You make the call!
I mean, I wouldn’t put it past Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst to slip Katy Perry 10 grand…
Posts Tagged ‘College Football’
College Football Broadcast Or Conceptual Art Piece?
Saturday, October 4th, 2014Texas 36, Oklahoma 20
Saturday, October 12th, 2013Well, no need to torment myself watching the UT/OU game, I thought. No chance the Longhorns win playing the way they have this year, I thought.
The only sure thing about this UT team is that they’ll do the opposite of what I expect them to.
New defensive coordinator Greg Robinson has completely turned that unit around. And Mack Brown just might keep his job.
When You’ve lost Earl Campbell…
Tuesday, October 1st, 2013Legendary running back Earl Campbell says that it’s time for Mack Brown to step down.
“Nobody likes to get fired or leave a job, but things happen,” Campbell said. “I’d go on record and say ‘yes I think it’s time….[it’s] very hard because Coach Brown is a very good man,” Campbell said. “I just hope he doesn’t stay…he’s done some great things. The program, he brought it back, and we don’t need it to get run down where somebody has to start all over again.”
So how many years of grace does winning a National Championship give you? At Auburn, they fired Gene Chizik two years after winning a national championship (which also happened to be their first). That seems more than a little injudicious. Tennessee gave Phil Fulmer ten years after winning a National Championship. (And neither’s successor has set the world on fire.)
I was not among those calling Mack brown to resign when the team went 5-7 in 2010. Knee-jerk reactions to transient adversity are seldom warranted. But Brown has had several years to right the ship of one of the most institutionally powerful teams in Division 1 football, and has not managed to do so. Ultimately, Alamo and Holiday bowl wins are not enough for a man getting paid $5 million a year.
Maybe it’s time for a change.
Disasters of Event Planning
Wednesday, November 21st, 2012November 16 next year, there will be a UT home football game (against OSU) and a Formula One race in Austin on the same weekend.
What could possibly go wrong?
The biggest winner? Hotel and motel owners in Bastrop.
If you plan on attending either of these events, you might want to make your reservations now…
How to Commit NCAA Recruiting Violations
Wednesday, July 6th, 2011Although this is more in Dwight’s line of work, you have to admire the sage efficiency of the advice offered by Sports Illustrated‘s Andy Staples in this handy guide: “Cheating for Dummies: Your guide to smarter NCAA rule-breaking.”
Rule #1: Always Pay Cash. (A lesson that will be repeated further in the piece.)
Rule #6 is to use burner cell phones for any illegal contacts with recruits. I was going to make a reference to The Wire…but Staples already did that too.
Sadly, not everyone can run a program as clean as Mack Brown, but for those who don’t, these simple tips should go a long way toward keeping your program from getting SMU-ed.
Texas Doesn’t Lead the Way (Thank God)
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011In arrests of college football players, that is. SI and CBS news listed the arrest records for every team in the preseason top 25, and the two Texas teams in the list did comparatively well. Texas came in third-to-last, with only two players charged, while TCU came in dead last with none at all. Oklahoma came in tied for seventh with nine players arrested, and Pittsburgh ranked first (which is to say last) with a whopping 22 players charged.
The usual caveats (arrest is not conviction, innocent until proven guilty, yada yada yada) apply, but this is one ranking Texas football fans are happy to see their teams rank last in.
(“Texas leads the way” shtick blatantly stolen from Bill Crider.)
Nebraska jumps to Big 10, the Conference Shuffle, and why not SuperConference America?
Thursday, June 10th, 2010Numerous sources are reporting this morning that Nebraska is jumping from the Big 12 to the Big 10. (Nigel Tufnel: “Why do that? The Big 12 is two bigger!”) So now the Big 10 will have 12 members, and the Big 12 will have 11. Assuming, of course, that six of them don’t go off to the Pac-10, which would make it the PAC-16.
Of course the move is all about money. (Though I wonder how much having the Longhorns own the Cornhuskers in football contributed to the decision. Going back through the records, I was surprised to see that Nebraska has beaten Texas at football only once throughout the entire existence of the Big 12, and even that year (1999) they were only .500 against the Longhorns, having lost to them in the conference schedule before beating them in the Big 12 Championship game.)
But if it’s is all about money, why stop there? Every conference has its Little Sisters of the Poor for marquee programs to beat up on every year, be it Baylor or Vanderbilt. Why not create a real national power conference, consisting of all football powerhouses? Call it SuperConference America. (I was thinking about SuperConference USA, but that’s too close to Conference USA, about which there’s nothing super, and it’s best not to tarnish the brand before you’re even out of the gate.)
An eight team conference would look like this:
Alabama
Florida
LSU
Oklahoma
Ohio State
Penn State
Texas
USC
Every team there has a huge following and a strong football tradition, and every team there except Penn State has won a National Championship in the last decade.
Want to make it a sixteen team conference and add a Conference (and de facto National) Championship game? Add:
Florida State
Miami
Michigan
Nebraska
Notre Dame
Tennessee
Virginia Tech
one more team (BYU and Washington are two possibilities, if only for regional balance in the west)
Now you have a conference that includes every team that’s ever played for a National Championship in the BCS/BCA era, and every AP champion back to 1991.
Can you imagine the TV ratings of those powerhouse schools playing each other every week? I suspect SuperConference America would earn more than all the other football conferences combined; every week would feature multiple games between powerhouse teams. It would be great for fans and great for the schools included. (And schools left out? Well, no one is really worry about them in the current conference realignment, so why should we?)
Academics? Other sports? Rivalry games?
Yeah, let’s pretend those matter. This is all about money, and great football. But none of those schools are slouches in the academics department. As for other sports, just like Notre Dame plays in the Big East for everything else, the teams in SuperConference America could retain their existing conference affiliations for other sports. And 7 games against SuperConference America foes still leaves space on the schedule for the Longhorns to beat up on the Aggies, for Florida and Alabama to pretend Georgia matters, etc.
This scheme is a sure-fire money maker. No one is going to miss seeing Texas play Baylor when they can see them play Alabama every year. And the only thing anybody has to give up (except for a few wins every year from playing real football teams rather than conference patsies) is the pretense that college football conferences are about anything other than money.
An Example of Why Longhorn Fans Love Mack Brown
Monday, January 11th, 2010With Longhorn safety Earl Thomas declaring for the NFL, and Pete Carroll decamping for the Seahawks, I thought I would post one short bit about why Longhorns fans love Mack Brown. (In addition to the whole “won a national Championship and constantly wins 10 games a year” thing.) Here’s what he said about Thomas’ decision:
“We appreciate everything Earl has done for Texas and want to wish him all of the best. He has been a great player for us and more importantly a tremendous person, student and representative of our program. We thank him, support him and look forward to following his career in the NFL.”
It may seem a touch biolerplate, but it’s a very thankful, very gracious statement. I’m sure more than one recruit’s mother or father will read that and go: “Gee, Mack Brown is such a nice guy. I feel safe entrusting my son to him.” And Brown does seem to manage his program in pretty a classy manner.
You would think this would be pretty standard for a college coach, or at least successful ones. But you’d be wrong. Contrast, for example, with then-USC coach Pete Carroll said when Mark Sanchez announced he was coming out early for the 2009 NFL Draft:
“We don’t see this decision the same. … Mark is going against the grain on this decision. He knows that. He knows that coming out early is a tremendous challenge for a quarterback. And the statistics don’t back up that it’s easy to be successful the way he’s going about it. We know that, he knows that. … I don’t agree with the assessment of the decision.”
That’s not quite rude, but it is pretty tone-deaf to talk that way about one of your best players. As for who was right, well, Sanchez has had his ups and downs, but given he’s $28 million richer and is starting for an NFL playoff team, you have to give him the edge.
I also found
(And no, I didn’t blog about UT’s loss to Alabama in the National Championship Game. When Colt McCoy got knocked out, it was obvious that UT’s chances of winning were going to be pretty slim, and I couldn’t bear to watch any more after that ill-fated shovel pass snafu that ended the first half. If McCoy had been healthy, the outcome might well have been different, but give the Crimson Tide credit: Their job was to beat the team that was actually on the field, and they did that in convincing fashion, so congrats to them for a well-earned National Championship.)
Christ Turns Down Notre Dame Football Job
Saturday, December 5th, 2009Though more up Dwight’s alley than mine, I found this Onion article amusing.
And as long as we’re bashing Notre Dame, I found the image below on this Fark thread.
Those with no interest in football should know that there’s more science fiction and book geeking coming up Real Soon Now.
Texas Longhorns 13, Nebraska Cornhuskers 12
Saturday, December 5th, 2009Texas barely wins on a (literally) last second field goal.
Either Nebraska has the best defense in the country (very possible), or UT will have real problems in the national championship game against Alabama unless Colt McCoy can regain some of last year’s poise.