Tramel's ScissorTales: OSU-Arizona State football game marred by QB Jayden Daniels' transfer

OSU hosts Arizona State next September in the kind of college football matchup of which we need more. 

The Cowboys and Sun Devils have played only three times – OSU routed ASU 45-3 in a 1984 desert showdown, then the Sun Devils won a home-and-home series during the dark days of the 1990s, 30-3 in Stillwater (1991) and 12-10 in Tempe (1993). 

So a 2022-23 series was quite appetizing. The Cowboys are riding high under Mike Gundy, having finished off a 12-2 season with a memorable 37-35 Fiesta Bowl victory over Notre Dame, in Arizona State’s backyard. The Sun Devils surprisingly have been quite competitive under coach Herm Edwards, 25-18 overall in four seasons and 17-14 in Pac-12 play. 

But the OSU-ASU game, scheduled for Sept. 10, is losing luster fast. Because the Sun Devils are losing personnel fast. 

Arizona State quarterback Jayden Daniels has entered the transfer portal, after announcing in December that he would remain a Sun Devil. 

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Daniels, who has started every Sun Devil game except one the last three years, didn’t have a great 2021 season. He competed 197 of 301 passes for 2,381 yards, with 10 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Daniels was much better his first two seasons, throwing just three interceptions combined. But Daniels was a running threat; he ran for 710 yards and six touchdowns in 2021. 

Daniels’ departure would exacerbate the many problems that have erupted with Arizona State football, including an NCAA investigation into recruiting violations.  

Five coaches have left ASU since the end of the season, including, most recently, offensive coordinator Zak Hill, who resigned after being placed on administrative leave. 

Edwards remains under fire – a state senator has called for Edwards and athletic director Ray Anderson to be fired – so it’s not even for sure that he’ll be in Stillwater, either, come September. 

Another ASU quarterback, Ethan Long, who has yet to play, announced in January that he was transferring, too. Daniels and Long are among 10 scholarship players who have entered the transfer portal since November. 

The Sun Devils did bring in Alabama transfer quarterback Paul Tyson, the great-grandson of Bear Bryant. Tyson threw 16 passes in two Bama seasons. 

But the Arizona Republic reported that ASU’s likely starter for 2022 will be veteran Trenton Bourguet, Daniels’ backup the last two seasons, though Bourguet has thrown only 12 passes. 

More ASU dysfunction: The Republic reported that when OU quarterback Spencer Rattler entered the transfer portal, Arizona State was considered a possible landing spot, since Rattler is from suburban Phoenix. 

But after meeting with Daniels and his mother in December, ASU decided not to pursue Rattler. Rattler went to South Carolina, Daniels has entered the portal and now Arizona State will come to Stillwater for a game and a quarterback showdown that isn’t near what we thought it would be. 

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Sooners again stumble without Harkless 

Two games without Elijah Harkless, two blowout losses for OU basketball. The Sooners were torn asunder 66-42 at Texas Tech on Tuesday night, emerging from the 30s only on Akolda Mawein’s corner 3-pointer at the buzzer. Last Saturday, OU lost 75-54 at Iowa State. 

Harkless suffered an injury Friday that will sideline him the rest of the season, and OU is in serious trouble without him. The Sooners already were thin on the perimeter. 

But Harkless also was OU’s toughest player and most athletic starter. He is a fearless player. Fearlessness is not necessarily a trait you need to beat Iowa State, but it absolutely is a trait you need to beat Texas Tech. 

Porter Moser was exasperated Tuesday night over OU’s second straight dismal second half. But he was a little too bullish on the first halves of each of the blowouts. 

OU trailed Iowa State 40-25 at halftime and trailed Texas Tech 29-22 at halftime. Being down seven at halftime in Lubbock is not much of an indictment – I still say Tech is the Big 12’s best Final Four hope – but the Sooners had 22 points in the first half and seemed to have little hope of generating much more. 

OU was out-skilled, out-athleted and out-toughed against Tech. 

Harkless can’t do much about the skill discrepancy – he's a blue-collar player, but he is a comparatively good athlete and one of the Big 12’s toughest players. 

Harkless would have helped a bunch in the second half, when the Sooners were tossed around. 

'We've got to move past it':Second-half slump leads to OU's blowout loss against No. 9 Texas Tech

“We talked about what we have to do better in the second half, and we didn’t do it,” Moser said. “We didn’t do it. It was indicative the first play, second half, we got eaten up on physicality. We talked about that at halftime.” 

It actually was the second OU possession of the half – Terrence Shannon and Adonis Arms double-teamed Jalen Hill, leading to a weak pass that was intercepted by Kevin Obanor – but no matter. 

And Moser was upset over the first defensive play of the second half. Tech got the ball deep to Bryson Williams on the block, and no one came to help Tanner Groves. Williams wheeled for an easy toss shot. 

“All first half, Williams and Obanor, we were making ‘em catch it off the block, we were winning the battle of the catch,” Moser said. But in the second half, “Williams caught it both feet in the paint. We were doubling and stunting the whole first half, then everybody just stared and looked at Bryson Williams take Tanner one-on-one.” 

Those plays the set the tone for the blowout. OU had 12 of its 20 turnovers in the second half. And while the Sooners made eight of their 20 second-half shots, OU made just three of its 13 shots in the first 14½ minutes of the second half. 

The Sooners were not good in the second half. And when your first-half deficit of 29-22 (or 40-25) is a point of pride, you’ve got problems. OU is 14-14. The Sooners have fell off the NCAA Tournament bracket projections. Now the Sooners are threatening to fall off the NCAA bubble. 

Moser admitted he was torn when talking to his team in the locker room at Tech. 

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“There’s no magic formula,” Moser said. “It is a balance. These guys are fragile. We’ve got some young guys in here. We’ve got a lot of guys that have never had to play the role they’re playing. We need some guys to play a leadership role, a star player role, so a lot of them are new, so it is fragile. 

“I’ve got high standards of what I want to do. We expected to win this game, we came in here, at halftime, we expected to play well in the second half, to do some things better. 

OU was playing well before going to Iowa State. The Sooners had beaten these same Red Raiders, 70-55 in Norman, and taken Kansas (in Allen Fieldhouse) and Texas to the wire before losing. But that was with Harkless. 

OU is not deep enough or good enough to withstand the storm of a major injury. Teams like Tech and Texas and OSU have much more roster equitability. Not the Sooners. 

“We need depth to get us through the second half,” Moser said. “When the starters get exhausted, their play goes way down. But whether it’s a two-point loss against Kansas or an overtime loss against Texas, gotta put it in the bank and move on.” 

Perhaps playing Marvin Johnson more is in the cards. The Eastern Illinois transfer probably is OU’s best athlete. He seems to make a million mistakes, but he’s athletic. Johnson, who suffered an ankle injury on January 29 that has kept him sidelined for a few weeks, played 10 minutes against Tech. 

Freshmen Bijon Cortes and C.J. Noland can be overmatched against the likes of Tech and Texas, but maybe they can hold up better down the stretch against OSU, West Virginia and Kansas State, then a likely Big 12 Tournament first-round game against WVU. 

But either way, without Harkless, the Sooner season seems destined to end in disappointment. 

Tramel's ScissorTales:Will the Big 12 only get five teams into the NCAA men's basketball tournament?

The List: Schedules void of I-AA foes 

In 2022, only 15 of the 131 major-college football teams will play schedules void of Division I-AA. According to fbschedules.com, that’s the same as last season but down from the 18 from two years ago. 

The Big Ten has a rule restricting its teams from scheduling I-AA opponents unless it’s a season in which the Big Ten school has only four conference home games. So this list includes five Big Ten schools. Every member of the Southeastern, Atlantic Coast, Mid-American and Mountain West conferences is playing a Division I-AA opponent. 

It’s a broken sport. Here are the 15 holdouts, ranked by schedule difficulty: 

1. Texas: Louisiana-Monroe, Alabama, Texas-San Antonio.  

2. Notre Dame: at Ohio State, Marshall, California, Nevada-Las Vegas (the Fighting Irish are contractually obligated to play ACC teams, plus has a few traditional opponents; these are the opponents that fill neither bill).  

3. Southern Cal: Rice, Fresno State, Notre Dame.  

4. Ohio State: Notre Dame, Arkansas State, Toledo.  

5. Colorado: TCU, at Air Force, at Minnesota. 

6. Texas-El Paso: Oklahoma, New Mexico State, at New Mexico, Boise State.  

7. Old Dominion: Virginia Tech, at East Carolina, at Virginia, Liberty.  

8. Georgia State: South Carolina, North Carolina, Charlotte, at Army. 

9. Louisville: at Central Florida, South Florida, James Madison, at Kentucky. 

10. Penn State: Ohio U., at Auburn, Central Michigan. 

11. Houston: Texas-San Antonio, at Texas Tech, Kansas, Rice. 

12. Michigan State: Western Michigan, Akron, at Washington. 

13. OU: Texas-El Paso, Kent State, at Nebraska. 

14. Maryland: Buffalo, at Charlotte, SMU. 

15. Michigan: Colorado State, Hawaii, Connecticut. 

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Air Force veteran recalls Bob Foster fight 

Tom Lorenzetti left Oklahoma in 1972 and hasn’t been back. Returned to his roots in Connecticut and built a life. 

But now Lorenzetti is 73 years old and reminiscing about life and wanted to share some memories of a remarkable time. 

Particularly, one remarkable night. December 16, 1971. The night of Oklahoma City’s first championship boxing match. The night the great Bob Foster stopped Oklahoman Brian Kelly Burden with a technical knockout in the third round, at State Fair Arena. 

Lorenzetti, then 21 and an airman stationed at Tinker Air Force Base, was the ring announcer for that fight.  

“Needless to say, it was a thrill for me that night,” Lorenzetti wrote. 

I called Lorenzetti on Tuesday, and we chatted about that time so long ago. The fight occurred three weeks after the OU-Nebraska Game of the Century, a football spectacle that Lorenzetti attended. 

He was transitioning out of the Air Force. Lorenzetti already had spent 18 months stationed in the Philippines, working support for bombers and fighter jets making runs in the Mekong Delta area of Vietnam. 

Then Lorenzetti was transferred to Tinker, where he was part of a program that transitioned airmen to civilian work. Lorenzetti got a job at radio station KJEM radio, which today is KJYO (KJ-103). 

Fifty years later, Lorenzetti still has a distinctive and commanding voice, a solid Connecticut accent, and it’s easy to see why a radio station would put Lorenzetti on the air, doing news and sports reports, even at what then was a country music station. I thought of my friend Owen Canfield, a Connecticut transplant, who in addition to his four-decade journalism career became the canter at St. Eugene’s Catholic Church and is the public-address announcer for Bishop McGuinness basketball. 

Anyway, Lorenzetti’s voice caught the attention of boxing promoter/trainer Pat O’Grady, who was relatively new to town but who was fast building a boxing empire. O’Grady’s son, Sean, eventually would win the world lightweight title, in 1981, 10 years after the Foster fight. 

O’Grady called Lorenzetti and invited him to the O’Grady gym. 

“He says, ‘I heard you on the radio. Have you ever done any ring announcing?’” Lorenzetti related. 

The answer was no, but growing back East, Lorenzetti was well aware of boxing culture. So Lorenzetti was hired to announce some fights and was O’Grady’s natural choice to be the ring announcer for the Foster fight. And when Foster arrived in town several weeks before the fight to train, Lorenzetti began regularly interviewing both fighters to promote the event. 

In 1971, boxing was nearing the end of its grip on the American sports consciousness. But it still was going strong. 1971 was the year of the first fight in the famed Joe Frazier/Muhammad Ali trilogy. Boxing was huge in the Olympics. 

And Bob Foster was part of that boxing frenzy. Coming out of Albuquerque, Foster had won the light-heavyweight championship in 1968. In 1970, he fought Frazier for the heavyweight title but was knocked out in the second round. In 1972, Foster would fight Ali, losing on an eighth-round knockout. Foster was undefeated as a light-heavyweight when he fought Burden. 

Foster, who died in 2015 at age 73, eventually would be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame’s inaugural class, in 1990. He was a star, and having Foster fight local hero Brian Kelly Burden (of Cushing) for the title was a major bonanza for Oklahoma City. 

“He was a big deal,” Lorenzetti. “He was very skilled. And I’ve seen a lot of boxing in my day. He was the real deal.” 

Lorenzetti said he got to know Burden well – the fighter’s real name was Kelly Burden, but he took the ring name of Brian Kelly; I’ve always just referred to him as Brian Kelly Burden, and that’s how Lorenzetti referred to him. 

Boxing was different then. Foster had won the light-heavyweight title on May 24, 1968. He fought three more fights in 1968, four in 1969, five in 1970 and four in 1971 before arriving in Oklahoma City. 

“Tall, lanky, but a heck of a punch,” Lorenzetti said of Foster. “Brian Kelly Burden at the time, 35 wins and a couple of losses (actually 39-4), but he was really really good. 

“I knew one thing. The first time this (title fight) was going to happen in Oklahoma City, it was going to be exciting. One thing I like to do is get people excited. It was good for that time.” 

Lorenzetti donned his tuxedo and went to State Fair Arena that night. The preliminary card had some good fights. But when the main event arrived, O’Grady informed Lorenzetti the fighters weren’t quite ready. O’Grady needed his ring announcer to entertain the crowd for about 15 minutes. 

“What do you want me to say?” Lorenzetti said. 

Anything, he was told. Just keep the crowd occupied. 

So Lorenzetti strolled into the ring and extolled the virtues of Oklahoma City. 

“How great it was,” Lorenzetti, a refrain he repeated Tuesday. “Talked about Oklahoma in general. I loved the place. I just thought Oklahoma was the greatest thing a young guy could be introduced to. 

“I talked to the crowd a lot. Pumped them up. Then it just so happens, here came the fighters. 

“I introduced each one of them. I was pretty loud and boisterous. I tell you what. I never heard the screaming as loud as it was that night by the Oklahoma fans. The roof was going to come off. That’s how much they followed Brian Kelly Burden. 

“They wanted it. They wanted it bad. It wasn’t to be.” 

Burden avoided Foster’s first six punches, but the seventh landed strong, and soon enough, Burden was down. He got up, just as he did after two more knockdowns in the first three rounds. 

A few years ago, Sean O’Grady recounted to our Jenni Carlson how the crowd tried to will Burden to his feet. 

"It was like the whole crowd had a mission," O'Grady said. "The mission was for their guy Brian Kelly to beat this awesome fighter.” 

But referee Earl Keel had seen enough. After that third knockdown, Keel ended the fight. 

“Foster was really pummeling him there at the end,” Lorenzetti said. “Too bad. I still think Brian Kelly Burden was a really good fighter.” 

By March 1972, Lorenzetti was gone from Oklahoma. Honorably discharged from the service, married with a son, Lorenzetti went back to Connecticut, though the radio station asked him to stay. 

Lorenzetti built a career working at Johnson & Johnson, Superior Electric and Cental Connecticut State University. He was involved in sales, training and marketing. 

Lorenzetti never put his voice to use again in the sporting realm. But being the ring announcer for Foster-Burden changed his career. 

“Not in radio or anything of the like, but the experiences helped me in life all around, from public speaking of my companies,” Lorenzetti said. “Very comfortable with it, and it was all because of that. Do something like that, and everything else seems less intimidating.” 

Lorenzetti, who now lives in Bristol, Connecticut, still raves about OKC. Meeting music star Bobbie Gentry (“Ode to Billy Joe”) in the KJEM studios. Announcing the third quarter of a Globetrotters performance at State Fair Arena. 

And being the ring announcer at Foster-Burden 50 years ago this winter. 

“Not too often do people get that type of opportunity,” Lorenzetti wrote. “For me it was great and something I will never forget.” 

Mailbag: NCAA punishments 

On the Sports Animal this week, I threw out an alternative for NCAA punishments. Instead of penalizing a particular program with a post-season ban (OSU basketball, for example), how about a plan that would penalize an entire athletic department without costing athletes opportunities? 

My suggestion: ban a school that goes on probation from hosting any NCAA post-season event. Baseball, softball, golf, track, tennis, etc. 

Rob: “I liked your opinion of taking away the chance at hosting NCAA Championship events as part of a college team's punishment. I always thought the NCAA could levy fines for teams that violate the rules. But here's more: fine the assistant coach violating the rule, fine the head coach for the assistant coach violating the rule, fine the athletic director for the assistant coach violating the rule, fine the university president for the assistant coach violating the rule, fine the regents for the assistant coach violating the rule. And make the fine have some bite! I am thinking of a fine of 75 percent of the person's yearly pay. I know this seems silly, and that boosters could end up paying the fines on behalf of the guilty, but ... that could get their attention.” 

Tramel: Interesting. But I doubt the NCAA's ability to fine individuals would hold up in court. The NCAA has lost a variety of compensation cases over the years. Conferences have the ability to fine -- don't ask me to explain the difference -- but often, these guys move on, especially the assistant coaches, so that's not much of a hammer. 

Clearly, the best way to punish is to make it so the schools are motivated to not hire cheaters but so that current players aren't punished as well. That’s why I came up with the hosting plan. 

If the basketball team goes on probation, the softball or baseball team can’t host a regional. You can say that’s not fair to the softball or baseball teams, but at least they get to compete. And that provides some campus pushback. The athletic director will be a little more dogmatic about following the rules if he knows a misstep by one of his coaches could bring the fury from them all. 

Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.