After the two head coaches of Oklahoma and Texas A&M exchanged some slightly light-hearted jabs, Sooners head coach Bob Stoops says he has not heard from his Aggies counterpart, Kevin Sumlin.
It all started when Stoops was asked about non-conference scheduling during one of many interviews on the ESPN car wash line-up recently. During his response at one point, Stoops used Texas A&M’s non-conference strength of schedule to drive home his point about overall strength of schedule.
“Boy, that’s a bunch of toughies,” Stoops said after looking at Texas A&M’s non-conference portion of the 204 schedule. Sumlin took some issue with the comments from the Oklahoma coach and offered a challenge.
“Coach Stoops has the right to say whatever he wants, but if he wants to play us again we’ll take him up on that,” Sumlin told aggiesports.com. Oklahoma and Texas A&M were conference rivals not so long ago, and they faced off in the Cotton Bowl at the end of the 2012 season. and it seems as though the Aggies won the fertile recruiting grounds in Texas in its divorce from the Big 12 two years ago.
This sounds as though the ball would be in Oklahoma’s court now to make the next move, but that has not happened. As the Sooners opened up fall camp on Friday, Stoops was once again asked about Sumlin and whether or not the two coaches have touched base since the latest comments.
“No, I haven’t,” Stoops said, according to The Oklahoman. Stoops went on to defend his comments and suggest it was not about taking a shot at Texas A&M, but commenting more on the scheduling differences between the Big 12 and SEC.
“I was asked too many times about the fact that we don’t have a Big 12 championship game, does that matter in the equation when other conferences do? And I pointed out the fact that we do play nine conference games,” Stoops explained. “The SEC at that point is only playing eight.”
True, but the eight games played by SEC teams in conference play is generally accepted to be more challenging than the nine games Oklahoma will play in Big 12 play. Hey, if Texas A&M and Texas are not going to get together on an annual basis, perhaps the two rivals of the Longhorns could get together and set-up an annual match-up.
That would be fun, no?