Week 14 Big 12 Picks
Congrats to OU for getting Bowl Eligible: it just means more!
Nice to see OU get bowl eligible last week. The so-called school in Norman even made a short documentary about it (though I’m not going to link it). I’m glad the Sooners managed to meet their goal for the year: getting bowl eligible is pretty cool, especially if you can’t read.
Happy turkey week, everyone!
Last week: 6-2 (.750)
Overall: 74-36 (.672)
Friday
Oklahoma State 41, Colorado 39. A lot of people don’t know or rather forget that Oklahoma and Colorado share a border. Probably a similar amount of people have never driven from one of these states directly into the other: it’s a lonely section of road, to me one of the most gorgeous parts of the empty plains—the high plains—that there are. It’s a profoundly austere part of the country that any way you look at it reminds you of oblivion, and to me one of the most beautiful parts of these United States. I still remember going with my family on a trip in late summer to Colorado from southeast Oklahoma when I was seventeen and stopping in a pizza parlor somewhere around Colorado Springs and me and my dad watching CU on a TV in that pizza parlor play their first game of the year and thinking: this place is related to where I’m from! And then some years later driving to the Front Range with my eventual spouse L. from Seattle—the other side of the country—and thinking once we got past all those mountains and deserts that divide the coast from the plains and thinking yes! yes! on the other side of all that flatness is my part of the world! And weirdly feeling a bit more at home, there in Colorado, looking east, knowing that the first significant elevation bumps one could find from there were mine, or something I thought of as mine. Anyway: that’s a lot not about football—which is to say I’m bullish about the Pokes on their first trip to Boulder since Alex Cate went 0-9 passing in the first half against those Buffaloes in 2009 and got relieved in the second half by a guy named Brandon Weeden—not a bad player. This is the first conference meeting between OSU and CU in fifteen years, but their 47th overall. The Buffs may own a 26-20-1 edge, but the Pokes have won four of the past five between the two.
Utah 37, UCF 35. No comment, and this year, no care.
Saturday
Kansas 39, Baylor 35. The KU reign of terror continues.
West Virginia 34, Texas Tech 37. Tech here gets to eight wins and shits itself with glee. WVU finishes at 6-6 and shits itself with gloom. It just means more, depending on who you talk to.
No. 16 Arizona State 32, Arizona 35. I believe in Kenny Dillingham. I also believe that ASU is a bit out over its feet at the moment: this game, I expect, will be a kind of hickup.
TCU 31, Cincinnati 34. No comment except to say Mr. S. Dykes’ seat is very very hot.
Kansas State 24, Iowa State 21. The distance from K-State to the University of Iowa is, according to Google Maps, 425 miles. KSU has played the University of Iowa six times, with a record of 1-5 in those contests. The shortest difference from K-State to Iowa State University in Ames, IA, is 347 miles. The all-time record between KSU and ISU is 50-53-4. That’s 101 more games than KSU and the U of I have played. (Just a little nod to the reason a lot of us who care about college football like to keep these things traditional, even if the mile-count is less than a hundred: some of us just hate each other a lot more.)
Houston 10, BYU 45. Houston has scored more than thirty points in a game this year only twice. Once against Rice (33) and then against TCU with an inexplicable 33 points that Sonny Dikes is probably still feeling bad about.