'Meatballs' and Sooners have much in common
At Ole Miss Saturday, progress will sadly suffice as victory remains unobtainable
Author’s note: Well, because my pregame column client, The Norman Transcript, requested I get the column to it a day earlier than usual, its needs are Oklahoma Columnist readers’ gains. Typically, this entry hits the world on a Friday, though today it’s a day early. Of course, it’s still about Sooner football, which may be hard to read about these days. On the other hand I’ve worked in a 1979 cinema and Billy Murray reference that I think’s apropos. Enjoy.
It just doesn’t matter.
Do you remember it, that particular phrase?
Maybe heard it in movie, a bunch of kids chanting it, led by an adult?
Type it into Google and by the time you’ve pecked out “It just doesn’t,” the search engine’s likely to offer “matter meatballs.”
Because “Meatballs” was the movie, Bill Murray was the adult, and one way or another, Murray’s kids from Camp Northstar were going to find a way to take down the cooler and more athletic kids from Camp Mohawk because, well … “It just doesn’t matter.”
Oklahoma football, though, will be experiencing its own version of “It just doesn’t matter” when it arrives in Oxford to meet Ole Miss inside Vaught Hemingway Stadium.
A competition’s at hand, so maybe that’s a similarity, and the way it’s gone for the Sooner offense, Bill Murray, not Seth Littrell, might as well have been the offensive coordinator the first seven games of the season, so there’s that, too.
Mostly, it just doesn’t matter for the Sooners because it happens to be the Bulldogs, but it could be anybody; it happens to be in Oxford, but it could be anywhere; because not the opponent, nor the site, not even the stinkin’ conference matters.
All that matters is OU.
Heck no, these Sooners aren’t going to go win — yes, there was the day Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in Tokyo and the night Chaminade stunned Ralph Sampson and No. 1 Virginia in Honolulu, so maybe anybody has a slight puncher’s chance — but maybe they’ll hit for a couple plays more than 20 yards; maybe they’ll limit Ole Miss to four or five sacks rather than nine; maybe they won’t have their tight ends, Bauer Sharp and Jake Roberts on islands, trying to handle big-time defensive ends.
Hey, I’m hardly qualified to be a playbook author, but maybe line those guys up in the slot so somebody has to account for them rather than run around them on the way to Jackson Arnold, after all, they’re far better receivers than blockers.
It’s an idea.
Anyway, that’s where OU finds itself.
The defense is terrific and if it can force an opponent to cough the ball up multiple times inside the Sooner red zone, maybe the earth will stop spinning on its axis and deliver Sooner Nation a victory.
Otherwise, any imagined progress is bound to come in the tiniest increments because the offensive linemen OU selected in the transfer portal last offseason were either comprised of talentless hacks despite several power conference starts between them or simply aren’t being reached by timeless assistant Bill Bedenbaugh, whose magic may have run out or at least taken hiatus.
I have no idea what Joe Jon Finley can do his first week on the job and it’s reasonable to be concerned he might actually fare worse than Littrell.
He’s never play-called before, though he finished up as a Sooner player 17 years ago it somehow feels more like 5 or 10 and it’s hard not to worry the space between his idea of what the offense he’s inherited can do and what it actually can could fill the Grand Canyon.
Still, if he knows his stuff at all, perhaps he can get OU out of plain dumb plays, like putting the tight ends on blocking islands, like dropping back deep to throw when the line can’t protect at all, like even creating a small package to take advantage of Michael Hawkins’ athleticism even as Arnold remains QB1.
They say when you have two quarterbacks, you don’t have any, yet if the Sooner line is the Sooner line is the Sooner line, OU probably needs two quarterbacks.
It’s another idea.
Sorry.
The only thing good about where OU finds itself?
Future stars stand ready to be identified, because when it just doesn’t matter, a walk-on receiver like Jacob Jordan can step on the field and be terrific, as he was last week, and maybe it will be somebody new today.
When it just doesn’t matter, the progress bar is awfully low.