OSU President Is a Fan of Public Enemy No. 1 Baker Mayfield

I missed this a week ago which I apologize for, but I thought it was worth re-visiting. OSU president Burns Hargis visited with the media to discuss a variety of things including Big 12 expansion (“I could try to be clever and say I don’t know, but I don’t have to be clever because I don’t know”), the Big 12 title game (“it isn’t going to hurt anything unless you knock off your best team”) and Baker Mayfield.

No. 6 has of course been the topic of much debate in the last month as his final year of eligibility (in 2017) was taken away and then given back to him by the Big 12 in the Big 12-iest move of all time. The group of people who voted on allowing non-scholarship Big 12 players to transfer within the conference without losing a year reversed Baker’s fortunes and greatly affected the Big 12 landscape for 2017.

Hargis had a take on it.

“The important thing for us to do was take Baker Mayfield’s picture out of the discussion and let’s just talk about what’s right, what’s fair,” Hargis told the Tulsa World. “It seems fair that if a walk-on wants to transfer, they still got to lay out a year but they shouldn’t lose a year of eligibility.

“I happen to like Baker Mayfield, and I think he’s done a great job, but that really should be irrelevant. The question is what is fair.”

Carson and I discussed the validity of the decision in this podcast (around the 12:00 mark). He smartly brought up the unique nature of Baker’s situation (Big 12 FOY, about to be put on scholarship, but we both ended up agreeing with the Big 12’s decision like Hargis did.

Also, I have something else to agree with Hargis on. [clears throat]

Ahem.

[whispers so softly it might possibly get blown away as this post moves from editing to publishing]

I like Baker Mayfield too.