The 2011 Schedule

Oklahoma State released its 2011 football schedule deep in the throes of a Friday afternoon, where most news goes to die. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t save it for Monday or Tuesday to get people talking, get the buzz going, but that’s why I’m an unpaid blogger and they’re compensated for their decision-making. Or something like that.

A quick review and my thoughts on each game….

Sept. 3 – Louisiana Lafayette (Home) – Why does the okstate.com release of the schedule say “Louisiana”? Wouldn’t that would be like Kansas’ schedule showing “Oklahoma” for our game with them? Or maybe they switched it up without us knowing. Does “Louisiana” even have a football team? [correction: see answer in comments]

Sept. 8 – Arizona (Home) – I wrote a few weeks ago that OSU needed to move this game to Thursday (which they did) because there’s a 0% chance they’d lose on national TV in the second week of the year. I still feel that way although I’ve backed off just a little bit because I know the crowd won’t be as good and the move is bad business for Stillwater as a whole.

Sept. 17 – Tulsa (Away) – This is the perfect away game: not a lot of travel, respectable team, not a very big chance for a loss. You want to schedule manageable road non-conference games and this is a prime example.

Sept. 24 – Texas A&M (Away) – This is the big one. I fully expect both teams to be undefeated headed into Sept. 24 and really believe the winner of this gets OU for the Big 12. The week after is an open date for the Cowboys so no reason to not empty the gas tank in College Station. I’m praying this doesn’t get moved to the Saturday night ABC slot because Kyle Field under the lights with both teams in the top 10 is going to be…um…loud.

Oct. 1 – BYE

Oct. 8 – Kansas (Home) – This is the perfect game to have coming off the Bye: easy opponent, home crowd, automatic W.

Oct. 15 – Texas (Away) – Two straight in Austin after not having won there since World War II? Give it to me. This also marks us entering the “holy crap did Joe Castiglione make this schedule?” portion of the schedule.

Oct. 22 – Missouri (Away) – See above. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but to win in College Station, in Austin, and in Columbia in the span of 30 days is rough. At least we’ll be on ESPN like 8 times?

Oct. 29 – Baylor (Home) – We can breathe again. Also, I want 70 this time.

Nov. 5 – Kansas State (Home) – This is the most Fox Sports Southwest game ever. An average KSU team at home in early November. I’ll be stunned if this isn’t the 11:30 FSN game of the week.

Nov. 12 – Texas Tech (Away) – We should have won at least two in a row and will hopefully have some momentum going into this one. Holder needs to pay Tech/Disney to not make this a night game either. 7 PM in Lubbock, Texas in the middle of November is where national title aspirations go to die.

Nov. 18 – Iowa State (Away) – My feelings on this are well-documented.

Nov. 26 – BYE

Dec. 3 – Oklahoma (Home) – I can’t even be close to rational in talking about this one. Let’s just save it for a few months.