an up-and-down season a year ago, but Miller and Reynolds came on strong at the end of the year. At least one of them was expected to crack the starting line up.
But no.
Heck, Reynolds isn’t even listed on the depth chart. He was seen as one of the up-and-coming hotshots, but he’s neither first-team nor second-team.
I give it up to Stills for taking advantage of his early enrollment last spring and cracking the starting lineup as a true freshman this fall. The same goes for Kenney, who had a disappointing season a year ago after transferring from junior college.
But what about the rest of the group? This was a bunch, after all, that was wildly inconsistent a year ago. They dropped passes. They flubbed routes. They missed blocks. Of course, they would make a spectacular grab right before that. They were truly a mess.
While the Sooner offensive line drew lots of criticism a year ago — and deserved a bunch of it — that was a group that battled injuries. It’s struggles can be better understood because of that.
But the wide receivers? There was little excuse for their inconsistency. They just weren’t as good as they should’ve been.
And the release of this latest Sooner depth chart doesn’t exactly signal that they’ve made big improvements. Maybe they’ll prove otherwise on the field, but if this depth chart is any indication, they have yet to prove it in practice.
Can Tiger Woods save golf?
Here’s just how upside down the world of golf is — a Monday qualifier has won a tournament this year and Tiger Woods hasn’t.
On Sunday, a guy named Arjun Atwal won the Wyndham Championship. A week earlier, he wasn’t even in the tournament’s field. He had to play in a qualifying one-day tournament on Monday to earn a spot in the field.
Then, Atwal went out and won the whole darn thing.
He became the first Monday qualifier to win a PGA Tour event in 24 years.
Doesn’t it seem like it’s been about that long since Tiger won a tournament?
It hasn’t been, of course, and up until the past few weeks, it seemed like he was just on a bit of a downslide. Now, you have to wonder when his game is going to return, if ever.
Who knows? The guy may just end up being like every other golfer on the PGA Tour — playing wonderfully for a stretch but then just being about 20 times better than the rest of us the rest of the time.
But you have to think that the PGA Tour is hoping that isn’t the case. It needs Tiger to get his claws back — and quickly. Ticket sales and television ratings are bound to take a big hit the longer that Woods is sliding and Monday qualifiers are winning.
There’s no doubt golf has other stars besides Tiger, but they aren’t taking advantage of this opportunity. They are taking a backseat to unknowns like Louis Oosthuizen and Martin Kaymer and Arjun Atwal. Unknowns winning makes for feel-good stories, but it doesn’t make for good TV or excited fans.
Golf is upside down right now. Tiger Woods might be the only player who can get the game back on its feet.
OU-Texas or Texas-Nebraska? The debate rages
Here’s the last installment of the audio from a radio interview I did with my buddy Pat Dooley, columnist at the Gainesville Sun in Florida. His show airs on 105 The Game, and we talked about all sorts of college football topics.
If you missed the first two installments, check my blog. They’re already posted.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
OU, OSU football: Let’s talk schedules
Here’s another installment of a radio interview that I did earlier this week with my buddy Pat Dooley, columnist at the Gainesville Sun in Florida. We chatted on his afternoon radio show, which airs on 105 The Game, and I’m rolling out the audio from our chat.
By the way, Pat says something about my “favorite coach”? Wonder what he means by that.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
