Daily Bullets (Aug. 2): Cade Cunningham Update, OSU’s Friendly 2019 Schedule

Football practice opened up yesterday, Cade Cunningham affirmed his OSU interest, and five-star recruit Bryce Thompson made his way to Stillwater to watch the open practice – they call that a good day. 

Bullets Rundown

• Cade Cunningham recruitment update
• Dez Bryant update
• OSU’s woeful schedule

OSU Bullets

• As previously mentioned, Cade Cunningham released his top-five last night – let’s get an update on what that means for OSU.

For now, it appears the Oklahoma State is still in the driver’s seat for this potential future No. 1 NBA Draft pick, but the bluebloods certainly aren’t letting up. [PFB]

The analyst who wrote the originally quoted article had a great quote – noting that “more than likely, (Cunningham) will end up in Stillwater…” – welcome news to the Cowboy faithful.

• Cowboy great Dez Bryant gave an update on his status for the 2019 NFL season.

Dez Bryant hasn’t taken the field since the end of the 2017 season back when he was still a member of the Cowboys and by the sound of it, we shouldn’t expect to see him on the field when the upcoming season begins.

On Tuesday, Bryant revealed that while he hasn’t retired, he has “no interest in playing football right now.” In the meantime, he says he’s “taking care” of himself. [CBS Sports]

Dez is more at an “everybody got hurt, what do we now?” stage in his career – staying in shape and fully recovering from the Achilles’ injury sounds like a good plan for now.

• OSU arguably has the second-easiest football schedule in the Big 12 this year – a solid opportunity to either break in some new coordinators (or make a run for a championship if you broke in the freshman quarterback the year before).

The case: Fornelli actually picked Oklahoma State as having the Big 12’s easiest schedule, partially because the Cowboys have one of the easier non-conference slates and partially because there’s no real Murderer’s Row section.

The Big 12 schedule starts at Texas and ends with a home game against Oklahoma, meaning the games against the projected two top teams in the league literally couldn’t be further apart. Baylor and TCU both come to Stillwater, while the road game slate: at Texas, at Texas Tech, at Iowa State and at West Virginia, isn’t bad at all. [247 Sports]

Spacing out OU and Texas is convenient. Texas tends to beat you up (they seem to be the LSU of the Big 12 in that sense) but getting it over sooner might be a good deal.

• I love this take by former Longhorn coach Mack Brown – would it really be bad for ratings if the conference champion automatically went to the playoff?

Think of how much better conference championship games would be. Teams with brand equity can skip the weekend after dropping a game and cruise into the championship… Get outta here with that.

Mack Brown's idea to revamp the CFP:

"I would make room for all 5 conference champs in a 6 team playoff, with an at-large. I would also remove the games from the schedule that are just scrimmages for money, and have the Non-Power 5 schools play for their own Championship."

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) August 1, 2019

• This Gary Patterson quote is memorable but I don’t get the timing. Is it pointed to current Big 12 teams that generally finish in the lower half of the league that used to make fun of them when they were in the Mountain West?

Gary Patterson on @TCUFootball :

"We're the school that was the little girl with piggy tails who had a crush on you, but you didn't pay attention to. Then all of a sudden she's the prom queen and you missed out."

That concludes my early quote of the year submission.

— Dean Straka (@DWStraka49) August 1, 2019

Non-OSU Bullets

• I like this guy’s thoughts on prioritizing relating at a key point in the day (of course, I’m an extrovert)

• These faith-based thoughts on being a good dad were helpful (and convicting)

• Choosing to live in surplus (not deficit)

• Potential improvements to Chesapeake Arena look pretty sharp – also, the Patrick Patterson buyout should get the Thunder out of the luxury tax which is great.