Whoa, Oklahoma!

Take it easy David Boren.

We’ve been over this before, bad calls are for better or worse a part of the game. Since any team will be both the beneficiary and the victim of bad calls at some point it behooves us all, coaches, players and fans, to bite our tongues and accept the fact that sometimes life gives you lemons. You take your lumps and move on.

The stoic reaction to life’s random, mean or cruel bullshit has been a traditional American value. And nowhere in America was that value more ingrained, apparently, than the heartland of which Oklahoma is a part.

So why, in a country where innocent people are incarcerated and or sentenced to death with alarming frequency, is the President of the University of Oklahoma, David Boren, raising such hell about a bad call in a football game? Shouldn’t he have more important things to do like run a school of 30,000 students?

Before any Sooners fans get bent out of sorts, let me say that I agree that the call was total crap. That it affected the outcome of the game is regrettable. But bad calls are unavoidable, and the Pac-10 has eaten crow on this. They have apologized as a conference and suspended the guilty referees and review officials.

What else can you expect them to do?

President Boren has called for the game to be stricken from the records, erased as history and has brought this sly-political request to the Commissioner of the Big 12 Conference. Furthermore, the Big 12 is threatening to cancel next year’s Oklahoma @ Washington game if the Pac 10 does not capitulate to Oklahoma demands that the Pac 10 change its rule requiring league officials to be used at its home stadiums. I really hope this doesn't happen. It sets a bad precedent.

I've seen other deserving teams lose by bad calls. It always sucks. But most, in the wake of such a loss have had the grace and the sense to realize that life, even football, isn't fair. Is that a reason to give up? Or throw a tantrum until you get your way?

Sadly Boren and Stoops and some of Sooner Nation have decided to play the part of the sore loser and cry foul like none before. I hope that the college football community, starting with the Big 12 and Pac 10, can ignore their cries (a little tough love, if you will) and move on because to entertain their whining would be bad for the Sooners and bad for college football.