Let's see... leading scorer on the team with the best NBA record. What are you smoking, dear Picker? It must be pretty good. Plenty of worse cases of hype in the NBA -- Eddy Curry, Vince Carter, the entire Phoenix Suns organization, and so on. All Dirk does is win basketball games and listen to David Hassellhoff. There are much worse people in the NBA deserving to be picked on.

National Boredom Association

looks like steve REALLY believes everything the sports animals has to say!!

Hey Steve -- The OU secondary is going to be good? At what, tackling from behind?

Anybody with half an arm torches the pass defense philosophy used here -- check Mike Stoops rope-a-dope tactics at Arizona, where he barely has a job.

The problem is, sometimes you must stop the pass first -- and this is what OU has not come close to doing against a quality flinger. You don't simply need returning starters.....you need GOOD returning starters.

PS, we hit another long shot, Jordin wins Idol, we tabbed her tops the first day.

Be nice, maybe we'll get you a Derby winner next week.....

Picker, since OU has such a questionable secondary would you attribute that to a deficit in talent ("You don't simply need returning starters.....you need GOOD returning starters") or poor coaching?

Again, Dear Picker, OU shut down FSU who had an amazing college offense. Your responses to that argument were like the cat from "Opus" -- *gurgle*, *spit*, *ahhhhh* -- they weren't really arguments. If you want to fault the OU defense of recent years -- you're onto something. But then again, they did beat OSU, the team you cite as the greatest offense ever.

It pains me to admit it but there's a lot of truth in most of these comments. It's true that the Sooners have been blistered by most accomplished passing offenses and have been continually hurt by the big aerial play. And it's equally true that they did play extremely well against Bowden's 2000 FSU team (Picker, you're dead wrong; Minnus being out of the game didn't render the FSU passing attack toothless - the Sooner defense did). But it's equally true that the Sooners secondary didn't beat Oregon in the Holiday Bowl...the OU pass rush gets credit for that one. With few exceptions, it seems like Oklahoma has always been plagued by poor pass defense, or at least since the days of Bobby Proctor anyway. Which leads me to return to the question I asked that you didn't bother to answer: in today's climate, do you blame the flagging OU pass defense on poor coaching or subpar athleticism?

The K-State / Venables question is a good one. But I had the impression that the disrespect was mutual.

In the first place, who's to say that serious negotiations ever took place between Venables and KState? I seem to recall that the "timing" wasn't right and Venables withdrew his name from consideration. But be that as it may, I've been accused by certain delusional individuals as being so strong an OU fan that I've lost some degree of objectivity while I maintain that the objectivity is precisely what makes being an OU fan fun. Having said that, I will be the first to admit that Venables is not...I repeat 'not'...a particularly effective def cor. In 1999, Mike Stoops and Brent Venables did a miserable job...whether it was because of the lack of talent on the field or the lack of talent under the headphones is a matter of opinion. M Stoops and Venables did a superb job in 2000 with obvious results. But since the departure of Mad Mike for Cactus Country, the personal opinion here is that Venables isn't up to snuff (although I have spoken to Barry Switzer and he's assured me that the problem lies with the talent, not with the coaching).