Taking a commanding 34-0 lead into halftime, the Oklahoma Sooners coasted to a 55-14 victory over the Washington Huskies at Husky Stadium. Sam Bradford completed 18 of 21 passes for 304 yards and five touchdowns and ran for a sixth.

Commentary:

The question is whether Tyrone Willingham will last the season or stay its course? Is his exit as coach of the Washington Huskies coming sooner rather than later, or "Sooners" rather than later as we punned in our headline?

Nowadays, he motors to Montlake in a sputtering 2004 Gilby, and has won only two of his last 14 games, having lost five in a row. Former coach Keith Gilbertson resigned before the 1-10 season was fully recorded in the 2004 record books.

Certainly the Dawgs had a puncher’s chance against mighty Oklahoma on Saturday night – at least as much as Seattle’s adopted Harry “Kid” Mathews had against Rocky Marciano in 1952. Rocky kayoed the "Kid" in the second round, after losing the first round to Mathews on the experts' cards. His manager, Jack Hurley, was a genius at building a fighter’s reputation, thoughtfully rebuilding Mathews' mojo, which was helped by spin from Royal Brougham of the Seattle P-I. Replay of round. This, with some help from United States      Senator Warren G. Magnusson who argued the "injustice" being done to Mathews.

Much the same as back then, the fish-wraps are spinning Willingham's season, saying he has too many "kids" and inexperience (blanks) on his team rather than real bullets. But some of this inexperience was avoidable in my mind. See Will recruiting mistakes cost Huskies?

Hurley taught the "Kid,"  a skilled boxer, how to punch.

How about setting this goal for Willingham's punch-less Dawgs: that is, beating both Stanford and Arizona, which are Washington's next two opponents? That goal seems fair enough to me and will demonstrate a certain measure of progress -- although Tyrone is lagging badly behind rival coaches Jim Harbaugh and Mike Stoops in all-over record at his institution. He's 11-28 at UW, while Harbaugh is 5-9 at Stanford and Stoops is 19-30 at Arizona. Willingham is 1-0 against Harbaugh and 1-2 against Stoops.

While Harbaugh and Stoops have converted their cadavers into Zombies, Doc Willingham is still operating on his corpse, who occasionally rises up, gasps for air and then falls back on the operating table with a “Sonics’ boom.”

Warning to Willingham: Watch out for Stanford's Toby Gerhart -- who is out of Norco.

Sure the Dawgs are playing a tough schedule, but so did Mathews when he fought Marciano. The "Kid" got off the deck to fight with even more vigor and, likewise, so can "Ty Willie's" Dawgs. After falling to Marciano, Mathews won his next two fights before drawing with Freddie Beshore in 1953.

Defense will be the key issue in the next two games.

Will Willingham last the season?

Hot seat joke:

• Thanks to Willingham's hot seat, the seat of his pants no longer need pressing with a steam iron.

School president Mark Emmert is a prolific fundraiser; he knows that achieving an excellence in sports at UW, especially in football, helps cultivate donors for a variety of programs. That's why Tyrone is walking an uncertain path, which could lead to his ouster sooner rather than later.

His ouster, though, won't happen until a new athletic director is in place and assumes he keeps losing.

The point is: follow the money.

Now for the game.

In its later stages, it seemed to me that Washington's first-string defense gave up on the game -- packed it in -- allowing Oklahoma two long touchdown plays in the third quarter one to Ryan Broyles on a 77-yard pass play from Sam Bradford and the other to Jermai Gresham on a 64-yard pass play from Bradford to make the score 48-7.

The Huskies' defense gave up 591 net yards on the game; over its first three games, the defense has given up an average of 520.7 yards per game, well above its school record of 464.4 yards last season. 

Washington's effort was marred by fumbles, missed field goals, sloppy tackling, dropped passes and errant center snaps; before the game started, a collision of the two teams at the tunnel, with some pushing and shoving going on, contributed to some of the bad blood felt during the game that was highlighted by a payback for a cheap shot taken at a UW player.

At one time, one of the ESPN announcers said it looked as if Oklahoma was conducting a 7-on-7 passing drill.

It's notable, however, that a fighting corps of substitutes fought to the bitter end, which prompted this quote from Willingham, "I still liked some of the things I saw from our football team. I thought we continued to fight, continued to battle until the end, and that's something we can take and go forward."

It was the worst home loss since USC beat the Huskies 48-0 in 1929.

The Huskies lost three fumbles and missed two field goals in their feckless first half.

The Huskies' game plan looked as plain and conservative as Jim Tressel's sweater vests -- which he needs to donate to the Salvation Army. How will the eastern mafia spin Tressel's embarrassing loss to Pete Carroll? They'll forget about it before the season ends and blame the loss on the absence of "Beanie" Wells.

The Dawgs have yet to record a sack this season. They surrendered 4 sacks to the Sooners for 28 yards. Thus far this season, the Huskies have given up 11 sacks for 82 yards.

Kicker Jared Ballman has had 4 touchbacks on the year, compared to 1 touchback all last year.