Maybe it’s the way Oklahoma finished last season, with with a comeback win to deny Oklahoma State a Big 12 championship, and then a come-from-behind stomping of Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. Maybe it’s Oklahoma’s status as the Big 12’s pre-season favorite. Maybe he’s just all hopped up on Mountain Dew.

Either way, Bob Stoops tapped into his fiesty side during media events Tuesday and Wednesday in Dallas and the ESPN mothership in Bristol. 

Stoops has fired the cannons at Texas A&M’s non-conference schedule: 

The excuses people made for Alabama following the Sugar Bowl:

And proponents of the 10-second rule:

“I’m here to speak about whatever you ask me,” Stoops told SVP & Russillo said when asked about his out-spokenness, “and if you ask me I’m going to give you my honest answer the best I can. And that’s it. So it may not be what you want to hear. If it isn’t, don’t ask me.”

Taking a break from pounding his chest, Stoops was asked what he would like to change about college football. “I don’t really see that there’s a lot that needs to be changed. In the end we’ve got a very popular game. I’m always careful to say don’t change our schedule, be careful what you wish for sometimes, and all of a sudden you don’t know the ramifications when it comes to even changing the recruiting calendar and what the ramifications would be for that. At the end of the day I like where we’re at,” Stoops concluded.

And then a lightbulb flickered on. 

“You know what needs to be changed? The overtime rule,” Stoops said. “Instead of the 25, where you’re already in field goal range, you need to get to field goal range, so you ought to start at the 40 or 45, and you have to earn your field goal. I think it would shorten games where you’re not in a field goal contest because it doesn’t reward great defense. You may get the ball at the 25, you get zero yards and you kick a field goal. The other team may gain 15 and miss a field goal. At the end of the day you should have to earn your field goal.”

Bingo.

Overtimes are tricky. The goal should be to end any overtime contest in no more than two periods. Marathon games rarely turn into extended thrillers like Syracuse and Connecticut’s six overtime game from the 2009 Big East Tournament.

More often they feel like boxing matches taking in place inside a sauna, where one competitor is waiting for the other to collapse. 

I think 40 is the magic number here. I agree with Stoops that offenses should have to earn a first down before being in field goal range, but pushing the starting line to the 45, with the corresponding 35-yard line first down marker, equates to a 52-yard field goal. That’s an iffy proposition in college football. Starting at the 50, at least in my opinion, goes too far the other way where teams could just as easily trade zeros through overtime periods.

We through the idea out on Twitter and got a range of responses:

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Zach Barnett
National columnist - Zach joined the staff in 2012...and has been attempting to improve Doug and Scott's writing ability ever since (to little avail). Outside of football season, you can find him watching the San Antonio Spurs reading Game of Thrones fan theories.