Linking Up: Oklahoma Sooners-Texas Tech preview and more
Nice defense.
A few links to get you revved up for the weekend:
*I wrote the OU-Texas Tech preview this week for Athlon. This could get weird.
*I also did Texas-Kansas State piece.
*This look at Rae Carruth's son, who suffers from brain damage and cerebral palsy from the trauma incurred when his mother was murdered while he was still in the womb, is absolutely devastating. Tremendous work by Scott Fowler of The Charlotte Observer.
*Gabe DeArmond of PowerMizzou.com did a great job getting the principals behind Missouri's move to the SEC to open up five years later for a behind-the-scenes retrospective. I generally take any oral history with a grain of salt because it's only as historical as the orators telling it. Even so, the piece does seem to capture the overall sense of animosity and distrust that has permeated the Big 12 since well before other conferences began picking it apart.
The piece paints OU president David Boren and former Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds as the two biggest burrs in the Tigers' saddle, which shouldn't come as a shock. It goes so far as to declare that Boren going rogue in 2011 pushed the school's brain trust beyond the point of no return. Frankly, I think Missouri's governor cast Mizzou's die as soon as he started gushing over the Big Ten and throwing shade at the academics of Big 12 institutions. After that, the end result was clear, even if the particulars weren't.
But I ultimately find all the finger pointing over the conference's devolution to be kinda childish. Lots of people tried to do what was best for their own constituencies throughout this process, even up through the Big 12's latest expansion evaluation. What has happened just sorta... is.
*Speaking of which, our friend David Wunderlich explored the possibility of the Sooners lighting out for the SEC at some point in the next decade.