Category archive: Oklahoma Sooners
Oklahoma Sooners coach Bob Stoops stirred the pot this week when he mused about the bottom half of the Southeastern Conference, saying college football fans have been subject to "propaganda" that the league is the best in the country just because the past seven title winners have come from the SEC.
"What are the bottom six doing?" Stoops asked, according to a column by John Hoover, who writes for the Tulsa World. "Half of [the teams] haven't done much at all."
Stoops made the comments at a booster-type event in Tulsa, and that's often where coaches loosen their ties a bit.
But there's something deeper at play: This is the first visible instance in which we have seen a coach begin to spin the political machine when it comes to the impending playoff.
To read Travis Haney's full blog post on Bob Stoops' comments on the SEC, you must be an ESPN Insider.
ABOUT THIS BLOG
Travis HaneyTravis Haney joined ESPN in April 2012 as Insider's national college football writer. He previously covered the University of Oklahoma Sooners for The (Oklahoma City) Oklahoman for one season, and the University of South Carolina Gamecocks for The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier for four. Additionally, Haney has contributed since 2003 to ESPN publications and projects, including ESPN The Magazine.
A native of Cleveland, Tenn., Haney's initial introduction to a college football cathedral was Neyland Stadium. He later graduated from the University of Tennessee, in 2003, and has spent time covering the Volunteers, the University of Georgia, Clemson University, and other schools. Safe to say, football, and football in the South, was injected into his bloodstream at a young age.
Haney is the author of three books -- Gamecock Glory and Gamecock Encore, which chronicled the South Carolina baseball team's run to the 2010 and 2011 national championships, and State of Disunion, a historical look at the Clemson-South Carolina football rivalry that he co-wrote with Larry Williams.
Haney resides in Charlotte, N.C. You can follow him on Twitter here.
