Happy Friday the 13th, friends and fans! If you’re the superstitious type, be on the look out for any strange happenings as you go on about your day. Who knows, maybe now that those Cowboys at Oklahoma State have announced that they’re selling beer at their athletic events, perhaps OU AD Joe Castiglione will surprise everyone and follow suit.

I know, it’s probably just a pipe dream at this point, but stranger things have happened, and it is the perfect day for such occurrences. With so many other colleges doing it, and all the money that could be made from it, it kind of seems like a no-brainer. People are already drinking before, during and after the games anyway, so why not make money off of it?

Now onto this Friday the 13th edition of Hot Links! Spencer Rattler has been bumped up to five-star status, Tim Tebow gives a thumbs-up to Baker Mayfield with the Browns, NASA is about to go way up and touch the Sun and more!

OU Links

• Baker Mayfield and Maggie Nichols are Oklahoma’s Big 12 male and female Athlete of the Year candidates, and fans can vote from July 20th-23rd. Both athletes are extremely deserving for all their athletic accomplishments, and there’s no doubt they each have that OUDNA. Boomer!

• With the playoff odds for every team in each Power Five Conference now being released, it appears Oklahoma has the nation’s fourth best chance to reach the four-team College Football Playoff.
• The media picked the Oklahoma Sooners as the favorites to win the Big 12 for a fourth year in a row, and the formula for winning remains the same. Lots of offense, and supposedly just the right amount of defense. Let’s just hope there’s a little more defense this time around.
• Since the inception of the Big 12, no conference member has won the league four straight times. Oklahoma has won the Big 12 three consecutive seasons on multiple occasions, but what would a fourth straight win mean for the program?
• It’s been a long time coming, but Oklahoma QB commit Spencer Rattler is now rated as a five-star recruit. Congratulations on earning your fifth star, Spencer!
• Tim Tebow is friends with Baker Mayfield, and the former Florida Gator thinks Mayfield is the right guy to bring Cleveland back to respectability.
• Former Sooner running back DeMarco Murray posted a photo of himself next to an ESPN sign and captioned it with ‘Stay tuned’. Could this mean Murray is headed for an early retirement from the league to start a career as an analyst? It would be quite a development, especially considering how shy he was as an OU freshman.
• Oklahoma basketball graduate transfers Miles Reynolds and Aaron Calixte are still adjusting to Norman, but they have already begun the process of winning over their teammates’ trust.
• Don’t forget to check out RJ’s thoughts on defensive backs coach Kerry Cooks and his scorching-hot recruiting as of late.

Around the Sports World

• The Boston Red Sox are having a pretty decent season. After defeating the Toronto Blue Jays on Thursday night, the Sox extended their winning streak to a season-high 10 wins. More than that, Boston now has 66 wins on the season, becoming the first team in MLB history to do so prior to the All-Star break.
• Isaiah Thomas spent over a week on the free agency market before finally signing a one-year deal with the Denver Nuggets for the veteran minimum.
• The Brooklyn Nets traded Jeremy Lin to the Atlanta Hawks, then acquired Kenneth Faried and Darrell Arthur from the Denver Nuggets.
• The Boston Celtics’ first-round pick Robert Williams had to miss his first practice with the team because he lost his wallet, not once, but twice, in a two-day span. I don’t know if that’s just bad luck, or lack of focus, but c’mon my dude.
• Dead & Company have been selling out large venues across the country for the past few years, but this man is concerned about their ability to protect Colorado’s QB this season. Can’t blame him.

• Former NFL running back DeAngelo Williams has returned to the ring as a professional wrestler, and in his return to IMPACT, he was on the bad end of a cheap-shot and a chair.

Stick to Sports!

• NASA is launching its Parker Solar Probe today from Cape Canaveral in Florida in a world-first attempt to ‘touch the Sun.’ The plan is for the probe to enter the corona of the fiery star, which is the gaseous atmosphere surrounding the Sun itself. According to NASA, if successful, this would mark the closest any probe has ever been to the Sun, and in doing so would provide new information about the greatest source of our planet’s energy. The launch is scheduled for today at 12:30PM CT.

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