Originally posted on 09/15/2016:

Quote Originally Posted by phil_abuster View Post
hmmm.
interesting points, fellas.
heres a slightly different take as food for thought to other readers.
this yr ou is 1-1,
having lost to the good opp they played (houston) allowing 33 pts against.
osu is arguably better than houston!
and ou defeated a cupcake team (ulm) by 42 pts, allowing the cupcakes to score 17 AT HOME!

osu this yr is 2-0
the two teams to which they handed a beat down are hardly cupcakes!
both were bowl teams last yr.
tulsa narrowly lost the independence bowl to vtech (52-55)
and bowlinggreen won the MAC last yr with a 10-3 record!
osu whupped tulsa by 45 pts - allowing only 3 against!!
osu whupped bowling by a whopping 67 pts - allowing only 10 against!!

so a cupcake team scores 17 on ou, and they allow a very good team to score 33.
but the 2 not-cupcake teams can muster only 13 pts combined on osu!!

plus ou is dealing with several injury issues - mostly on defense!
so i figure if a cupcake can put up 17 in norman then osu can put up at least 34 (regulation)
if ou is going to win they will have to score 35+ on osu (regulation)

i dont see that happening UNLESS ou gets lucky and benefits from a few turnovers.

the loser is most likely out of realistic playoff discussion.
After reading this post, it's obvious you didn't watch OU/ULM or Ohio State Tulsa. You're just looking at box scores and stats.

I graduated from OU and live in Tulsa so I watch a lot of those teams. Tulsa's defense is absolutely horrible and it was a 6-3 game at Ohio State late in the second quarter. Then Tulsa had some of the worst playcalling I've seen in my life and threwtwo pick six to go down 20-3. Ohio State's offense didn't look impressive the first half. It was vanilla playcalling but against Tulsa they should be able to get whatever they want.

In the second half, Tulsa threw in the towel and Ohio State's starters played the entire game and ran it up in garbage time...that' leads me to another point.

You talk about OU giving up 17 points to ULM at home...THAT GAME WAS 42-0 at HALFTIME! OU pulled its starters unlike Ohio State. Are you really going to gauge how good OU's defense is by what the backups did in a blowout?

Also, if you watched the OU/Houston game, you would know that OU's defense gave up 24 points. Houston scored a TD on a return. Giving up 24 to Houston is pretty good imo.

You talk about all these injury issues OU has...please enlighten me because I don't know of many. OU held out some players and suspended some guys last week but that's because they were playing ULM. Obviously you didn't watch the game....not that I blame you, just saying.

After reading this, I hope you don't think I'm a homer. If you want proof I'm not a homer, please look at the thread in which I said Houston +11 was a great bet and went on to say I thought Houston had a good chance to win straight up. As an OU fan, Houston worries me. Houston exploited OU's linebackers and had a big return TD on specials teams that I eluded to before the game...

You can't handicap by looking at box scores and stats. Ohio State might win the game but I feel like Vegas is comfortable taking all the Ohio State money on this game. I have several reasons to back OU here even though I think they'll still be like a 9-3 team. None of my reasons have to do with what OU's backups did against ULM or what Ohio State did to Tulsa.

OU should be -6.5 here.