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.
Kurt Budke: One of the Good Guys
OSU coach Kurt Budke hugs Andrea Riley during senior night before the NCAA women's college basketball game between Oklahoma State University and Iowa State at Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater, Okla., Wednesday, March 3, 2010. Photo by Bryan Terry, The Oklahoman
The timeline is foggy to me now — the jarring news this morning that Kurt Budke is dead after a single-engine plane crash in Arkansas has scattered my brain — but I ran into the Oklahoma State women’s basketball coach in the parking lot at Gallagher-Iba Arena some time ago.
Normally sporting the Cowgirls signature orange, Budke was in blue.
Stillwater Pioneers blue.
I asked him where his orange was, and he told me that he was headed to his son’s game later that day. It was Homecoming or Senior Night or some other significant event — told you this whole thing has left me reeling — and Budke spoke with a buoyancy about being there for his son’s game, being able to cheer him on and support him.
And you could tell that he was absolutely genuine about that passion.
That was Budke. Genuine. Passionate.
It’s no wonder that he was able to resurrect the Cowgirl basketball program. He was able to recruit better players, then to spur them to become even better players. He was serious. He was engaging. He was tough. He was funny. He was the kind of guy that I would’ve gladly seen a cousin or friend play for.
As recent days and awful news out of places like Penn State and Syracuse have reminded us, we can’t know everything about the sports figures that we cover. So, I don’t pretend to say that I know everything about Kurt Budke.
But what I do know is that he was the kind of person who I liked to be around. There was no attitude. There was no sugar coating. He told it like it was, and more often than not, there would be some point in the conversation where you were laughing about something.
He just had this genuine passion about him that was endearing.
Sure seems like we lost one of the good guys.
Power Lunch: Chat with Jenni Carlson
Switzer: “Everyone” may not have known
Barry Switzer wants a clarification.
The coaching legend gave me a call Friday morning about 24 hours after I called him to ask about Joe Paterno and the mess at Penn State. What he said then was both insightful and bone-chilling.
Among the more disturbing thoughts was that a staff that’s been together for a long time tends to know each other’s business. Because so many of Paterno’s assistants have been in State College so long, you have to suspect that they knew about Jerry Sandusky and his transgressions.
“Everyone on that staff had to have known,” Switzer said Thursday.
When he called Friday, that quote is what he wanted clarified. He said this is a situation of which he has no first-hand knowledge. He said he spoke out of turn.
“Everyone”, he told me, was probably a stretch.
But knowing what he knows about coaching staffs, he said he still believes “others” knew.
Others beyond the Penn Staters who’ve been dragged into the scandal this past week. Others beyond Paterno, Sandusky and Mike McQueary, the wide receivers coach who witnessed that heinous in-locker-room incident when he was a grad assistant.
It’s hard to argue with that.
Switzer may disagree with me on this, but it isn’t out of the question that “everyone” on the Penn State staff did know. Happy Valley is a tight-knit college community, and within that closely woven town, the football program is bound even tighter. It doesn’t seem that far-fetched to believe that Sandusky’s issues were known by everyone on that staff.
Switzer also told me Friday that he was afraid his comment might have hurt the young assistants on the Penn State staff. I can appreciate his empathy for them, but it’s safe to say that Barry Switzer did nothing to hurt them beyond how they’d already been hurt this week by their own football family.
This is a tragedy no matter how you slice it. “Everyone” may not have known, as Switzer suggested, but it sure seems like enough people knew enough about it to have saved a bunch of little boys from a monster.
Power Lunch: Chat with Jenni Carlson
Looking for HS football playoff traditions
The high school football playoffs kick off this week, and at many schools and in many towns, that means the keeping of long-time traditions.
Midwest City players paint their shoes gold.
Jenks players die their hair bleach blond.
So, what does your school or community do when the playoffs start? We want to know. Tell us about your playoff tradition, and if you know any details about it — when it started or why it started, for example — we’d love to know that, too.
Email me at jcarlson@opubco.com, and you might see your school featured in this Friday’s edition of The Oklahoman.
Both Cowboys, BPS Earthquake Proof
Sitting in the press box Saturday night after one of the most exciting college football games I’ve ever seen, I was typing furiously trying to get everything done before deadline.
Oklahoma State and Kansas State gave us a gem of a game, but it took forever to get done. With less than an hour to deadline when the game ended, I decided to stay in the press box while my teammates Gina Mizell and John Helsley went to postgame interviews.
Who knew I’d have a chance to test Boone Pickens Stadium’s earthquake readiness in the process?
Yep, the big 5.6 magnitude tremor that hit near Sparks was felt at the stadium. And felt. And felt.
What I first thought was being caused by some rowdy fans — hey, they sway at Texas A&M and the whole press box goes side to side — was quickly pinpointed as an earthquake. The strong shaking lasted a good 20 seconds, but the stadium was still vibrating for another 30 seconds or so.
Not sure Boone Pickens had earthquake-proof on his wish list when he gave all those millions to OSU for a stadium, but he sure got it.
He got a team that is equally solid.
The Cowboys were on the ropes Saturday night. No other way to say it. Their offense was committing uncharacteristic turnovers. Their defense was not only allowing yards but also points. That Cowboy D has been known to do the former but not so much the latter in recent games. It was a recipe for disaster.
The season was crumbling around them. Ditto for their national championship hopes.
Ironically, Pickens talked to a few of us media types at halftime. That was before the game unraveled and the press box shook, but I asked him, a man who’s been so highly successful in business, what it was about this team that he thought made it successful.
He mentioned a lot of things, including coach retention and strong recruiting, but he also brought up Brandon Weeden. Pickens talked about the Cowboy quarterback’s maturity, about what he’s been through, about how that sort of experience comes in handy.
Darn if that wasn’t one of the main things that saved the Cowboys on Saturday night. On OSU’s last three drives, Weeden was 8 of 10 for 149 yards and one touchdown. And had Joseph Randle not weaved his way into the end zone for the game-winning touchdown, something told you that Weeden would’ve found a way to get that score.
In the most important moments of the game, he was at his best.
The Cowboys feed off of that steadiness. There didn’t seem to be panic on offense or defense, and part of that flows from the confidence that Weeden exudes. He wasn’t intimidated. He wasn’t fearful. He wasn’t shaken.
Earthquake proof, just like the stadium around him.
Power Lunch: Chat with Jenni Carlson
