Oklahoma State Cowboys (Football)

How Does The 2013 QB Class Stack Up According To The "Parcells Rules"?

A few months ago, former head coaching great Bill Parcells was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, slated to be inducted this summer. If you're looking for the reasons why, there are obviously plenty -- twice named NFL Coach of the Year, twice a Super Bowl winner, three times a Super Bowl part ... More >>

Texas A&M Gives Kevin Sumlin A Nice, Big Raise

So how much are an 11-2 record, a Heisman Trophy, a win over Alabama in Tuscaloosa, a Cotton Bowl rout of Oklahoma, and a top ten recruiting class worth? Well, if Kevin Sumlin's new contract that he inked earlier this week with Texas A&M is any indicator (and really it's the only indicator) the val ... More >>

20 Fun Facts About College Football's Final Regular Season Coach's Poll

College football's methodology for selecting its championship game participants (and its marquee four bowls outside of the title game, for that matter), the BCS, is cloaked in numerous flaws that when all is said and done, more often than not give us a title game shrouded in controversy over who act ... More >>

Football! This Weekend's Best Bets -- "College Football Playoff, Get Here Soon" Edition

It's the first weekend of December, and you know what that means -- a slew of college football conference championship games that, to the average college football fan, mean virtually nothing. Sure, will some teams win their way into automatic bids to BCS bowls? Yes. In the spirit of...well, spirit, ... More >>

College Football BCS Race: And Then There Were Six

As a Notre Dame alum and reinvigorated Notre Dame football fan, this November feels awfully strange. For the first time since I got into radio in 2007, the Irish matter in November. For the first time since 1993, the Irish are 9-0. It's been a long, slow trip back to late season relevance, to be sur ... More >>

Aggies, Texans, LSU: Football! This Weekend's Best Bets, Helping Impoverished Greek Soccer Teams

Ironically, I lead into this weekend's football bets with a story of a poor Greek soccer team trying to stay afloat financially. Courtesy of the Soccernet area on ESPN.com: Players on a cash-strapped Greek soccer team now wear pink practice jerseys with the logos "Villa Erotica" and "Soula's House ... More >>

Football! This Weekend's Best Bets, "Satan Hates Auburn" Edition

I was saddened on Thursday to hear of the passing of legendary college football historian and journalist Beano Cook, who passed away in his sleep at the age of 81. Back in the `80's and early `90's, before the television landscape was cluttered with literally dozens of studio shows all blending toge ... More >>

NFL Week 1: Schaub Gets Rich(er), Buffalo Gets Poor(er) -- 4 Winners, 4 Losers

Check out our slideshow of the Houston Texans' season opener against the Dolphins. Could Sunday have been any better? 80-degree day. Sun shining. Birds singing. NFL football back in our lives. Oh and someone left a whole book of Burger King coupons in the lobby of my building. SCORE! So yeah there ... More >>

Adventures in DUI: Jacksonville Jags WR Justin Blackmon (w/ Mugshot!)

While the new NFL collective bargaining agreement has brought rookie salaries, particularly first round rookie salaries, more in line with their true value, there is no denying that NFL teams are still investing significant chunks of change in a bunch of unproven commodities. Along those lines, it's ... More >>

Proper Pronunciation and UT Fans

Football! This Weekend's Best Bets, College Bowl Special: UH, UCLA & An Aggies Loss

Hopefully will not include "NAPA Know-How" ads.​In the second part of my ongoing series "Sean phones it in on the Hair Balls blog during his vacation week," here are six picks I really like for the upcoming week of huge (and not so huge) bowl games. Have I mentioned that I'm 56-38-1 this year ... More >>

Coogs Versus Southern Miss for All the Marbles

One more win and the Coogs are BCS-bound.​The distractions are there for the 12-0 Houston Cougars, the number six team in the BCS standings. Distractions like which BCS bowl game they're playing. Distractions like which team they're playing in that BCS bowl -- current projections being Michi ... More >>

Football! A&M-UT, LSU: This Weekend's Best Bets

So yeah, about that "Bully Theory" from last week. Um, well, um....sorry? In case you missed it, I shared a theory of mine last week, and without rehashing the details it all led up to me telling all of you to take Wisconsin, Oregon, Oklahoma State, and Stanford laying the points. The theory had a ... More >>

Cougars and Mustangs, Orange and Sugar, BCS Comes Calling

See pics from ESPN GameDay at UH in our slideshow. Maybe it was the stadium packed to the gills before kickoff. Maybe it was the excitement and energy of Senior Day. Maybe it was ESPN's Lee Corso letting loose with a profanity as he picked the Cougars to defeat SMU. Maybe it was the representati ... More >>

A Very Special BCS Edition of 4 Winners, 4 Losers

For the first time in the history of my Texans fandom, their bye week left me with a palpable void. Sure, I love having NFL football in this city, even bad football is better than no football, so the bye week always feels a little weird. However, this season's team is a little different. If the Te ... More >>

Football! This Weekend's Best Bets: Take the Bullies

Not when it comes to betting.​Nobody likes a bully. That is, nobody likes a bully unless that bully can win you piles of loot by doing their bully things. And that's exactly what the gambling gods have continued to bless us with this season. As I outlined last week, if you just rode the four ... More >>

Are the Cougars Really BCS-Bowl Bound? If They Don't Mess Up, Yes

As of now, the Coogs are BCS-bowling.​I spent most of Saturday afternoon working on a post explaining the possible ways the Cougars could still make a BCS bowl even with Boise State going undefeated and taking the one guaranteed BCS bowl spot that the non-automatic qualifying conferences get. ... More >>

Football! This Weekend's Best Bets: Stanford, Wisconsin & Other Bullies

Not seen at Camp Randall.​Nobody likes a bully. Unless, of course, that bully can win you some money! Through the first ten weeks of the college football season, in my mind, four BCS conference college football teams have set themselves apart as "bullies" of the college football world, meanin ... More >>

Football! This Weekend's Best Bets

The Flacco Factor: Always keep it in mind​It's the first weekend of football in November. In college football, this means we get into nut-cutting time, weekends that completely weed out the real championship contenders. This weekend includes a quasi-final four in the SEC with the huge LSU- Ala ... More >>

Did The Cougars Run Up The Score On Rice? Does It Really Matter?

Photo by Fred TraskRun it up, says Case​I've got a friend who is just starting out as a sports agent. His sport is football. It appears that there's this pre-season list of college players that is put together by scouts that can be purchased by agents. And this list provides the pre-season ... More >>

Football! This Weekend's Best Bets

Tim Tebow, in the act of Tebowing​So I said last weekend that we were in the midst of one of the most dominant, and in turn most predictable streaks in college football. The top ten teams each week were crushing the books to the tune of covering the number about 80 percent of their games. Two ... More >>

UH Strives for Perfection as Rice Struggles to Stay Close

​The Houston Cougars SID office sent the media an e-mail on Wednesday morning. An e-mail warning that Houston athletes are prohibited by NCAA rules from promoting outside media events and individual media outlets, including specific shows and stations. And this is the first time since I've b ... More >>

The Intergalactic Planetary Super Football Conference

​It's got no name, this football-only alliance of Conference USA and the Mountain West Conference. It's supposedly been in the planning stages for over a year, but nobody involved has a clue to any actual details of how the thing's going to work. And once the Big East finishes acting -- mayb ... More >>

TCU to the Big 12: What's Changed Since the Southwest Conference Went Kaput

​Earlier this week, Texas Christian University officially accepted an invitation to join the Big 12 Conference, which sort of models the old Southwest Conference, a division that the Horned Frogs competed in from 1923 to 1996. We gotta tell you, horny toads, compared to '96, the league is goi ... More >>

The Coogs Go 13-0. Does Anyone Notice?

Don't get your hopes up, Coogs.​After their impressive win over East Carolina this weekend, talk in Cougar Town is that the team is set to run the table and go undefeated. Such talk has occurred before, of course, like in 2009 when it beat Oklahoma State and a strong Texas Tech team early in ... More >>

Cougars Looking to Cage the Bulldogs

The UH coaching staff hopes the team shows up for the complete game against Louisiana Tech.​The Houston Cougars don't want to start off another game like they did last week. A start where the opposition, a clearly lesser school, jumps off to a lead. A start that finds the team struggling to ... More >>

Five Reasons Why Texas A&M Just Ruined College Football

It's an emo day to be a college football fan. ​Today, Texas A&M basically ushered in the era of the college football superconference when the Southeastern Conference extended an invite to the university. (That legal threat lobbed by Baylor an anonymous Big 12 school is idle at best.) Well don ... More >>

College Realignment Talk Is The New NFL Lockout Talk

More a-holery from Ken Starr​During this past summer of sports talk radio, our insatiable appetite for any topic football-related, our perennial need to talk about minutiae at all times, and the usual summer content-related radio doldrums met at a tedious midpoint -- a no man's land that left ... More >>

Can UH Save the Big 12 Despite UT's Best Attempts to Kill It?

Can the Cougars save the Big 12?​When I spoke to UH Athletic Director Mack Rhoades at the football media day a couple of weeks ago, the talk of Texas A&M possibly jumping to the SEC was just something being whispered around, and something not being taken seriously. So I didn't ask about reali ... More >>

UH To The Big 12? Five Reasons It Would Be A Huge Boost

Home sweet home for the Coogs?​Everyone's reporting that Texas A&M has all but decided to leave the Big 12 for the SEC, and the San Antonio Express-News adds an Aggie official says the Big 12 told the school the University of Houston would be a viable replacement. UH had been talking/hoping/t ... More >>

Top 5 Best Big 12 Football Games of 2011 (With Predictions)

Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner, etc., etc., etc.​Football-wise, the Big 12 (aka. Oklahoma and the nine others) is barely hanging on, now that Nebraska is in the Big Ten and Colorado bolted to the Pac-12. The 2011 season, which is just over a month away, marks the first time that ... More >>

The Final Play

After traumatic knee injury, Case Keenum has one more season to prove his talents.

Dez Bryant's Unpaid-For $800,000 Jewelry Spree: State Senator Royce West Offers Lamest Defense Ever

Some tasteful Dez Bryant jewelry​Dallas Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant, who is turning out to be the epitome of a Jerry Jones-era Cowboy, is being sued for somewhere around $800,000 in debts for jewelry and tickets and other stuff. He apparently entered an agreement to "buy" all the stuff while ... More >>

2010 Turkeys of the Year

Metro chief Frank Wilson is our biggest gobbler.

Texas A&M Aggies: Care To Make The Rest Of The Season Interesting?

Headed for a life of disappointment​I had other things I wanted to get to today, other anecdotes and information I wanted to share with all of you. Really, I did. But this one is time sensitive.If I wait even 48 more hours, the impact is lost because by then Notre Dame will have beaten Boston Co ... More >>

Houston Cougars -- An Early Lock of the Century

That's a very big lock​I realize that my Best Bets for the weekend are usually a Friday thing, and rest assured after my fast start last week, no one is chomping harder at the bit to get back to the business of picking winners than me. (By the way, did ya see? 4-2, bitches! I know 6-0 and 5-1 are ... More >>

Game Time: College Football -- Celebrating 90210 and the Big 12

A&M: The Dylan McKay of the Big 12​I hate making tough decisions. Today was one of those days. I mean, you have the start of the college football season, which in my house and on my show is like Christmas morning wrapped up in a 21st birthday party.And yet, it is also September 2, 2010 -- th ... More >>

Game Time: Texas A&M Trying To Break Off From Longhorn Entourage?

What you fail to understand, Turtle....​What started as a history lesson, in this space at least, on Monday is on the verge of becoming an historical shift in the world of collegiate sports. The college football gods dropped this mayhem in our laps, so let's keep talking about it. (For the recor ... More >>

Game Time: Dez Bryant's Miami Dolphins Interview: Okay, I'll Stick Up For Jeff Ireland

Okay, I'm about to stick up for Miami Dolphins' general manager Jeff Ireland, and I feel like I'm walking into a pen full of Dobermans with a couple dozen raw steaks taped to my body. After all, the last guy to take up publicly for a Miami general manager was then-Dolphin coach Cam Cameron on Draft ... More >>

Your New Year's Weekend Sports-Viewing Guide

​So you stayed up a bit late last night doing the whole celebrating the New Year thing. Now your head's aching, the room's spinning, and you just want to flop on the couch and watch some sports. But you don't want to have to think about what sports to watch. That's where I come in. Here's a little ... More >>

Game Time: Previewing College Football Awards Night

​Last night, the Rotary Lombardi Award for the top lineman in college football was given to Nebraska defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh. To anyone who watched him play this year, or even just watched him rag-doll and chokeslam the Texas offensive line in the Big XII championship game, Suh's winning th ... More >>

Coogs' Shot At A C-USA Title On The Line In Front Of A National Audience, Hostile Crowd

Photo courtesy UH​Tomorrow is the day the Cougars have pointed toward since they won the Armed Forces Bowl back on New Year's Eve 2008. Tomorrow is the Conference USA Title Game, and all this season, the Cougar coaches and players have talked of playing in this game and winning the conference.And ... More >>

Game Time: In Defense Of TCU, An Open Letter To The Chron's Richard Justice

​Dear Richard,I'm not sure if you are aware of this but your Monday column entitled "10-0 TCU Not Equal of 10-0 Texas" has caused quite an uproar among the Horned Frog faithful. I am going to assume you are aware of this because the only logical explanation for your outlandish premise and its su ... More >>

UH's Case Keenum -- What's A Dude Got To Do To Get Some Heisman Love?

​The end of the college football season is fast approaching, and the rest of the nation is finally learning something that Houston Cougar fans have known all season. The best player in the country isn't Colt McCoy or Tim Tebow. The best player is Case Keenum.Several sites which poll Heisman vote ... More >>

Game Time: Weekend Review

​I hope everyone had a great weekend, and that you were all able to enjoy the nice weather by moving your television and recliner into your driveway to watch football on TV.  I'd like to start off by welcoming the Texans to this new thing for them called "November".  Boys, I know in ... More >>

Coogs Try To Forget About Their Biggest Win In Years

Photo courtesy UH​"Everything just slowed down. It was in slow motion," Houston Cougar running back Bryce Beall told Hair Balls yesterday. "I just told myself, whatever you do, do not drop this ball. When it got in there I just made sure I grabbed it and held on tight and took it to the ground. ... More >>

Yeah, That Was Quite The Upset On UH's Part

Photo courtesy UH​"If we play as good as we can play," Houston Cougars head coach Kevin Sumlin said last week, "I think everybody will be happy."Saturday, the Houston Cougars played as good as they could play, and they pulled off the upset of the college football weekend, defeating the then ... More >>

Easy Win Over, Now UH Gets Ready For A Top-Ten Team

Photo courtesy UH​The Houston Cougars came out and dominated the Northwestern State Demons last Saturday, scoring on their first five possessions on the way to a 55-7 win. But this week's contest is going to be a bit tougher as the Cougars are traveling to Stillwater to take on the fifth-ranked ... More >>

Five Reasons The Longhorns Won't Win The BCS Title This Year

​Finally -- after what seems a wait of approximately five years -- college football is back.The New York Times, of all people, has picked the UT Longhorns as the Number One team in the nation. A lot of other experts, not to mention Red Bull-swilling, Cheeto-chomping, Mom-avoiding bloggers, pick UT ... More >>