The Football Brainiacs

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– Thayer Evans of Sports Illustrated is reporting that coach Josh Heupel is out at the University of Oklahoma. We have not been able to confirm this and, as I will explain below, do not expect to be able to.

– The three names we are hearing as possible candidates so far are Spavital (TAMU), Meacham (TCU) and Helton (WKU). The fact that we are mentioning names of candidates we have heard Oklahoma may be interested in isn’t a confirmation of Josh Heupel being out. We have simply been told that OU has been in contact with at least these three coaches. We know there has been a rumor that Spavital interviewed with Oklahoma yesterday and we can confirm that this is not true. However, that does not mean that an interview did not take place at some point prior. We can’t say one way or another.

– Those of you who follow our twitter account will recall this tweet from last week:

There is A LOT of smoke right now coming out of OU in RE coaching changes. Hearing things are happening as we speak.

— TFB Sooners (@TFB_Sooners) December 31, 2014

Since that tweet we have heard multiple names circulated as coaches who will be out or may already be out. However, throughout this we’ve tried to avoid posting unconfirmed information and certainly attempted to leave names of coaches out. But at the time the tweet was posted we had been told, in no uncertain terms, that unlike previous changes, where staff changes were made after signing day or were delayed significantly, the process had already been in motion and the changes were imminent.

You will recall that on December 17th in the Open Post we noted the following (here):

We got a tip last night that we thought y’all might find interesting. We’d normally put this information on TOP because it hasn’t been fully vetted just yet, but it does jive with some general things we’ve been hearing. Essentially, we were told that Bob Stoops and David Boren had a day-long meeting recently to discuss the concerns of fans and some of the major boosters regarding the current state of the football program.

We have been hearing for a while that changes to Stoops’ staff will happen, but nothing concrete has really developed to date. And until it does, we remain cautious with respect to whatever possible changes may or may not come. But this also isn’t the first time we’ve heard there are some concerns from inside the administration and, perhaps just as if not more importantly, from major boosters.

In other words, these changes have been brewing for a while and that note mentioned on the 17th certainly wasn’t the first word we had received that changes were on the horizon.

– Over the weekend it was circulating amongst the OU players that multiple coaches were let go. We attempted to confirm it from a well placed source and the source said, referring to the dismissals we attempted to confirm, “I have heard that but cannot confirm it at this time”. We were given names but we will leave those names out until they are confirmed.

– In the past day the athletic department has been locked down pretty tight in terms of information getting out. One of our sources inside the program said that a lot of people on the inside are as in the dark as a lot of people on the outside. Another source said that it was simply getting too tense to really talk about anything. We have tried to discern what exactly will be addressed in this mornings press conference with Bob Stoops but again it’s been very difficult to get more than educated conjecture even from people inside the program.

– There are a number of folks, including players who believe certain changes have already taken place. I will say that one of the people rumored to have been dismissed from his position, is still speaking to recruits. This may simply be because he will be reassigned. Again though, that information, while coming from people close to the program is not confirmed. That may sound peculiar since one would assume people inside the program would know, however this has been a unique time where, even people well placed within the program aren’t absolutely certain what exactly is going on.

So with all that said, we will continue to leave names out of the discussion unless names are reported by others, are announced or we have officially confirmed them ourselves but we certainly expect more names to come out shortly. Again, as a reminder coach Stoops will meet with the media today at 11 am and Brandon will be in attendance.

– UPDATE (8:19 am): As I mentioned above, we have heard that one of the offensive coaches OU has been in contact with is Jake Spavital from Texas A&M. If he is a serious candidate, we are not in favor of this hire. Spavital has had the help of far too many good offensive minds at TAMU too discern whether he truly is a great play calling OC. Additionally, I’ve been told that Texas A&M recently hired David Christenson from Utah in order to help Spavital. OU needs to get this hire absolutely correct and in our opinion there is too much risk surrounding that possible hire. Again, we don’t know what direction OU is going to go in but we would not be in favor of this hire.

– UPDATE (8:34 am): Josh Heupel has put out the following statement. Class move.

pic.twitter.com/ftrICFj4t1

— Josh Heupel (@OU_CoachHeupel) January 6, 2015