Baker Mayfield's Arrest Is The Last Thing Oklahoma and the Big 12 Need
We hear many traditions in college football take place. But the one tradition that nobody wants is to be the yearly "program under fire for wrongdoing" tradition. We've seen it nearly every year in some manner, whether we saw it at Auburn in the early 90's, Alabama in the early 2000's, Miami and North Carolina recently, Penn State with Sandusky, etc. Over the past year, we have seen three programs that have been under massive fire for handling of situations: Baylor, Ole Miss, and Oklahoma.
We have seen & heard Baylor with the sexual assault stories and how the coaching staff played a deaf ear to it. We have seen and heard about Ole Miss and the players taking improper benefits. Of course, the NCAA has gotten involved since the coaches were very involved. But Oklahoma is different as they had halfback Joe Mixon punching out a lady at a bar. Instead of kicking Mixon off the team, Bob Stoops suspended him for an entire season. People bashed Bob for that with the recent video and it made Stoops come out and say "in retrospect I would have kicked him off." I will leave it at that. But the NCAA left Oklahoma to handle that situation.
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While the Sooners aren't as vilified for the Mixon incident as opposed to what Baylor and even Ole Miss have gone through (which says a lot because they were very vilified for it), they have that dark cloud of a program being run in the sense of "win at all costs" because of Mixon. And Bob Stoops has been a lightning rod of controversy himself over the years in Norman. With the majority of the team coming back for a national championship run, including Baker Mayfield, their Heisman Trophy favorite for 2017.
Let's face it, I have made my opinions known on Big 12 football and the vibe is that the Big 12 cannot hang with the other four power conferences. But Oklahoma is the conference's meal ticket and has been for the last 10-15 years. But even they have been plagued by on-the-field issues of beating powerhouse teams like Ohio State, Clemson, etc. in big games. They lost by 21 to the Buckeyes in Norman last year and have a trip to Columbus in 2017. So, having the Sooners return a large part of their team, especially on the offensive end, is big for the upcoming year and with the Big 12 getting their championship game again (albeit a flimsy one at that), Oklahoma would get a chance to prove they belong with the likes of Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State. And it would be good for a conference that is not really stable. So what is the last thing that the conference and Oklahoma needs to happen to them?
Mayfield has counts of public intoxication, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and fleeing (a felony).
Yep.
The face of the program and really the conference going to Arkansas and acting like a knucklehead. Now, whether or not he is the center of whatever issue, but the evidence looks like Mayfield was not being very smart with his decisions. So Oklahoma is "learning the details." And before we just say "well, they need to punish him right away," they do have to make sure all the facts come out. But it isn't good given these charges.
Also adding into the mess was that a month ago, Sooners corner Parrish Cobb was charged with felony accounts of robbery and is suspended indefinitely. So, Oklahoma, still overshadowed by the Mixon controversy, has now some major questions to answer. What to do with Mayfield? What to do with Cobb? Of course, the popular response is, suspend them both (and maybe in Cobb's case, get kicked off the team for the felonies if convicted). That said, you do have to go to the "innocent until proven guilty" issue. But again, it seems to be an overwhelming amount of guilt here on both.
The Sooners have a Week 2 rematch with the Buckeyes, a team that dismantled them in Oklahoma last year
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In hypothetical terms, let's say both Mayfield and Cobb are convicted or take plea deals, common logic says they would be suspended for at least a couple of games. I don't even think Bob Stoops would sweep it under the rug and just keep it as a 1-game suspension for either one (home to UTEP in Week 1 mind you). Which means Week 2, Oklahoma is in Columbus to take on the Buckeyes, the team that really sealed Oklahoma's fate in the College Football Playoff last season (in September). So that is probably going to be a blowout loss from all looks of it.
Simply put, Oklahoma's nightmare has come true. Mayfield is the Sooners meal ticket to the playoff (and really the Big 12's best bet). Bob Stoops knows that. Now, it wouldn't be totally out of the realm to see Stoops not lower the hammer on Mayfield in response to his arrest given Stoops is that "win at all costs" coach and has been for a long time. However, he would be clouded the entire season by the media and he himself would be looked under the same light as people have with Art Briles, ignoring the situation as it is and doing nothing about it.
Adding on, while Oklahoma's issues are nothing to that of their Big 12 rival Baylor's (and the Bears pretty much added more to it thanks to their women's head coach Kim Mulkey's disastrous quote yesterday), many older college football fans are reminded of the end of the Barry Switzer Era Sooners where it seemed like it was all chaos and the inmates ran the asylum. It makes a feel like the program never really has changed sine that point despite it being nearly 30 years ago.
Oklahoma is in a no-win situation right now. You suspend Mayfield for any lengthy amount (4 or more games), then the season is pretty much another uphill battle (though it isn't as hectic to start the year as it was in 2016) and perhaps the Big 12 is on the outside of the playoff looking in, again and may set a domino effect of certain programs eyeing other conferences. But if Mayfield plays without any punishment the program will get a worse rap than what they already have. Adding on that, you will have the program constantly answer questions about these controversies and if you look at the other two programs in hot water in 2016 (Ole Miss and Baylor), they did not handle it well at all.
Definitely a bad day for Big 12 football, not just Oklahoma.
-Fan in the Obstructed Seat
