Oklahoma Sooners Hot Links: Football Season Can’t Get Here Soon Enough!

Happy Wednesday, folks! Hope the week’s treating you well so far.

It’s a good time for football in Oklahoma. In ESPN’s new too-early top 25 (hopefully we’ll get to stop saying that soon), Oklahoma State has surged from no. 10 to the sixth spot. Oklahoma remains firmly in eighth. If both teams run the table until bedlam, it’ll be a titanic matchup. And there’s a chance they’ll get another crack at each other in the Big 12 Championship Game.

Of course, all of that is months away. Football can’t get here any sooner.

Without further ado, today’s edition of Hot Links:

OU Links:

• Our Graham Dudley writes: did Lincoln Riley find his 2018 quarterback in Adrian Martinez?
• TJ Pledger would like to think so:

• The Tulsa World’s Guerin Emig laments the fact that Samaje Perine and Jordan Evans were overshadowed by other stories on draft day.
• OU softball has its sights set on their sixth straight Big 12 title, and they’ll have a chance to claim it during this weekend’s Bedlam series. The Sooners need just one victory to lock it up.

National Links:

• The Big 12 has a talent-producing problem. Even the AAC put more players into the NFL than the Big 12 did this year. David Ubben is concerned about the gap further lengthening between the other four power conferences and the Big 12.
• Alex Kirshner and Richard Johnson take a deep dive into how the spread offense changed football forever.
• Brandon Roy, one of my favorite NBA players of the mid-aughts, was shot trying to shield a group of children from gunfire. I don’t care if somebody has to make one up: get this man a medal.
• Isaiah Thomas is a damn legend. Nobody’s had a tougher few weeks than him. He returned from major oral surgery to score 53 points — 29 of them in the fourth quarter. He dedicated the game to his late sister, whose birthday was yesterday. Excuse me while I compose myself.
• Head coach of the Utah Jazz Quin Snyder is definitely a character. I mean that literally: he looks ripped straight from a cartoon. Deadspin hilariously delves into what else Snyder looks like.

‘STICK TO SPORTS!’

• RIP Kevin Garcia, bassist and founding member of the seminal indie rock band Grandaddy.
• Scientists have completely eliminated HIV from a living animal using a method called ‘cut-and-paste’ gene-editing. Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.