Oklahoma, Oregon, and Bobby Knight

You cannot really discuss the Oklahoma-Oregon disaster without admitting, full-stop, that Oklahoma got screwed. Badly. More than once in the final few minutes, the Pac-10 officials made dreadful calls, allowing Oregon to pull back from down two scores. Search YouTube for proof if you've been, for instance, in Europe.

The Monday after the game, when Oklahoma's university president suggested that the game should be wiped from the record books, ESPN.com polled America, and asked whether or not the president was on track. I said, with some hesitation, Yes.

The thing is, I feel very badly done by. The most important football game I ever watched — important to me, I should be clear — was decided against my team in a rather blatant and discouraging way, and I'm not even talking about the Super Bowl, which is a wound that still hasn't healed. My game was the 1998 Rose Bowl, when Ryan Leaf and the hard-charging WSU Cougars spiked the ball at Michigan's 20-yard-line, only to watch the clock tick :02, :01, :00 while everybody in Crimson shouted bloody murder.

I didn't call for that result to be overturned, or the Super Bowl, but I am absolutely conscious of my own belief that my teams did not get a fair shake, and that nobody else cares. It's awfully popular now to blast Seattle for not giving up on the Super Bowl, or whatever, but I'm not sure I'd be happy until the media stopped calling Pittsburgh "SB Champions" and started calling Pittsburgh "SB Recipients". Washington State has barely sniffed a bowl since 1998, let alone the Rose Bowl. Wins like that can change a program, which would have finished us in the top 3. But, because of a bad call, we didn't.

So, like, I hear Oklahoma. I understand. I voted yes.

Then, two days later, Bobby Knight complained about how Texas Tech lost a basketball game to Oklahoma on a bad call. Hypocrites, he seemed to suggest. And, of course, he was right.

Ugh.

Get over it, Oklahoma. Get over it, Seattle. Get over it, Fyall.