Happy Monday, friends and fans!

Kyler Murray has not-so-quietly been setting the college football world on fire with his scintillating performances week after week. After yet another outstanding outing in Week 9, the future major leaguer was named a semifinalist for the Maxwell Award.

Murray is one of 20 players who have reached semifinalist status for the Maxwell, and out of that total, he’s one of 11 quarterbacks. Last season, Baker Mayfield brought home the honor. If he keeps it up, K1 has a great chance at making it back-to-back for the Oklahoma Sooners.

Three finalists will be announced on November 19th, and the winner will be presented with the award on December 6th live at ESPN’s College Football Awards Show.

Now onto this week’s Monday edition of Hot Links! Oklahoma is playing with more confidence on defense, Oklahoma’s offense is lighting up the scoreboard like never before, Hue Jackson is out at Cleveland and more!

OU Links

• Kyler Murray made another Heisman statement on Saturday with a nearly flawless performance. While he was out on the field boosting his resume, competitor Tua Tagovailoa was off during the weekend with a bye.
• Well look what we have here, it’s Bookie and the King. Brendan Radley-Hiles recently introduced himself to Barry Switzer, and all I can think about is the potential for how iconic this photo could be in the future. Awesome stuff.

• Since Ruffin McNeill took over as interim defensive coordinator, the Sooners have looked like a different team on that side of the ball. What’s also helped in this transformation is the emergence of freshmen ends Ronnie Perkins and Jalen Redmond. Together they form a dynamic duo.
• Speaking of the defense, as a whole, the group is playing with a lot more confidence since the Texas game. They continue to emphasize fundamentals like tackling, and it’s already paying off with promising results on the field.
• This Saturday’s game against the Texas Tech Red Raiders will serve as easily the greatest test since OU made the change at DC. How the Sooners limit TTU’s high-octane offense will be a barometer for the rest of the season.
• It’s no secret that Oklahoma’s offense is a finely-tuned machine running on all cylinders. It’s not only the best in the nation this season, it’s embarking on a pace that has never been seen before.

• Here’s Jack’s Big 12 power rankings post. They’re like the actual standings, but better! Actually, they’re pretty much just the actual standings.
• It was a game unlike any other, and if you watched it you remember where you were when Baker Mayfield and Patrick Mahomes set all kinds of records that we can only hope are never broken again. It’s fitting that these two elite field generals are squaring off in the NFL this week as Oklahoma and Texas Tech prepare for a marquee Big 12 contest.

Around the Sports World

• Cleveland Browns head coach Hue Jackson has reportedly been fired. I’m sure Lincoln Riley’s name won’t be mentioned at all over the next few months... . Actually, he’s already been asked about it. Expect the chatter to continue for the foreseeable future.

• The Boston Red Sox won the World Series after dominating the Los Angeles Dodgers 4-1. It was a fitting end for the best team throughout the regular season.
• Bill Snyder and Kansas State could be headed toward a very awkward and uncomfortable end if the Wildcats aren’t able to recover this season or rebound in the very near future.
• After 11 AP-ranked college football teams fell in Week 9, the Empires Map is going through some major changes. Oklahoma State beat Texas who had won six straight, and that’s just a small part of the shift in power.

• In every Power Five conference, there is at least one team remaining that nobody expected to contend for a conference championship, and this is why the parity in college football is such an awesome thing.
• Michael Jordan, not that it means anything to you, but you just stepped on my heart a little bit. In all seriousness, nice troll job, Mr. G.O.A.T.

Stick to Sports!

• While testing a rocket-launched parachute for future Mars missions, NASA broke the world-record for the fastest deployment of a parachute this size at four tenths of a second. From being as dense as a block of wood to the size of a small house in that amount of time is incredible, especially in the Mars atmosphere.

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