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Things have gotten really bad in a very short amount of time. We had ten admissions last night. TEN. That is a full third of our capacity. A normal Friday night is like four. Half of them were patients transferred down from the medical ICU to make room for COVID admissions. Our medical ICU (back to being the COVID ICU tbh) has gone from three COVID cases to twenty in a little over a week. Every COVID patient there is unvaccinated. Mortality is up. Delta patients crash, and they crash faster and more severely than the cases we were seeing earlier in the pandemic. The coagulopathy is insane. You get a stroke! You get a stroke! Everyone gets a stroke! I'm so fucking tired. Had to clock in early and ended up with more than 15k steps over my thirteen and a half hours. Everyone wants to quit but you're going to end up dealing with this shit anywhere you go.

I'd argue it was steeper in 1957 when OU had Bud Wilkinson, A&M had Bear Bryant. And while we didn't realize it at the time, Arkansas was about to hire Frank Broyles. I'd for sure say it was steeper in 1998. Texas had had some limited success, but football had successfully been deemphasized (by the way, some of the same forces are still at work within the athletic department to this day). People who weren't around prior to Mack Brown have no real concept of how apathetic the powers that be were about football, including the athletic department itself. I do not consider myself a huge Mack Brown fan, but almost as important as that 2005 season (and nothing will ever top that for me) was him making it apparent almost immediately after being hired how valuable having football front and center was to UT as a whole. What's going on with NIL currently (or not going on) is criminal towards UT's ability to compete in football in the future. But at least the head of the BOR, the president, and the athletic director consider winning in football important enough that they fired a 7-3 coach coming off a blowout win in the Alamo Bowl mostly because his recruiting had fallen off a cliff. And through some impressive maneuvering, they have us on the brink of getting out of the Big 12, which absolutely had to happen. I have no doubt that at some point NIL will be delivering impressive results for Texas athletes, because the competitive pressures are too immense. But the longer that takes to get going, the farther behind Texas is going to be. If the NIL part can be answered, even if it's done outside the athletic department, it makes the head coach job at Texas a lot more competitive, regardless of who it is. Really, the hill has never been more downhill for a Texas coach. Texas is in one of the largest college cities in the country that has zero professional presence. They have arguably the most valuable and recognized brand. They have one of the wealthiest alumni bases with an intense personal, emotional investment in the success of the football team. The NCAA no longer exists as an effective enforcement organization. There's almost no limit on transfers. There's no real limit on paying athletes. They're about to get out of the albatross of a conference they've been in (which was in large part of their own making). There's no excuses left. Either you want to compete among a select few programs who can afford the uncapped payroll for fielding an elite football or men's basketball team or you want to drop out and play in the Championship League instead. There's truly no other program in the country better situated for the new wild wild west of college sports. I am not sympathetic to any kind of bullshit about what other programs can offer. I've been as righteous about the white hat approach that I feel like UT has embodied in many ways as anyone. But the white hat approach no longer exists. So no. The hill being steeper is a load of crap. That's not on you, WinningIsHard, because you make good points. It's simply not the correct mindset. It's focusing on how other programs have performed vis a vis Texas, which is fair to a degree. But what it's really about is the incredible incompetence surrounding the football program since 2009 (really before, when Mack Brown decided he had college football all figured out and didn't have to work so hard any more), and how much we've handcuffed ourselves in the name of trying to do it cleanly. Well, there is no dirty, and there is no clean any more. There's only paying players what you're willing to as a collective, managing to get a head coach who can win at the highest levels, and then keeping that coach.

I don't understand why any of this stuff matters. Jimbo Fisher has a better track record as a head coach than Sarkisian, both at Florida State and A&M, versus Washington and USC. Saban, Swinney, Mack Brown, Orgeron, and Jimbo Fisher are part of an elite group of active head coaches who have actually won a national championship. Anything Sarkisian did as an assistant at Alabama can easily be credited to Saban instead. But in the end people make these types of decisions emotionally, then rationalize them afterwards. That's not just true for 18 year old kids, although them especially. That's simply sales 101 for anyone. The fact remains Sarkisian is not a witch as a recruiter, at least not at this stage of his career. That's okay. Nick Saban wasn't making everyone googly eyed at Michigan State, either, and it took a bit for him to take off at LSU. Part of how he succeeded at Alabama was getting ahead of the curve regarding paying kids and handlers for unofficial visits, using that as leverage to get an offer, sending out offers like it was coming from the Zimbabwe currency printing presses, and then ruthlessly dropping offers right before signing day to make the numbers. I see people complaining about A&M paying for unofficial visits. Get a grip. That's been going on for 10 years now in various ways. The only thing that's changing is the amount of money paid. Was anyone paying attention at how many cross country unofficial visits Texas was getting under Herman? He made it part of the sales pitch that he wasn't carpet bombing offers, but still. Don't be naive. Strong's early classes were in part because he was a good recruiter, and at least in part because of race. Herman's early classes were in part because in some ways Texas took the gloves off, particularly concerning working with handlers and compensating people for unofficial visits. Also both of them had recent track records as head coaches that they could sell. Nothing against Sarkisian or the hire, but that's part of the risk of hiring an assistant. It makes the NIL bit even more important. Texas at least has to be playing on a level playing field when it comes to student athlete compensation. When kids come on visits, they have to be told by players on the team that they're being taken care of. Frankly, that's even more important than anything done before they get to campus. When OU was cheating their butts off under Switzer, that was a huge part of the sales pitch. The players would explain to recruits how the system worked. They would go around to various alums after a game and get huge wads of cash. The bigger the player, the bigger the payout, but they all got something. Think about it this way. You have a special set of skills that's highly valued. You have interviews at three different companies. They all offer you to come in for a 3 day visit, tour their facilities, go out for dinner and drinks with employees, even have someone chaperone you a bit. One business offers you a big payout to take the job, one business talks about the city they're in and the great resume builder it will be to work there. The third business the employees talk about how amazing it is to work there, and how well they're taken care of by the company and the different shareholders, often on an individual basis. All other things being equal, which job are you likely to take? Never mind that one of the companies hasn't had anything other than mediocre profits for the last 10 years. They have a new CEO, and he was the chief vice president of the number one company in the country! That's where the sense of urgency has to come from. The better the players already on the team are taken care of, the more robust the sales pitch. The longer it takes for anything to transpire, or if whatever comes about is chicken feed or only for the star players while other programs are doing a better job of taking care of everyone, the more that's going to be seen in recruiting. Remember, the final nail in Herman's recruiting came when he lost the locker room. Not everyone, as could be seen by the effort given at the end of the season in the games. But there were plenty of recalcitrant voices. People are a lot more responsive to an asshole when he delivers all the time. Anyway, I've somewhat written off this class as the one that returns Texas to elite status. It will be a good class, because Texas. And there's still time to get a few more difference makers. Plus studs can be developed or the staff can find diamonds in the rough. But it's not going to be a top 5 class, and in the end that's where Texas needs to be year in and year out to give them the best chance at winning multiple national championships. Hence the depression, which I get. But the sense of urgency regarding NIL is real. And frankly, whining about kids getting paid to make visits to A&M is not helpful. Those days are gone. There's no enforcement agency any more. The NCAA is handing that responsibility to the conferences (hahahahahahahahaha!). So unless you think the IRS is going to step in to make sure those are declared wages (they're not and they're not), then Texas either needs to be doing the same or they need to stay in the Big 12 or a similar dead end of a conference.

Lmao. Actually I’m fully vaccinated, but I still have low tolerance for people pushing their personal/political agenda on a football thread.

And a shitty person, too. You're literally endangering the lives of not just yourself, but everyone around you. And fuck you too, @Ray Cranham.

And they’d be correct in doing so. The American gulf coast is the worst place in the world for the current outbreak. A large swath of the country is on par with the likes of Fiji, Botswana, and Cuba for their current case load. And that despite having first access to the vaccine. The American south is a self imposed 3rd world shithole.

Repped to offset the antivaxxers

No it won’t, for several reasons. And class isn’t the main predictor of vaccination status. Moreover, class is subjective. If you live in Souf Oak Cliff, work at the most dangerous Dollar General, cannot afford a babysitter, have 4 kids all under 7, and don’t have time to get the vaccine because of your life situation, THEY WILL LITERALLY COME TO YOU WHEREVER THE FUCK YOU ARE TO GIVE YOU A FREE VACCINE NO MATTER THE DAY OR TIME OR HOW DANGEROUS THE NEIGHBORHOOD IS.

I’m an American. I only believe in two numbers. 69 1776 and that’s all I need!! Keep them muslim-y numericals away from my kids! Ban the teaching of Critical Unified Number Theory in schools. No C.U.N.T. in schools!!!!

Coach Stong - You better produce or you won’t be here long. Tope - Shit, I’ll be here longer than you and your replacement.

That plus Trump being Putin's gimp, betraying the kurds, losing the war in afghanistan, having Trump suggest injecting bleach and inserting UV lights into various orifices, walking out on a bunch of international agreements, impeaching Trump twice while Mitch apologized for a criminal, an endless list of other things, and showing no signs at all that we've learned anything from any of this. Our populace become even more belligerently stupid in response. Instead of punishing Trump for inciting sedition, we let him go to Mar-A-Lago and plot further attacks.

And of aggy’s 10 win lead over that decade, more than 10 came against FCS schools while we played 0. They’ve accomplished nothing. We’ve accomplished nothing.

I think they mean to say LVI% of Americans and LXXII% of Republicans think that.

SL, thanks for your note. I would be more than happy to share some comments and feel free to ask any questions. This is obviously a difficult time. Coach was in the hospital a few months ago but was able to go home. I communicated with one of the kids today and it sadly doesn't sound good. I think that Coach is either 90 or 91 and he's just tired. That happens when you get old and your body starts to shut down. I am obviously biased but I think that Coach Black did more for the university than almost any coach especially in hoops. Its not always about won-loss records. He loved the University as much as anyone could including Bill Little. He was the coach that actually integrated the hoops program starting in the late 60s. The first black bbal player was Sam Bradley but I believe that he had either a track or football scholarship so he was technically a walk on. The second was Jimmy Blacklock who I think played at Yates in Houston, went to Tyler JC and then came to Texas. The third but the first black student athlete to sign a 4 year LOI was a teammate Larry Robinson from Hobbs NM.I think that he was the best player in the SWC in the 70s and from there, more black kids came to Texas. Coach, in my opinion was extremely underrated as a coach in part because the media didn't like him for the most part. Coach probably ran the cleanest hoops program in the country and did not hesitate to turn in another school if he knew they were cheating. A lot of Texas high school coaches didn't like that either so we had to recruit literally nationwide. I had team mates from Texas but also New Mexico, California, Oregon, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Louisiana and I may be forgetting a few others. He was definitely a strict disciplinarian but he was fair. Practice was serious business and tough. He was probably the opposite of Coach Lemons. As far as that sweet 16 team, things were much different back then. The only major conference to have a post season tournament to determine who went to the playoffs was the ACC. If I remember correctly, Virginia won the tourney 3 straight years despite the fact that they actually finished last each of those 3 years. So to get to the tournament, we had to win the SWC. I believe that year, we tied with SMU for the conference and had a playoff game in Waco and we won. Our first round opponent was UH in Las Cruces NM. I believe they were one of the favorites to make the final four. The Houston media said that if we didn't show up, we would only lose 2-0. Otherwise it would be a least a 20 point loss. UH if I remember correctly had Dwight Jones and Dwight Davis, 2 top 10 NBA picks. They started the game on a big run. Coach calmed everyone down, Robinson beat the crap out of those 2 despite playing on 1 leg and we won. The next game was the sweet 16 against Kansas State. Back then, they were the Kansas power coached by Jack Hartman. We had several injuries and just couldn't keep up. That team when healthy could have won one or two more games. The one sad thing back then is that without going into any detail for the moment is that we were an after thought to the athletic department. I think they tolerated us because they had to. I can't help but wonder if things would have been different if we had their support. SL, does any of this help? Please feel free to ask anything else if you like. Those were interesting times but are being quickly forgotten. I appreciate your interest.

Look, it's important for you to realize that GRHorn/Muy Frio is not anti-vaccine in general. He'll tell you so over and over. He's just opposed to vaccination in virtually every specific situation yet proposed.

It’s still Colt.

Remember when vaccines were required and no one thought that was controversial. I member

Just shut the fuck up about it, there are plenty of places to discuss shitty humans. The vaccination rate of the team is fine to mention but anything further needs to bounce to another thread.

Kurt Bowls is THE dumbest and most subversive local college journo there is

wellbye.gif

Virtually every post you've made on this topic since Jan 2020 has been undercutting public health guidelines and/or vaccines. 1) The article YOU posted from the CDC says vaccination of previously infected reduces their odds of contracting Covid by 60%, so you can stop disinformation on that one. 2) 45,000 kids have been hospitalized and tons of transmission have occurred between kids and adults. https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/07/health/children-covid-19-protection/index.html Delta spreads readily between kids and is a serious threat to kids. We've already lost ~400, which y'all say is a small number, but that's some fucking comfort to the families of those kids and the ones that are about to die. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-covid-risk-to-children-kids-2021-6?op=1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/08/04/a-new-study-documents-efficient-covid-19-transmission-from-infected-children-and-adolescents-to-household-contacts/?sh=47f37a42282d So you can stop pushing your disinformation now, but you won't. Everyone who is eligible needs to mask up and vaccinate. Everyone.

Wait until they find out about algebra.

And they’re going to take it back to their home towns and spread it there. I saw a piece on CBS News this morning where they were in Sturgis and the reporter was interviewing this fat old biker skank and asking her if she was concerned about Covid. She said, “Nope, not since day 1,” and she also said she wouldn’t get vaccinated, all while sporting a shit-eating grin and cackling like the moron that she is. Dirt fucking stupid, a threat to public health, and proud of it. If she doesn’t catch Covid and die from that, maybe she’ll wreck her bike and not get a hospital bed because they’re all full of Covid patients.

Erwin Von Nacher looks like the president of a student org that lobbies the UT administration to reduce the university's carbon footprint to zero

This applies outside of football. #nocloakroom

Nancy Boston is a special kind of stupid. I'm friends with Boston's counterpart in Bell Co. Polar opposites. The ones I have engaged with this come back with science is the work of the devil. How you feeling man? Hang in there! I lost one friend several years back to the Q movement. I decided today to cut another free after he gave me this smug smartass story about how he set some receptionist in Houston straight about how he'll get vaccinated the day he gets shipped to the internment camp. I told him to leave, to GTF out of my shop. I'm just so tired of these fuckers thinking they are so smart, and they only humor me because I am too caught up in the Biden Socialist Program. And I am surrounded by them. He and his wife have been good friends in the past, but I just couldn't help but think "Go ahead you two, FAFO." And if one or both died, I'd probably not shed a tear. White privilege and white supremacy were not under threat at that time. In fact it might have been argued by some that the white race made America the savior of the world. And follow the money. What better way to rebuild the post Depression economy than by selling arms and goods to war ravaged countries? The same thing with law enforcement. The rural counties tend to get the disciplinary cases the larger counties want gone. Probably the same for schools too.

I guess they don't have a problem putting a cover over their faces after all.

@TreatyOak made some fucking incredible logos. Will be debuting shortly

After the Insurrection, most of the world sees us a “declining democracy.” They’re not wrong.

Costco combo

Its almost as if kids are fucking stupid and will believe anything anyone tells them. Texas has a bad record the past 10 years! In the past 10 years Texas has gone 74-52 while Aggy has gone 84-43 besides their magical season of losing to Alabama their best record was 9 years ago at 11-2 with a Heisman trophy winner and then followed it up with 8 years of averaging 8.25 wins. They've won 3 bowl games in a row we've won 4. We won 10 games 3 years ago they won 10 games 9 years ago. We do nothing with highly ranked players they do nothing with highly ranked players. They had 4 players drafter we had 5 players drafted. Aggy has sucked just as much as we have yet no one cares because no one cares about Aggy and all their recruiting pitch amounts to is come play in the SEC.

You don't think a 60% reduction in re-infection probability is worth taking 20 minutes and spending $0 to get vaxxed? Lol.

nsiap

You actually have to be a shitty teammate to not get vaccinated.

Keeping it real today at the original Frank’s Grill on Telephone Road where the beautiful people come to relax and converse.

Honestly, it doesn't matter. Both were stupid and shouldn't have happened.

Imagine being so stupid as to hitch your wagon to Joe Rogan. Goodness, I weep for America.

EAGAN, Minn. -- A day after Kirk Cousins doubled down on his stance regarding the COVID-19 vaccine, a hospital Cousins partners with in his hometown of Holland, Michigan, cut ties with the Minnesota Vikingsquarterback. "As the trusted health care leader along the lakeshore, we are committed to providing accurate, timely health information and guidance based on guidelines from the CDC and medical experts," the statement read. "While we acknowledge that each person is entitled to their own viewpoints, those who speak on our behalf must support messages that align with the hospital's position on matters of vital importance to individual and community health. "For this reason, Holland Hospital will discontinue using Kirk Cousins as our spokesperson for now. We are proud of our association with Kirk. He embodies many values we respect and share as part of our work culture. "However, we must be certain that our communications about COVID vaccination are consistent and unequivocal. "The clear recommendation from the CDC and leading medical experts is that the COVID vaccine is safe, effective and the best defense against becoming infected with the virus. Evidence also indicates that vaccinated individuals may be less likely to carry and transmit the virus to others including children, family members and friends. "For these reasons, Holland Hospital has and will continue to strongly recommend the COVID vaccine to those who are eligible to receive it. It is important that Holland Hospital maintain the trusted reputation we have earned for providing consistent, truthful information and evidence-based health care guidance." https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/31975009/hometown-hospital-cuts-ties-minnesota-vikings-qb-kirk-cousins-vaccine-comments