Today's Odyssey Is Brought To You By The Letter O

The wakeup call in the Athens (OH) came at 6:30 AM. But instead of heading directly to the airport I grabbed some free Hampton Inn breakfast, went back to the room, flipped on Morning Joe and took apart 80 pages of West Virginia game notes.

I packed up, jumped into the Sonata around 9 AM and hit the road for Columbus. It was a nice day for a drive. I made a few calls, which took me a few minutes off course. But I pulled up at the Columbus airport rental car return at 10:45, just in time to hook up with the conference call with the West Virginia coaches at 11:00.

In the daylight I could see the posters that tickets were still available for the 2013 NHL All-Star Game in Columbus. Tickets are still available for the January 26-27 weekend.

If you're planning a vacation to see relatives in Ohio (every single person I know has one), Nate Silver is projecting an 89% chance there will be plenty of hotel rooms that weekend.

The West Virginia call got moved back to 11:30 so I went through security, found some workspace and listened in, before boarding my first flight to Detroit Metro.

I got a powernap, did some Oklahoma State prep work, and devoured a pastrami sandwich at the Irish Pub in Detroit's B Terminal. My flight to OKC was delayed about 30 minutes, but I settled into my first class seat, finished up on the Cowboys, and actually cracked open my book before we landed.

While I had status on the plane, I had none at the rental car counter. I waited about 20 minutes for a generic Malibu, and got stuck major rush hour traffic in downtown Oklahoma City. It was good timing that I could talk to the kids for a few minutes before my cell phone ran out of juice. The 70 minute drive was more like an hour forty-five.

So this long day's journey that started in Athens Ohio wound up at my Stillwater hotel at around 7:45 CT. The glamorous life of a national TV producer: out-of-the-way college towns, rental cars and long drives, commuter jets and delays, traffic jams and low cell phone batteries.

It's not too different from the adventure West Virginia fans will take to get here. At least I'm getting paid to do this. Welcome to the Big 12!

But like most stops in the Big 12, Stillwater is pretty OK once you get there. See you out tonight at Eskimo Joe's!

When A Game Is Not A Game

Oklahoma State 84, Savannah State 0. Take all the cliches, "one down at a time," "play to the final gun," "give it the old college try," and they all add up to -- what's the point?

Some may point the finger at Mike Gundy and the Oklahoma State Cowboys for hanging such a loaded score on their poor opposition. That's preposterous. At what margin do you stop playing? 63-0? 70-0? Do you start taking knees in the middle of the 3rd quarter?

Oklahoma State played all 95 players who dressed, and 9 of their 12 touchdowns were runs. In fact two of their 2nd half TDs were 1-yard passes, theoretically less probable for a score than bucking it into the line.

The oddsmakers had installed Oklahoma State as a 67 1/2 point favorite so the outcome wasn't that far off from the hypothesis.

Do you blame Oklahoma State for scheduling a patsy? Maybe, but most major-conference schools schedule a lower division opponent to fill up their home calendar. Maybe they didn't realize, despite SSU's status as an FCS (1-AA) school, how downtrodden they've been - or maybe they did.

The result has also caught the attention of national college sportswriters like the New York Daily News' Dick "Hoops" Weiss. He knows exactly where to place the blame:

...if Savannah State administrators had any concern for the safety, welfare and psyche of their overmatched players, they should have taken a pass. We understand smaller schools that support football have bills to pay, but the idea of using players to balance an athletic budget is sad.

The payday for Savannah State to endure certain humiliation in Stillwater was $385,000. 

This is standard practice at underfunded HBCU institutions, but it is more practical in basketball when your traveling party is fewer than 20 and there's no equipment to haul, thus fewer expenses to manage or mismanage. And fewer souls to console.

Ron "Fang" Mitchell perennially takes his Coppin State Eagles basketball squad on the road to every national power you can think of, and those appearances fund the entire athletic department. And it's not without benefit. Coppin State scored one of the great upsets in NCAA tournament history as a #15 against #2 South Carolina. Of course that was 15 years ago.

Savannah State's men's basketball under Horace Broadnax has mirrored Mitchell's plan, and it's been somewhat successful. The Tigers play top-notch competition, and it helped shape them into 2012 MEAC regular season champions, gaining an NIT berth and a national TV game at Tennessee.

But to apply that business model to the football program only lends itself to making your school name a national punchline: 84-0. It couldn't possibly get any worse than that, could it? 

Savannah State at Florida State - Saturday. The Seminoles can name their score, but the game on the field is irrelevant. Chalk up another $475K.