Sunday Letters – Crazy Dana

Welcome to our newest feature here on Pistols Firing. I’m testing it out for now to see how I like it and will be doing so for the next month until I decide whether or not it’s here to stay.

Weekends are weird on blogs. People tend to visit fairly regularly Monday through Friday and then are all over the place on Saturday and Sunday. I can’t blame them either, most folks probably have better things to do than peruse a college sports blog about a tier 1.5 program written by a crazed aficionado such as myself. Like…oh…I don’t know…hang out with their families.

Anyway, all that to say that on weekends I’ll generally be posting Saturday Cartoons (which I stole from this guy) that will normally involve some sort of YouTube video reliving the glory days. I’ll also be posting any game recaps (football or basketball) on Saturday nights. Sundays, however, will be reserved for something I’m calling “Sunday Letters.” I’ll pick one person associated with OSU, the Big XII, or college athletics in general and write them a letter expressing my thoughts, feelings, and general temperament about something they did, said, or, in the case of Dan Beebe, thought about maybe possibly doing.

I have no idea where this will go or what will come of it but I think it could be something we all enjoy. I try, from a personal standpoint, to write as many notes and letters as I can on Sundays to begin with so I thought, “why not carry that over to the blog?”

My first Sunday letter is to somebody that I might never get to write another letter to again: Dana Holgorsen.

I already wrote my “7 Things I’ll Miss About Dana” post but I haven’t taken the opportunity to write him a formal farewell letter.

Here we go…

Dear Dana,

I feel like we barely even got to know each other. You were like the hot girl we met on that Spring Break ski trip who we ended up spending every waking, breathing moment with. We didn’t really get that girl or understand why we clicked with her but we knew that our only desire was that it might last forever. All of this despite the fact that in the back of our minds, we knew our Spring Break girl actually went to school about 2,000 miles away and we’d more than likely never see her again after that 7-day stretch. But what a stretch it was and how we wouldn’t trade those 7 days for anything in the world. You were our Spring Break ski trip girl.

I hope it’s not too creepy that I just compared our non-existent relationship to that of a hypothetical hot college girl who I, and all of my readers, hypothetically fell for on a hypothetical Spring Break trip. Of course, you live in a hotel room and drink Red Bull like it’s water so there there probably isn’t a ton of stuff that really creeps you out.

Mostly, I guess I just want to say thanks. You’ve had a great career and been at some fantastic places so you probably don’t fully understand the context of this season you and your fabulous quarterback and superstar wide receiver just gave to all of us but let me be the first to tell you — we aren’t used to 11-win seasons around here.

Thanks for slamming the gas pedal in the beginning of August and not letting off until Mike Stoops waved the white flag in San Antonio and surrendered the Alamo.

Thanks for ramming your historically great offense down Baylor’s throat. They had it coming, really, that uprising down in Waco needed to be squelched and the crescendo of trick plays you used to do that will echo with them for years to come. You killed Baylor in 2010 but you might have also beaten them in 2011, 2012, and possibly 2013. That feels good.

Thanks for just coming at Nebraska and OU with everything in your deep arsenal. We aren’t used to hanging with those teams, much less playing 4th quarters with Big XII titles on the line, so thanks for delivering that to us this season.

Thanks for rallying the troops that Thursday night against A&M. That was Joseph Randle’s semi-coming out party and (I’ll continue to harp on this) a turning point for our program. If we’re hoisting a trophy in Miami, Pasadena, New Orleans, or Glendale over the next 5 years then I’ll DEFINITELY be writing you another lengthy letter thanking you for helping our program get over a mental hump that late September night.

Thanks for pouring it on in Austin and telling the entire world your star QB threw the worst pass in the history of college football. That made me laugh (mostly because it might have been true) and I was glad you could get away with saying things like that because, who are we kidding, OCs who waltz into Austin and do what you did can say whatever they want.

And that’s what I’m most grateful for — that you pretty much did whatever you wanted the entire season. You let Gundy be the CEO, the face of a franchise, but everybody knows who was running the show. Who was Steve Jobs without Steve Wozniak? Whatever, you’ve probably never heard of Steve Wozniak. Thanks for acting like you cared about things like sportsmanship, class, and the integrity of the sport even though all you really cared about was blasting every DC you faced for 65+ and never punting. The charade was a good one and the cover-up believable.

I saw through it to a point though. Anybody who lives out of a hotel, doesn’t sleep, and bangs 6 Red Bulls a day can’t really be the John Wooden of collegiate offensive coordinators. It’s OK though, we didn’t need you to be him, we just needed you to hang hundreds of points and give us something exciting to talk about. That you did, and it was a thing of beauty.

So I wish you the best in Morgantown. Maybe we’ll all rock Davy Crockett coon skin caps to November and December games to honor your aerial attack. Or maybe OSU will sell Red Bulls with a likeness of your face/skullet on them at home games instead of sodas. Or maybe, just maybe, if you’re lucky we will (as my buddy Matty A. suggested) have t-shirts made up with the WVU logo that say “Hug a Bear, Chug a Red Bull” with your grill all over them.

We’ll see what happens.

Thanks for everything, keep throwing and chugging.

Peace Love and Cowboys,
– Pistols Guy