Josh Pate: 'Poverty Program Oklahoma State is going to look at Christmas lights'

On his show Thursday Josh Pate told a story, a parable of Christmases and College Football Saturdays past.

"Boy oh Boy," Pate began. "Sometimes the Sarah McLachlan Special sneaks up on you."

In Pate's lexicon, the Sara McLachlan Special is a college football matchup so one-sided that it elicits the strains of "The Arms of an Angel," the crystalline-voiced Canadian singer's tender ballad about the weak and vulnerable, famously used as the backdrop for images of forgotten animals in shelters, victims of animal cruelty.

Pate continued, "Other times you can see her from a mile away. And I really think she's gonna be coming to us from Eugene."

"Oklahoma State at Oregon, right now this line is twenty-eight-and-a-half." The Nashville-based talk show host consulted his paper. "Which is a shame, because once upon a time, not too long ago, kids...this would have been a marquee matchup not too long ago."

Indeed, when the home-and-home series was originally announced in November of 2018, the Cowboys were coming off back-to-back Top 25,10-3 seasons, including a 2017 team that scored 45 points a game, fourth in the country.

The Ducks had suffered through seasons of 4-8 and 7-6.

"Oregon is still what they're supposed to be. Oklahoma State has fallen on hard times, a poverty program by their own admission lately."

Reaching for an analogy, Pate recalled a memory from his boyhood.

"Where I grew up in rural Georgia, round Christmas time, one Friday night, you'd go to Golden Corral. You'd get stuffed, get you maybe a to-go box. I'm not sure if you're supposed to do that at Golden Corral. Anyway, you'd leave, and before you go home, it's December, your mom or your dad says, 'You guys want to go look at Christmas lights?'"

"And the kids in the back seat joyously ring out, 'yeah we want to go look at Christmas lights.'"

That meant a drive to the homes in the hills with long driveways and immaculate Christmas decorations on the three-and four-story homes.

"But all the while you know you've got a finite amount of time in there. You're only there to visit. That's not the neighborhood you live in. You've eventually gotta turn around, and you've got to go back home."

Mike Gundy said earlier this week that the Cowboys had spent $7 million on NIL over the last three years, while he proposed that the Ducks had spent $40 million last year alone, figures he'd pulled from the back pocket of his Golden Corral stretch big-boy pants.

Dan Lanning countered, "We spend to win."

Pate said, "Oklahoma State is going to see Christmas lights this weekend."

"I can tell when Dan Lanning is about to run it up on someone. They're about to run it up on Oklahoma State."

"Kindly right now, one-and-a-half is my level of concern for this game."

The Ducks are favored by 28.5. In his coaching career, Lanning is 26-0 against unranked opponents, and Oregon hasn't lost a nonconference game at home since Boise State in 2008. OSU is starting a redshirt freshman quarterback with 20 career passes.

The lights are about to go out.

Game facts:

1-0 Oklahoma State at 1-0 AP No. 6 Oregon, 12:30 p.m. PT at Autzen Stadium, TV on CBS and Paramount, Brad Nessler, Gary Danielson and Jenny Dell on the broadcast.

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