One of the more enjoyable moments in UT bowl game history.

Eamonn Brennan, Yahoo Sports, rates the Big 12 basketball coaches. Rick Barnes gets an elite ranking.

THE ELITE

Rick Barnes, Texas: Rick Barnes is as good as a coach can be without an NCAA title to his name. He has made the NCAA tournament in each of his 11 years at Texas; he's gone to two Sweet Sixteens, two Elite Eights and one Final Four. He's recruited the best talent in the country and loosed them on an unsuspecting basketball populace (who remembers how good Kevin Durant was?). The only thing keeping him just a notch behind his more revered contemporaries -- and maybe that's fair, or maybe not, depending on how you feel about the transience of NCAA tournament success -- is his lack of a title. But in terms of keeping his teams contiuously competitive, year in and year out, Barnes is as good as a coach as anyone in the country.

Dr. Saturday looks at the cases of Sooner recruits Josh Jarboe and Justin Chaisson.

My liberal arts degree requires that I point out Tramel's inherent paternalism (Jarboe and Bowman are black, and therefore can still be redeemed by the ivory tower father figure, whereas Chaisson is corrupted even as a member of the upstanding white establishment, and therefore must be beyond salvation), but I'm more intrigued by that last line. So it's alright now to take an eligible player for purely football-related motives, despite the possible legal and/or social risks? How novel.

Chaisson's pending admission to Oklahoma -- he's passed every academic and legal hurdle, if Stoops and the school actually welcome him back -- rubs me wrong in all the ways that Hood's do not. Chaisson's crime against a teenage girl wasn't committed by a 13-year-old under the influence of an older accomplice; Chaisson was 18, apparently acting alone and had already accepted the scholarship to OU. He hasn't done anything to redeem himself; where Hood's victim actually wrote to Tennessee on his behalf, Chaisson must legally stay a certain distance from his ex-girlfriend and another witness. Everyone around him is vouching for Hood; Chaisson's best friend in the press is the judge who reduced his felony charges.

Bob Stoops as Father Flanagan. Maybe Stoops wants to give Justin Chaisson a chance because he is such a charitbale guy?

There are many reasons to give a scholarship to a ballplayer with a shaky past.

Foremost is victory; never forget that Stoops’ prime directive is autumn glory. Beat Texas, beat OSU, win the Big 12 and start winning bowl games.

For the humanitarian in most of us, redemption is no small part of the process. We’ve all needed a second chance from time to time; I wouldn’t want to live in a world without second chances.

But don’t write off the Boys Town factor. Coaches believe they can transform a troublemaker. Coaches believe that instilling discipline and screaming loving care and expectations for proper behavior can will a wayward soul to change.

Barry Tramel, NewsOK, thinks another three-way-tie is highly unlikely.

The lofty preseason ranking of O-State — the Cowboys are slotted anywhere from sixth to 12th in most earlybird lists — has visions of another three-way tie cropping up.

Feasible, I suppose, but improbable. And insufferable.

Could we all survive another stretch of grieving and groaning from two camps, not to mention the pontification from national pundits talking nonsense?

I’m saying we won’t have to.

Five of the 10 deaths in Division I-A football have been attributed to the sickle cell trait.

Some might say the ignorance prevails to this day. According to research obtained by CBSSports.com, "exertional sickling," a complication of sickle cell trait, is now the leading cause of death of NCAA football players this decade.

Anecdotal evidence over the years suggests that total could be higher. Athletic trainers, team doctors and NCAA personnel were responsible for assembling the data which had not been previously released.

Big 12 football coaches do not twitter. Fanblogs has a list of college football coaches on twitter. Zilch from the Big 12.

R.I.P. John Kelso weighs in on the Aggie graveyard.

 

The Aggie part of the new cemetery is decorated with a circular, concrete, tilted A&M logo. Vaults holding cremains will be marked with a dark red, almost maroon granite, Albrecht said.

Wouldn't the cemetery be even more festive if they included one of those UT outhouses like they used to stick on top of the Aggie bonfires?

What surprises me about this is that nobody's come up with this before. If it says A&M on it, you can sell it to an Aggie. Why didn't I buy a couple of acres outside Bryan about 10 years ago and start digging? I could be rich by now.