Odds and Ends For The OU-Miami Showdown

While I'm sure everyone is still scratching their head over why College Gameday would travel to the Boston College - Florida State game when there are two far more obvious choices (OU-Miami, USC-Cal), it turns out that Kirk Herbstreit and Brent Musburger will still be calling the Sooners game. Lisa Salters will be the sideline reporter. This, of course, means that Herbie will need to be flown down to Miami immediately after Gameday. Busy day for him! Meanwhile, we get the benefit of being able to listen to ESPN's "A-Team" of announcers. Additionally, most of the country will be seeing our game, so a good performance could mean a jump in the polls (for either team really).

The primetime coverage map. Image from assets.espn.go.com

More odds and ends will be posted after the jump, including some brief news about various things, and a somewhat rainy weather forecast.

• The Forecast:  Hopefully we won't have to contend with rain again. But, right now they are saying a 40% chance of storms and a game time temperature of 83 degrees. The rain won't help on half of the field either, because they recently sodded over the baseball infield since the Marlins are done now. Fresh sod + rain + football game = mess.
• The Bradford Factor:  Sam Bradford continues to practice but nobody knows if he's going to play. That's probably a good thing, and I suspect we won't know until Saturday. There's got to be quite the battle going on in Stoops' head. He doesn't want to bring back Sam too early, and Landry has been playing great. At the same time, I'm sure Sam really wants to play and he's got to feel like it would be beneficial to have a Heisman Trophy winner in there against a more athletic defense. Personally I think it will come down to whether or not Sam can make all the throws on the field. If not, I'd let him shake off the rust against Baylor.
• Picks:  College Football News takes Miami in a close one. Tim Griffin from ESPN takes the Sooners in a close one.
• Referees:  Big 12 refs will work the game in Miami, as ACC refs worked the game in Norman two years ago. I'm sure you all remember the ACC refs from the National Championship Game, so I will be glad to have some Big 12 refs at this game.
• Elimination Game:  This ESPN article may have put it just about right when they called this a BCS elimination game. The loser will most likely not see a BCS bowl, and their national title hopes will essentially be zero.
• Yankee Bowl:  Yep, they've gone and done it. A Big East - Big 12 bowl game at Yankee Stadium will be played in December 2010. I guess they punish the 7th place Big 12 team now by sending them to play the 4th place Big East team in the cold.
• Sold Our Soul To Jerry Jones?  Courtesy of the Tulsa World:
  

  The Sooners got a $2.25 million paycheck from ESPN and the Dallas Cowboys, plus 1,000 tickets behind the team bench, four suites and 100 parking passes, all for the honor of playing in Jerry Jones' new palace, getting their Heisman-winning quarterback hurt and falling flat on their face.