Red & Blue Sportsball

Baker Mayfield wins the 2017 Heisman Trophy during the Heisman Trophy Presentation on Saturday, Dec. 9, 2017 in New York, NY.  Todd J. Van Emst/Heisman Trust/Pool #6 on your programs. #1 in the hearts of OU fans everywhere. And soon, #6 in Heisman Park, just across the street from Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, right next to Billy Vessels, Steve Owens, Billy Sims, Jason White and Sam Bradford. On Saturday night, Oklahoma QB Baker Mayfield solidified his legacy as one of the greatest players in college football history by winning the 2017 Heisman Trophy. His entire college career has been a long, wild ride, fueled by a chip on his shoulder the size of Norman. Growing up in Austin, Texas, in the shadow of that ugly burnt orange, Baker Mayfield walked on at Texas Tech after only getting scholarship offers from Rice, FAU, and Washington State. As a walk-on freshman, Mayfield led Tech to a 5-0 record and a #24 ranking, but was injured against Kansas and lost the sta...

All is not well in the sports universes I follow. Bucs Julio Jones spent Sunday making the Bucs' defense look like a joke, with 12 catches for 253 yards, and the Atlanta Falcons ran down the Bucs, 34-20. At least Jameis Winston will be back at QB when they head to Green Bay to play the Packers on Sunday. Since Aaron Rodgers is still hurt, that might be a game the Bucs can win. At 4-7, it's probably too late to try and claw back into the playoff picture. I don't know if you want to risk re-injuring Jameis if there's no shot at the playoffs. I'm sure Koetter wants to save his job, but if Jameis gets seriously hurt as a result, Koetter absolutely will be fired for risking the franchise's future. Thunder The OK3 inexplicably beat Golden State the night before Thanksgiving (which I admittedly did not expect), then proceeded to resemble the team I thought they were, and lost their third straight game tonight against the Orlando Magic, who broke their own nine-ga...

Week 12 was mostly a dud in the college football world. There were only a couple of upsets in the top 25 this week (cue Oklahoma State fans screaming into the void), but there was at least some news to talk about. But if you're reading this, there's probably one specific game you care about. #4 Oklahoma 41, Kansas 3 Looking at the box score, it looks like what you'd expect to happen when the #4 team in the country plays a 1-9 team, but this one got weird from the coin toss. Sooner Twitter went all "You done messed up now!" towards KU for the handshake snub, but I honestly didn't have a problem with it. I didn't think there was any beef between Baker Mayfield and the Jayhawks before the game, but KU seemed intent on creating beef where it didn't exist before. The game stayed chippy all afternoon, with Kansas taking some, um, liberties in trying to take down Baker. That was a blatant late hit by Hasan Defense, and should have been called t...

So I've been out of the writing game a bit longer than I ever should have been. Once I got a "grownup job" where I have to write for a living and research a lot of dry topics, I didn't feel like doing this as much. I figured an easy way to at least get back in the habit of writing somewhat creatively would be in talking about something I find less dry: sports. If anyone's found their way here that doesn't already know me, I'm a 28-year old alumnus of the University of Oklahoma, with a BA in Journalism. I do writing, research and QA for a training company in OKC, and I spend most of my free time doing my best to keep myself entertained. Sports have always been interesting to me, even though I've never been much of an athlete. (I did attempt to play football in my freshman year of high school, but that didn't pan out nearly as well as I'd hoped.) Part of it is the typical vicarious experience of being a sports fan, but the history and context...