Oklahoma is a more talented football team than Texas Tech. I think even the most ardent Red Raiders fan would have to acknowledge that the Sooners, from the top of their roster to the bottom, have more NFL-type football players.

But Texas Tech, which is a touchdown underdog at Oklahoma despite being the No. 2 team in the country,
can win Saturday night. And the reason is that the Red Raiders, while having less overall talent than the Sooners, will also have the best player on the field.

That player, wide receiver Michael Crabtree, is the player who needs to have a big game if Texas Tech is going to pull the upset and take a big step toward a spot in the BCS national championship game. While Texas Tech has plenty of good players, Crabtree is the one guy who can look at the opposite sideline and say, “I’m better than all of them.”

Will Crabtree do it? I expect Oklahoma to make stopping him its first, second and third priority on defense, but I still think he can. This is the biggest stage yet for the best player in college football, and I think he’ll come up big.

Oklahoma defensive coordinator Brent Venables appears to be a strong candidate to become the next head coach at Clemson.

SoonerScoop.com posted a photo yesterday showing Clemson officials arriving at the Oklahoma City airport, and Clemson athletic director Terry Don Phillips is apparently in town to interview Venables for the job.

There were rumors that Oklahoma offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson was also a candidate, but he says he knows nothing about it. Wilson did say he’s heard the rumors about Venables, but he doesn’t know if there’s any truth to them.

“Everybody keeps throwing Brent’s name out there from time to time,” Wilson said. “But we don’t ever talk about it up (in the football office).”

The 38-year-old Venables played at Kansas State and was an assistant coach there from 1993 to 1998. When Bob Stoops, at the time a Kansas State assistant, became the Oklahoma head coach in 1999, he brought Venables with him.

Venables did not show up when Oklahoma assistants were made available to the media yesterday.

Texas Tech coach Mike Leach is finding himself attached to various rumors about vacancies at other programs, and he’s not exactly shooting those rumors down.

Asked about the possibility that he could leave Texas Tech, Leach would say only, “Playing OU is enough of a handful without worrying about any of that.”

That’s not exactly, “I’m not going anywhere,” but even if he did say that, plenty of coaches have said that and then gone somewhere anyway.

Texas Tech says it plans to renegotiate Leach’s contract, but not until after the season. By then, he may have found another job elsewhere, and there will no doubt be plenty of schools willing to pay more than the $1.85 million he’s scheduled to make next season.

Texas Tech quarterback Graham Harrell has emerged as the favorite in the Heisman Trophy race after his 40-for-50, 456-yard, six-touchdown performance against Oklahoma State on Saturday. If Tech beats Oklahoma in two weeks, the Heisman is Harrell’s.

But if I had a vote, it would go to Harrell’s teammate, wide receiver Michael Crabtree.

When I watch the Tech passing game, I see two types of plays: The plays when the defense is double-teaming Crabtree and leaving another wide receiver wide open for an easy catch, and the plays when the defense is double-teaming Crabtree and Crabtree makes the catch anyway. That’s how much respect Crabtree gets from opposing coaches.

He also gets a lot of respect from NFL scouts. The Heisman is about college production and not about pro potential, but it’s at least worth pointing out that Crabtree is considered a much better pro prospect than Harrell is. The NFL think Crabtree is his team’s best player.

I’ve got nothing against Harrell, who runs Mike Leach’s offense to perfection. I’ve also got nothing against Texas quarterback Colt McCoy, who is probably the player most likely to win the Heisman if Harrell has a bad game against Oklahoma. But the Heisman is supposed to go to the best player in college football, and that’s Michael Crabtree.

This week’s BCS standings are out, and as everyone knew, Alabama remained No. 1 and Texas Tech remained No. 2. As long as the Crimson Tide and Red Raiders keep winning, they’re on course for the BCS title game.

But the real interest starts at No. 3, where Texas edges No. 4 Florida. That would seem, at first, like good news for Longhorns fans.

But it really doesn’t matter. The truth is, if Florida and Alabama keep winning, they’re on a collision course to meet each other in the SEC championship game, and if the Gators were to win that, there’s nothing the Longhorns could do to keep the Gators from leapfrogging them.

Another way of looking at the remainder of the college football season is that there are three teams — Alabama, Texas Tech, Florida — that have complete control of their fate. And then there’s Texas and Oklahoma, for whom it’s a little complicated, because Texas won the head-to-head battle but could get bypassed if Oklahoma wins impressively against Texas Tech in two weeks.

After Alabama, Texas Tech, Florida, Texas and Oklahoma come USC and Penn State, both of which need to hope for a whole lot of upsets. It’s also at least theoretically possible that Utah could get into the Top 2, but realistically it’s not going to happen.

This week’s BCS standings, as well as the AP and coaches’ polls, are below.

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This is an outrage: The November 29 Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game has a chance to be one of the biggest football games of the season, with the winner possibly going to the Big 12 title game and perhaps the BCS national championship game — and yet thousands of seats will be empty.

That’s because Oklahoma State refuses to sell individual game tickets. Instead, the Oklahoma State administration says it’s simple: Either you buy at least four season tickets or you can’t go to the game at all.

As a result of that policy, Oklahoma State sold more than 39,000 season tickets this year, a school record. But those 39,000 people are the only ones who will be admitted to Boone Pickens Stadium, which seats 60,000.

It’s a travesty. The state of Oklahoma will stand still on November 29 — especially if the Sooners and Cowboys both run the table between now and then — and it’s absurd that tens of thousands of Oklahomans who want to go to the game won’t be able to because they can’t afford to pay $1,000 or more to buy four season tickets, while tens of thousands of seats will be empty.

When the news broke that Kansas State coach Ron Prince wouldn’t return next season, speculation immediately turned to Texas Christian coach Gary Patterson, a former Kansas State player.

And then the Kansas State Rivals site reported today that the deal was done, and Patterson had agreed to leave TCU for his alma mater. Several other news outlets then picked up the report.

But Patterson’s agent, George Bass, says it’s not true.

“We have had no contact with K-State,” Bass told Rivals.com.

Patterson is 71-27 at TCU, and he’s widely regarded as likely to leave TCU at some point to coach a BCS conference team. But right now the reports that he’s leaving for Kansas State appear to be premature.

Kansas State has announced the resignation of coach Ron Prince.

The resignation will be effective at the end of the season, and Prince will coach the team for the final three games of the season. It’s still possible that Kansas State, which is 4-5 this year, could make a bowl game; it’s not clear who would coach the team if the Wildcats do go bowling.

Kansas State is on a three-game losing streak and is coming off an ugly 52-21 loss at the hands of Kansas. It’s the third straight season the Wildcats have lost to the Jayhawks. In addition to his record, Prince has been criticized in some quarters for his recruiting, including what many believe is an over-reliance on junior college players.

Heading into the 2008 season, Prince was one of just six African-American coaches in Division I-A football. Two of those six, Prince and Washington coach Tyrone Willingham, will lose their jobs at the end of the year.

When Prince was hired in 2006, Kansas State was in a decline, having gone 5-6 in 2005 and 4-7 in 2004. He improved the team at first, going 7-6 in his first season, but he has an overall record of 16-18 and has never come close to the kind of success Kansas State had in the late 1990s and early part of this decade, when the Wildcats were routinely winning nine, 10 or 11 games.

To no one’s surprise, Alabama is the new No. 1 team in the country in both the Associated Press media poll and the USA Today coaches poll.

But to my astonishment, the coaches ranked Oklahoma ahead of Texas.

How is that possible? Why on earth did the coaches pick Oklahoma No. 4 and Texas No. 7? Have they forgotten that Texas beat Oklahoma on a neutral field? And who on earth was the coach who voted Oklahoma No. 1?

The truth is, college football coaches aren’t particularly interested in trying to rank the top 25 teams in the country. They’re interested in their own teams and the next opponent, and they don’t spend enough time thinking about other teams to consider that there’s just no justification right now for having Oklahoma ranked higher than Texas.

We college football fans are left to hope that the season shakes out in such a way that the coaches’ silly evaluations of teams they’ve never watched won’t keep us from getting the two best teams in the country in the BCS title game. But for now we’re stuck with terrible decisions by the college football coaches who vote in the USA Today poll.

Both polls and the BCS Top 25 are below.

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Texas Tech’s win over Texas tonight was the best game of this college football season, and the biggest play of that game has me re-thinking my own choice for the Heisman Trophy.

Tech receiver Michael Crabtree made the play of the year when he caught a 28-yard touchdown pass with one second left to secure the 39-33 win, and he finished the game with 10 catches for 127 yards. Even before this game I thought Crabtree was the best receiver in college football, but now I think he’s the best player in college football, period.

Texas quarterback Colt McCoy will probably win the Heisman despite tonight’s loss. It was far from McCoy’s best game of the season, but he still put together solid numbers (20 of 34 for 294 yards, with two touchdowns and one interception), and he had such a huge lead among the Heisman voters heading into tonight’s game that I doubt he lost it. He’d be No. 2 on my ballot. Texas Tech quarterback Graham Harrell is also a strong candidate.

As for the national title picture, Alabama will move up to No. 1 in the BCS rankings, and Penn State will be No. 2. Texas Tech will be No. 3, but I think if the Red Raiders run the table — which would mean beating Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Baylor and a Big 12 Championship Game opponent — they’ll surpass the Nittany Lions.

Other than Texas Tech fans, the people who should be happiest with this result are the fans of one-loss teams Oklahoma, USC and Florida, all of which are back in the national championship picture — a picture that just got a lot more interesting.

Here’s Crabtree’s game-winning touchdown:

From out friends at Fan IQ.