Have the Cowboys Played a Trial Run for the Trip to No. 7 Oregon?
STILLWATER – As most of you that know me or have read and listened over they years know, I’m not a gamer. I don’t have a Playstation or a copy of EA Sports College Football 26. My video game days ended with Pong. Okay, maybe I played a little Frogger in the day. I am curious. The Vegas line on the Oklahoma State at Oregon game opened over the weekend at Oklahoma State +23.5 and quickly rolled up to +27.5 for the Cowboys. Okay, so what does the game say? The Oregon numbers are substantially better than Oklahoma State, but the skill of the player can make up for some of that.
I asked several of the Oklahoma State players if they had run a simulation or played the Cowboys at the Ducks just for fun.
“Yeah, yeah, I play video games and College Football ‘26,” nose tackle De’Marion Thomas said. “I’ve been playing a lot of 2K lately.”
Oklahoma State at Oregon?
“No, I have not,” answered Thomas. “I played Oklahoma State and Tulsa, just the Turnpike Classic. I have some friends that play it. I will get to it this week. There is a lot of preparing going into the game, scouting report. I’m going to have to peek at that and see how it correlates to real life.”
“I might, I actually might,” said running back Kalib Hicks. “For sure, I might do that for sure.”
Both joked that it is an extension of game prep, but the simulations I saw weren’t great for the Cowboys. I saw a 41-20 Oregon win and worse a 59-21 Ducks conquest.
Hicks wouldn’t be pleased with those results, but he really wasn’t pleased with his player ratings in the game.
“I think my speed needs to go up, my power, just everything for real,” Hicks said of how the game ratings treated him. “They’ll have to do it, they’ll have to do it someday.”
Hopefully, the transfer from Oklahoma will show some production this coming weekend to give the folks at EA Sports some motivation for that.
One Cowboys that has some first game numbers to back up a reason for EA Sports to rethink is receiver transfer Terrill Davis from Division II UCO. Davis in his first game as a Cowboy had two catches for 75-yards, a per catch average of 37.5.
Davis doesn’t play it at all.
“No I’m not, not until they put me in there,” answered Davis.
John Holcomb of the Cowboys Radio Network and KOTV Channel 6 in Tulsa said, “stick to your guns.”
One Cowboy that won’t be looking at the game is because he will be looking at everything he can get his hands on to prepare for the real game on Saturday in Eugene.
"No, I'm not really big into playing video,” said linebacker Bryan McCoy Jr. “I just love watching film and watching NFL video, tape, and stuff like that. I like college football a little more because guys show a little more heart, but I like it."
His attitude isn’t fazed by point spreads and simulated games on a video game. Call McCoy Jr. a realist to the enth degree.
"I'm just very excited and everything will be played between the white lines. There is really nothing else to say about it,” McCoy said with excitement in his voice. “We wear orange and they wear green. I'm not really going to put any name to it. They will watch the film, we will watch the film and we're going to play football. They have athletes and we have athletes and we all get paid to play this game. It shouldn't be any different than what is going on."
Now, there is a phrase I’m still getting used to in college football “we all get paid to play this game.”
For the folks interested, our own Zach Lancaster said he will follow up this story with a recap from the times he will play the matchup early this week.
