"Step Away From the Ledge, Mr. Collier."

(Page 2 of 3)

1. I can quit sweating it. I’ve been fretting this all season—this game I mean. At the beginning, I said if we could go 10-2, I’d be pretty happy. I always figured the game in Norman would be one of those losses, with another thrown in just to satisfy my pessimistic side. Now I can quit worrying about it.

2. We’re 10-1, with a decent shot at going 11-1. If you’d told me that at the beginning of the season, I’d have been thrilled.

3. Just a bad day? I’m still convinced that Tech is not as bad as they looked on Saturday. This was, as I see it, one of those “perfect storm” things. There were a lot of things lining up that made this outcome occur. It was in Norman, always a tough place to play. Stoops may be a turd, but he can coach and he can damned sure motivate his players. He knew he’d need to turn Tech into a greasy spot to make a statement for the pollsters. His players were still pissed from last year. Plus, our guys just did not seem to have the intensity they had against UT or OSU. I’m not sure any level of play by Tech could have overcome the OU steamroller last Saturday, but I suspect the lopsided score wouldn’t have been quite so, well, lopsided, had Tech not been flat.

4. Hey, blowouts can happen to anybody. Tech did it to Kansas this year. To OSU, too. UT got blown out by OU by 52 points just five years ago, and by 49 points a few years before that. The folks who dealt Tech this butt-kicking got beat pretty bad by USC in the Orange Bowl a few years back. It happens. It sucks when it does, but, it happens.

5. Maybe we get to keep Cap’n Mike. One of my other things to sweat was, and is, Coach Leach leaving us for another, bigger school. Face it, before this loss, most of the talk was about him hauling ass. The humble folks from Tennessee kept posting on their Scout board that Leach was already as good as there, that they “could have him if they want him” and that nobody would choose Lubbock over Knoxville. I never really thought Leach would be a good fit there, if, for no other reason, that I don’t think he’d want to be at a school with a double negative in its fight song. Still, the talk caused such trepidation that people started websites to collect funds to bribe him to stay. I hear somebody started trying to erect a faux mountain near his home to try to combat the “flat Lubbock" vs. “we got mountains” swill the Tennessee people kept spouting. To this end, somebody managed to pile up 30 feet of cottonseed hulls in his backyard by the time of Saturday’s whoopin'. Now, it’s not that I think Coach Leach isn’t going to be sought after anymore, because I know better. He’s the most innovative coach in the country, and he will surely still be wooed. However, he may not seem quite so bootylicious now. Let’s face it: all the Simonize, buffing and elbow grease in the world can’t put a shine on the turd Mike’s team laid in Norman last Saturday. Maybe he’s less of a hot commodity now. More importantly, however, maybe this will make him want to stay and prove this blowout was a fluke.

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