I’m going to leave he review of last weekend’s football action for one day because there is too much other news to talk about:

82 year old Joe Paterno, fresh off of hip replacement surgery, has a new contract extension for three more years at Penn State. There are literally dozens of ways a guy could make fun of the situation, but given that the team is heading to the Rose Bowl as Big Ten champs while my team isn’t going anywhere. This is a situation we should appreciate while we can, I guess, because we sure won’t see anything like it again. I would love to be a fly on the wall around the program to know what kind of a role he actually plays with the team. Surely he can’t be very active anymore.

Far more important than that, though, are the struggles that both teams have faced heading into the BCS Championship game. The first news I heard today was that Florida offensive coordinator Dan Mullen will be calling the plays in the game. He’s a very good OC, but his head won’t be totally in the task – he’s the new head coach at Mississippi State. As he tries to juggle two tasks it could seem reasonable that there could be some confusion, frustration or resentment around Florida. that could be helpful for Oklahoma, and it’s just the kind of detail that sticks n the mind when we have so long to get ready for these games.

Before I could process what that all meant, though, much bigger news came along. Oklahoma running back DeMarco Murray will miss the game after rupturing his hamstring and requiring surgery. The injury was suffered on the opening kickoff of the Big 12 championship, and was initially thought to just be a bad bruise. Murray accounted for almost 1400 yards of total offense, and he scored 18 touchdowns. Oklahoma obviously has lots of options – Murray wasn’t even the leading rusher. The loss of Murray, though, robs the Sooners’ offense of depth and texture. The trick now is determining how much of an impact the situation will have, and balancing that with the response the public has to the situation. I’m not yet sure what I think about the whole thing.