Daily Oklahoman post mortem

[No Quarter]

No much mention of Woods pushing off - although even three TDs fewer would still have been a sound defeat.

Outmatched SMU put up a fair fight
2003-09-21
By Berry Tramel
The Oklahoman


DALLAS — Maybe SMU didn’t deserve this.
The Mustangs, once the gangsters of college football, do things right these days. Follow rules. Graduate players. Tell sugar daddies to hit Mockingbird Lane and don’t look back.

So feel a little bad for the Mustangs taking the brunt of a 52-6 rout and an NCAA record.

Maybe SMU didn’t deserve this. But Rashaun Woods did.

Even with the game long decided — like midway through the second quarter — the Mustangs kept stacking the line and Woods kept running into SMU’s deep-blue end zone and Josh Fields kept tossing touchdown passes to the greatest receiver in Oklahoma State history. Seven TDs in all, an NCAA record.

Consider it repayment.

Reward for Woods, the senior from Millwood who has done so much for the Cowboy gridiron revival. Reward for the approximately 13,000 Cowboy fans who painted orange Gerald J. Ford Stadium.

Reward for all the players — from Fields, to blockers, to fellow receivers, to defenders supplying sublime field position — who shared in Woods’ magic night. Reward for OSU recruiters who, armed with the record, just might find it a little easier to lure pitchers and catchers to Stillwater.

And I don’t have a problem with that.

This was a fair fight. SMU is no I-AA school. The Mustangs hand out just as many scholarships as OSU, they sit in plush recruiting ground, they have a rich history that goes deeper than the cheating. Doak Walker, Kyle Rote, Jerry Levias, Eric Dickerson.

This was Southern Methodist, not Southern Nazarene.

This is a school still moaning the demise of the Southwest Conference, which has crippled SMU rebuilding efforts from its 1987 death penalty.

SMU can’t have it both ways. You want to play with big boys? Fine. Big boys boast ballplayers like Woods.

And to their credit, SMU players and coaches didn’t whine afterward. Said they’d have done the same thing.

So the record is legit.

Simply, SMU picked the wrong poison. The Mustangs were the anti-Southwest Missouri State. A week ago, SMS played so soft that OSU passing was futile, and Cowboy play-caller Mike Gundy lamented not running his tailbacks up the gut for 400 yards.

Saturday night, SMU stacked the box.

Mustangs coach Phil Bennett wants to play tough-man defense. SMU sports new uniforms that resemble Ole Miss. Bennett doesn’t want the Ponies to play like Junior Miss. Stuffing OSU’s tailback game was a he-man way to go.

But Gundy countered by calling deep ball after deep ball, probably 15 in all, taking advantage of Woods going one-on-one with overmatched defenders.

“I was single-covered the whole game,” Woods said. “I haven’t been single-covered in a long time.”

And then when the Cowboys sniffed an NCAA record for Woods, they shifted into high gear. Coach Les Miles and Gundy called for repeated aerial assaults, and the record fell quickly. At halftime, Woods had nine catches and five touchdowns. In the first 10:07 of the third quarter, Fields threw five balls to Woods. He caught four, two for touchdowns.

Miles said all the passes were in the “natural flow” of the game and “all within the guides of sportsmanship.”

Gundy said if SMU had played conventional defense, Woods “wouldn’t have had seven touchdown catches. He might have had 20 catches for 300 yards, but not seven touchdown catches.”

Miles offered another plum for such plundering. In three weeks, Kansas State figures to deploy a similar defense; Bennett came to SMU from K-State. Why not make KSU rethink its tactics?

And Miles wants high-school passers and receivers to take note: “If you’re looking to go to a place where they know what to do with guys who make plays ... it gives us a characteristic as a team that knows what the heck it’s doing in throwing the football.”

Consider it all, and OSU was well-served to make sure Woods went home with the record.

Not since the 1945 Cotton Bowl had the Cowboys won in Big D, and not since 1969 had a major-college receiver set the touchdown record. Thirty-four years ago, San Diego State’s Tim Delaney caught six TD passes against New Mexico State.

Who knows how long Woods will hold the record? But this I know. Woods deserved this night.

Berry Tramel can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]. His radio show, the Writers Block, can be heard Monday through Friday from 4-6 p.m. on WKY, 930 AM.

[Damon'sDaMan]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by No Quarter:
<B>.... Miles said all the passes were in the “natural flow” of the game and “all within the guides of sportsmanship.” </B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Like hell.
He's a good coach, but I wouldn't ask him to run a seminar on sportsmanship.

[methodistmustang]

Unfortunately, ESPN didn't see any of the push offs either. And on many occasions he had beaten his man so badly i don't know how he could have pushed off...it sucked yes but let's not deal with it by calling the other team a cheater. Our cornerbacks had problems with Tech receivers too. Woods is the best in the NCAA.

[Sam I Am]

We have been weak on pass defense for two years. We don't have the hosses for man on man coverage yet.