whereiend

Pierce hasn't had a single dominant team in his entire tenure here. I'm talking about the type of team that Vitello has fielded twice in the last three years. How many top 8 seeds have we had under him? Maybe one? Pierce makes winning at Texas look way too hard; it reminds me of Tom Herman.

Strong disagree. Those 3 CWS have some context. For the most part we have had meh teams that overachieved in the postseason. UT baseball should have elite teams with top 8 seeds more years than not. It shouldn't be a miracle to make Omaha, that should be playing to expectations.

I think this is kind of pointless because at some point giving a shit about an opponent saturates at 100%. Yes, we are almost always at 100% give-a-shit against OU, but did we give less of a shit playing Bama the last two years, or even playing LSU in 2019? Texas when good will get a 100% give a shit at every SEC opponent that has fans I think (e.g. not Vandy) The main difference compared to the Big 12 is 1.) In that conference we were the super bowl for everyone even in years that we completely sucked and 2.) Our fans will actually get up for a few of these opponents as well. It was hard to get up for anyone other than OU (and in the old days, Nebraska) in the Big 12.

Until we have multi-year contracts I wouldn't pay big for any 18 year old, personally.

Is the idea that Nahlin made a push to make OTF an IT property? I can see how he would feel like OTF was benefiting a lot from IT content and resources, but I can also see why Bobby (and, apparently, Gerry) would tell him to fuck right off with that lol.

Ian is a pretty terrible radio personality and not special as a writer, but his football takes can be interesting. It's pretty clear the hasn't played a down competitively and that has pros and cons. The good news is that he isn't shackled by conventional wisdom the way that your typical meathead football commentator is. The bad news is that when he misses he can miss big and say embarrassing things. His analysis of Herman's QB run game is an example of what I like about him. Everyone knows that running the QB "provides an extra blocker in the box", but Ian's theory that the ability to dial the QB running up and down was the primary source of Herman's ability to overachieve in big games was an interesting observation that I hadn't seen other commentator's make. I remember a stay that Bill Connelly had about how Herman's teams were ridiculously "lucky" year-in and year-out and I think it make sense that there might be something systematic about that. Another example is the 3-3-5 defense. We all know that this has taken over the big 12, but I really haven't seen anyone else anywhere in the country discuss the mechanics of this defense and why it works to the extent that Ian has. Now, when he is writing about scouting HS prospects that's obviously way out of his zone and I'm gonna skip over that. And at his root he is a message board poster who is prone to extreme homerism clouding his vision. IT also seems to have a bigger quota for him than he has bandwidth to generate. Still, sometimes he can write interesting stuff.

Whoever had "Fuck Brett Yormark" on the jumbotron is a legend.

So what section should I get tickets in? I've yet to see any info on where the UT allotment is.

One has to imagine that the pay for this position is quite low. I believe Ian lives in the middle of nowhere in Michigan. I can see how IT likes the steady stream of filler content to keep the board engaged.

I also hated the British museum; it's a bunch of random artifacts from other places that the British looted during the colonial era. I prefer museums that have more of a consistent narrative. One that I did enjoy was the museum of London.

I don't know how you can be a fan of Texas basketball and watch this team without being impressed by what Terry has done this season. How many seasons have we had with talented rosters that played top 10 ball at some point in the season only to meltdown later in the season and in March? This team has a good roster but it's not loaded with first round picks by any means. IMO we have had several teams with better rosters that were much worse than this team on the court, even with Barnes who was a very good, if flawed, coach. I think there are plenty of long-term question marks about RT in charge as far as roster management, player development, culture building, etc, but he has done an excellent job of guiding us through this season. We also happen to know that Terry is a damn good recruiter, and he actually even assembled some high end talent at UTEP, including Souley Boum (I don't know the details of why he didn't win more there, but in any case that program is not UT). The guy knows the UT program.. I don't usually buy into this sort of thought but I think there is something there with UT basketball. We are an odd program in that we have a rather unusual mix of unlimited resources and immense access to talent, but also a contradictory combination of middling fan/student enthusiasm yet extremely high expectations. Our former NBA players might be a more important part of the program than at any other school, and many of them played for RT. Shaka definitely did not get UT basketball and Chris Beard did. And I completely agree that if we replaced Terry we would get absolutely destroyed by the media and it would be setting up the next guy for failure, whether that is fair to us or not. We know from Shaka Smart, Tom Herman, Charlie Strong, etc, that any coaching hire is an unknown that might fail. I see hiring Terry as having a higher floor and no lower of a ceiling than hiring any other coach would be, outside of the aforementioned Jay Wright / Brad Stevens tier of guys that aren't coming. I will say that if we were going to hire a different coach Sean Miller would make a lot of sense. He is damn good and I hope we can beat him on Friday.

I've only been to A&M games in Kyle when they were playing us. I'd have to say that those games were definitely loud, big time college football environments. The swaying and singing has a bit of a soccer feel that is fairly unique. That said, obviously playing against "TU" is the absolute fucking super bowl for A&M, and I wouldn't say that those games were louder than truly big games in DKR. The biggest issue with DKR is that we don't play OU there, and in general nobody gives a fuck about the rest of the big 12. So you typically only get big games with top notch OOC foes like Bama or LSU. The Bama crowd was absolutely insane. It was definitely up there with, and maybe even above all, the all time loudest games I can remember which would include the second half of Okie State in 2004, Missouri in 2008 and WVU in 2012.

Card is more accurate than Gilbert but I can kinda see it. Both have the deer in headlights thing in the pocket going on for sure. Even though he looked like a goof doing it, Gilbert was at his best running the ball a lot (see Nebraska 2010), which is probably true for Card as well. Luckily we have an actual team now with WRs and RBs and don't need mediocre QBs to do VY/Colt impressions.

I don't see that one at all. Card is the opposite of Case, he has a good arm he is just ridiculously slow and indecisive going through progressions. Case actually was a pretty quick thinker who got the ball out he just didn't have the arm to get it there. A faster/slighter of build David Ash I could see. Honestly "faster Case" is probably Casey Thompson lol. Case's arm was one of the worst I have seen in D1 football in the last 30 years, though.

Question from an Omaha noob that is going to the first two games: Where should I buy tickets? does it matter? Are there team sections or is it randomly mixed? I assume we'll have a big advantage vs. ND but I know there will be plenty of Sooners and Ags.

The Massey composite (a shitton of random ranking systems averaged together) has us at #9. ESPN FPI has us at #8. Bill Connely's SP+ on the other hand has us all the way down at #27 for whatever reason.

Mack was our best hire over like 50 years. Whereas OSU's worst hires are basically Mack equivalents...

I don't know if I agree. If you draw a circle around Knoxville there is still plenty of talent, even if it is across state lines. A lot of competition, yes, but still. I think they can be good, but I'd be shocked if Huepel is the answer. IMO that dude is an equivalent coach to Applewhite. At a blue blood school that guy should be a position coach.

Wow what an awful hire. UCF has progressively gotten worse under Huepel, who was also mediocre as an OC (and QB for that matter).

The transfer portal/mindset might make this a bit more difficult. Where a kid before might have given another position a go, today they can just transfer somewhere else.

I never really made the transition to Surly after whatever happened to Shaggy happened. Need to get back in it. But I posted on shaggy for a decade and hornfans (God help us) before that. Have also posted on 247 (several years ago) and IT (still do but mostly just read).

More like, the SEC is playing Big 12 football now, and their fans haven't adjusted expectations accordingly yet.

Fair enough. Maybe SP+ is putting a lot of stock into recruiting rankings.

The only UT D's in the modern era that would rank that high are '01, '05, '09, and perhaps '08? I know Bama recruits well but funny to think about wanting to fire the DC after a year like that.

Haven't read 100 pages, apologies if I restated something already discussed.