Dear Sooner Nation:

SHUT THE FUCK UP. Jesus fucking christ, it's one game at the beginning of your season. As I've pointed out before, I didn't see the end of the game because I wasn't aware it switched networks, but I've seen the main play in question (the onside kick) and I have a few things to point out.

1) Oregon was kicking the ball. This means they had already scored a touchdown. The Sooner defense could have stopped them then, but didn't.

2) It was an onside kick recovery, not a touchdown, so far as I know. So Oregon still had to drive the ball down the field in order to score the touchdown that led to them taking the lead. Again, the Sooner defense could have stopped them, but didn't.

3) Oklahoma had a chip shot field goal (33 yards) as time expired to win, AND HAD IT BLOCKED. You have to put that square on the kicker, because a 33 yard field goal should never have a low enough trajectory to get blocked. Manute Bol shouldn't have been able to block that kick.

Not only are the refs and replay officials suspended, but they're getting death threats from angry fans. Now, I'm a very very serious college football fan, and I take my Dawgs very seriously, but the only way I'd send a death threat is if Spurrier or Fullmer punched Mark Richt in the face. Of course everybody knows Mark Richt is a T-1000 sent from the future to bring home a BCS title to Georgia so the punch would go right through his liquid metal face and he'd snap their arms off at the socket (yes, I watched Terminator 2 last night), but that's about it.

Here's the thing: BAD CALLS HAPPEN. Any Georgia fan out there not remember the phantom Jasper Sanks goal line fumble that cost UGA the Georgia Tech game? The Caned One has already referenced the bogus pass interference call in the national title game a few years ago that may have cost the 'Canes a championship.

Here's the bigger thing. Has replay helped this at all? NO. All replay does is slow down the game, and they only get the calls right about 60% of the time, which seems worse than before because now they're overturning calls they got right the first time around. Look, sports are imperfect, and we need to accept that. The human error factor is a huge part of football (that's why we track INTs and fumbles) and until we design robots who can completely define exactly what holding or pass interference is, we're going to be stuck with the occasional bad call, and some iffy ones as well. Replay hasn't helped that one bit. We now have fewer plays that actually happen on the field, because we want to make sure the ones that do happen are called correctly. Well, it's not working. And on top of that, they wont' scrap the system because it was so expensive to implement. There's no way to fix it because if I understood right, the replay official (or referee, I can't remember which) only had 1 camera angle and was viewing on a 14 inch screen. How is that superior to 5 guys spread all over the field seeing it in real life, in real size? And for fuck's sake, can we stop reviewing the spot of a ball? We waste about 15 minutes in every game reviewing precisely where the ball was when the player's knee hit, and it's rarely a difference of more than a yard. Blood starts shooting out of my ears when they review a touchdown and rule him down at the 1 millimeter line, only to have the offense punch it in on the next play. We don't need precision. Football isn't always a game of inches.

And now for the shame game. Pat Forde wrote a brilliant piece about this debacle on ESPN.com and I encourage everybody to read it. Shame on the University President at Oklahoma and shame on Bob Stoops. The University president is actually calling for the game to be banished from the record books because of the officiating. Why is this any of the president's business? Forde rightly points out that he should be managing the rest of his univeristy and not focusing so much of his energy on the football program. That's the job of the athletic director. Of course, this is the school whose president once said he wanted to develop a school the football team could be proud of. And double shame on Bob Stoops for still carrying this around and threatening to pull out of the game against Washington next year. Bob, you were going to lose at some point this year. That QB you have is borderline atrocious, and Texas is going to hand your ass to you in a few weeks. This only delayed the inevitable. You were never going to win a title with this team, and though it's still possible, you weren't even going to win a conference title. Don't go on TV and say you're not whining when that's exactly what you're doing. Of course, what else would you expect from a Spurrier protege. Spurrier cried and whined more at Florida than a hungry baby with a shit-filled diaper, and it appears he's instilled that ethic into his former assistants.

So the Fuck Off And Get a Life Award of the week goes to: Sooner Nation. Get. Over. It.

I'm gonna close with a quote from Pat Forde's column. Here's the link, for those who want to read it in its entirety (almost all my sources were culled fromt this article):
Forde Yard Dash

"If the scoreboard says you lost, you lost. That's not going to change. Take an hour to vent postgame, then try to regain your sanity. Do not diminish your quality of life -- and the quality of life of those around you -- by spewing for days about the refs who cheated your team, the flagrant league bias against your team or the complete lack of class displayed by the team that beat your team. Your team l-o-s-t. Try to deal."