Since there's a sub-thread here about Stoops and the SEC, let me address it and why it rubs so many of us the wrong way.
1)
Stoops is the one who started the whole fracas.
Now keep something in mind - when Stoops opened his mouth (May 2013), the SEC had won every single national title since 2006 (seven in a row) and had beaten Big 12 teams head-to-head in the title game twice (and a third when Saban beat Stoops in 2003). Rather than keeping his mouth shut,
this is what Stoops said:
"You’re listening to a lot of propaganda that gets fed out to you. You’re more than smart enough to figure it out," Stoops told the Tulsa World. "Again, you can look at the top two, three, four, five, six teams, and you can look at the bottom six, seven, eight, whatever they are. How well are they all doing?"
Stoops's point was to try and argue that the Big 12 is a harder conference because in their conference, Kansas can beat Oklahoma but in the SEC, Vandy is not going to beat Alabama. Contextually, he was referring to the fact that in 2012, the bottom six of the SEC was 0-30 against the top half.
He should have just kept his mouth shut. First of all, since OU was at the time in the midst of multiple shellackings at the hand of the SEC (in fact, the last game Stoops had coached was a 41-13 jackhammer job by Johnny Football at the end of 2012).
In fact, if OU is better because they play in a tougher conference, shouldn't they have manhandled ATM, who was something like the fifth best team in the SEC that year?
Charlie Weis jumped on board with it - I mean, who really cares what Charlie Weis of all people thinks? This guy has been a failure at every single collegiate stop he's made. If he wasn't riding the coattails of his time with Belichick, he'd be pumping gas between stops at the buffet line at Cici's.
2) You simply cannot argue with the numbers - the SEC has PWNED the Big 12 for about the last decade.
I keep a running tally. Wanna know what the record is of head-to-head competition between the Big 12 and SEC since 1996?
Try this:
SEC 33 wins
Big 12 20 wins
But here's where Stoops looks like nothing but a whining little baby:
SEC vs Big 12 (2006-12) - chosen because he shot his mouth off after the 2012 season:
During this time frame, it wasn't even close.
WINS
SEC 14
Big 12 3
Not only that, but look at the three wins they had:
1) Okie State over Alabama in the 2006 Independence Bowl (a game won on the last play)
2) Big 12 co-champion Texas demolishing 5-7 Arkansas, 52-10 (yeah, that's reasonable......your best clobbers one of our worst, whoop de do)
3) Okie State over UGA, 24-10, in 2009
However, let's look at the ENTIRE ledger for the time frame in question:
2012
Texas A/M 41 Oklahoma 13
2011
Arkansas 29 K-State 16
Arkansas 42 Texas A/M 38
2010
LSU 41 Texas A/M 24 (even teams)
2009
Arkansas 47 Texas A/M 19
Oklahoma State 24 Georgia 10
Georgia 44 Texas A/M 20
Ole Miss 21 Okie State 7
Alabama 37 Texas 21
2008
#2 Florida 21 #1 Oklahoma 14
Texas (13-1) 52 Arkansas 10
Ole Miss 47 Texas Tech (11-2) 34
2007
Georgia 35 OK State (7-6) 14
Alabama (7-6) 30 Colorado (6-7) 24
2006
Auburn 17 Nebraska (9-5) 14
OK State (7-6) 34 Alabama (6-7) 31
Georgia 14 Colorado (2-10) 13
Note that in two of these 14 wins, the SEC won the national championship head-to-head with the Big 12, both times by double digit margins.
If Stoops wants to argue 'statistics' and say 'it's top heavy,' maybe he needs to likewise explain why his conference was getting creamed at the exact same time. ONE-LOSS Texas Tech got absolutely slaughtered by FOUR-LOSS Ole Miss in the Cotton Bowl in 2009.
At the time Stoops opened his mouth, the Big 12 was in the middle of a 3-14 stretch. Since that time, the Big 12 lead the SEC in head-to-head match-ups by the landslide margin of 5-4, which includes their 2-0 record this year (Tech beating Arky and OU beating Tennessee).
He simply should have shut up and coached his football team. He needs to get over his 'greatest team of all-time' getting their manhood taken away by LSU.