By JIMMIE TRAMEL Sports Writer on Aug 29, 2013, at 12:32 PM Updated on 8/29 at 12:32 PM
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
Former Oklahoma State receiver Artrell Woods is down and out. He suffered a spinal injury (and temporary paralysis) due to ...
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On Friday, Sports Illustrated’s five-part investigative look (“The Dirty Game”) at the Oklahoma State football program focused ...
Oklahoma State opens the 2013 football season against Mississippi State. Think anyone will mention the fact that a Big 12 school is playing an SEC school?
The SEC is riding high in terms of national championships -- and national perception.
“The way people see them kept us out of the (BCS) championship game two years ago,” OSU coach Mike Gundy said when asked about the SEC during a preseason interview.
“That’s just a fact, in my opinion. Everybody has their opinion. I’m not saying anything about LSU or Alabama or any of them. I’m just saying in my opinion that (perception of SEC superiority) kept us out of the championship game.”
OSU is playing Mississippi State with the intent of beating Mississippi State, period. But I wondered if Cowboy players who were around for the 2011 season might have an incentive to show they’re not out of their league when playing an SEC opponent.
Safety Daytawion Lowe and linebacker Shaun Lewis (and Gundy) all referenced the fact that OSU could have reached the 2011 title game just by taking care of business in a late-season game at Iowa State.
“I think back upon that and I am disappointed in that more than I am not getting a chance to play (in the championship game),” Lowe said.
But he added that the Cowboys will have a chance Saturday to influence perception.
Lewis, reflecting on 2011, wonders if a Big 12 school might gotten benefit of the doubt from BCS voters if the Cowboys were blessed with the tradition of, for instance, Oklahoma.
“Just because we were new in that situation, people weren’t too sure about us,” he said. “This year we don’t want to leave any doubts in anybody’s heads. We don’t want to put the decision on somebody that is capable of making those assumptions about us. We just want to go out and take it one game against Mississippi State and we just want to do what we have to do against them.”
If Big 12 preseason favorite OSU beats Mississippi State, it doesn’t prove that the Cowboys deserved to crash an All-SEC BCS title game two seasons ago. But a lopsided victory would raise some eyebrows. And you can guarantee this: A loss to a Mississippi State squad picked sixth in the seven-team SEC West would have some people saying it is evidence that the 2011 Cowboys had no business being in the national championship game.
For what it’s worth, Gundy said he agrees with OU coach Bob Stoops’ offseason comments about the SEC being top-heavy. How good is the bottom of the league? The only real way to change perception, according to Gundy, is to get in a championship game with an SEC team and win.
“It’s like the old title fights,” he said. “You are going to have to beat that guy to take his belt. If you are going to leave it up to the judges, they are probably not going to give it to you.
“That’s where we are at in this league. I really believe that. We have to get there and then we have to win the game because right now they have got seven in a row. We can sit and talk about it all you want, but it’s not going to change until somebody knocks them off the top.”
