Stoops has an ally in his SEC fight

This blog first appeared in the Tulsa (Okla.) World newspaper.

Bob Stoops hasn't gotten a lot of sympathy since his perceived slapdown of the SEC.

Sorry.

His perceived slapdown of the bottom half of the SEC. Even his brother, the new Kentucky coach, chose conference over blood when asked for a reaction.

"We don't have to answer to that," Mark Stoops said, per the Palm Beach Post. "Our league speaks for itself."

Won't someone come to Bob's defense?

Why yes, actually, someone will. Someone did. One of his peers, in fact.

And you're not going to believe which one.

"I applaud Bob for standing up and taking up for our league," Mack Brown said to the Dallas Morning News.

I applaud Brown for taking up for Stoops. He saw his rival coach's comments for what they were, an attempt to keep his program (and his conference) on even ground with the bullet train of college football.

What's Stoops (or Brown or Urban Meyer or Jimbo Fisher or David Shaw or any coach outside the SEC) supposed to say?

"Yeah, well… We got no shot. I mean, none. We're playin' for second obviously."

Course not.

Now, I think Stoops could have made his point more effectively had he not picked on the SEC's also-rans. Every league has those. People don't so much care what's going on that low in the standings. It's the heavyweights that draw the attention. And prestige.

But you can't blame Stoops from dialing up his inner Youngstown, putting up his dukes and defending his own. That's what he was doing that evening at OU's Tulsa caravan stop.

And that's what Brown was doing Monday at his pre-summer press conference.

You wouldn't blame Mack for going stone cold silent at the mere mention of "Stoops." You remember OU's rag-dolling of the Longhorns last October, a game so lopsided that the USA Today column that followed was entitled "Is Mack Brown nearing the end of his Red River rope?"

"As the Sooners were accepting the trophy… Mack Brown was sitting beneath harsh TV lights, declaring the loss 'unacceptable.' Texas' coach looked tired, older than his 61 years," George Schroeder wrote from the Cotton Bowl. "On days like these, and there have been too many of them, he always does."

Good on Mack for putting that humiliation aside and, in a sense, joining the SEC fight with his Red River tormentor.