orangebird

So what's Georgia's excuse tonight? They weren't excited to be in the SEC Championship game?

Yeah, it's a shame for them, too bad OU post-Riley won't be around.

Honestly I don't care if he is Joe Exotic's illegitimate son spawned from that one time he got drunk and had sex with a woman. If he is better than any QB we have on the roster at the moment, come on down. Can't be too picky after the shit we've been through for the last 11 years.

Can you just imagine how much fun this conference will be to watch after Texas and OU bolt for the SEC? Yeah, me either.

Jesus H. Christ, how did Oregon win 10 games this season? They're still better than Texas by a mile, but OTOH, if Texas played a Pac-12 schedule...we'd probably be bowling this year again, too.

Oregon is very, very white. Super white. It's arguably one of the whitest states in the country, due in no small part to a series of racial exclusion laws that were still technically on the books up until 1926. There were virtually no minorities of any sort living here before WWII. Many Oregon towns had a reputation of being sundown towns up until the 1960s or so. I have actually talked to people who grew up in rural Oregon and had never met a black person until they visited Portland. When they filed Animal House in Eugene in the 1970s, the black actors reportedly had to be bussed in under armed guard from Portland, as it was not safe for them to stay in Eugene back then. Eugene has changed quite a bit since then, but a lot of the more outlying parts of Oregon haven't. That said, I don't think Cristobal's heritage is all that much of an issue here. But I have heard no shortage of racist comments in general here, once you get out away from the comfy confines of metro Portland and Eugene. Culture in Oregon outside of Portland and Eugene? There is none.

Used to live there, actually. Though TBH, I think there are a greater concentration of Latinos out in Cornelius.

True story -- a cousin of my dad's once owned a restaurant outside of Paris, Texas, coincidentally also named the Dinner Bell. They served much the same kind of fare as this, as I recall. Then the whole thing completely burned to the ground about 25 or 30 years ago. We always kind of suspected arson in the back of our minds, as the cousin was a bit of a shady character -- but apparently the investigators could not ever prove anything, so nothing ever happened to him. James McMurtry's "Choctaw Bingo" always hits a little too close to home when it comes to parts of my extended family, LOL.

I do wonder whether all the external drama (Longhorn Network, tons of meddlesome Big Cigars, athletic department chaos) has been a factor in our ability to lure "big name" coaches here. It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in certain circles and learn whether any overtures were even made to Kelly - particularly after Meyer and Saban have turned us down in the past.

Just to further illustrate how silly the "culture fit" argument is: I live in Oregon, where a Cuban guy is the current coach of the Oregon Ducks. And while the Latino population here is growing, you cannot really confuse this place with California, Texas, or Florida. Whatever issues people have here with Cristobal happen to be, his "cultural fit" apparently isn't one of them. Likewise, Texas could hire a Scotsman who thinks haggis is the absolute bomb, and I could not care any less as long as that guy takes us to our next national championship. tl;dr - it's all about the winning.

Coonasses won't care if Brian Kelly came from Mars, as long as he wins there. The best "culture fit" LSU ever had is leaving the program after this season.

This. It's only "not my money" if you're not buying tickets, gear, etc. to the games or supporting the athletic department via donations. But if you wonder why universities are raising ticket prices to college football games almost every year, look no further. Sure, the Big Cigars may pick up a lot of these costs at universities like Texas. But they sure as shit aren't picking up all of them, and some of them are still being passed along to the fans. A percentage of every ticket Texas sells for a home football game is paying Tom Herman not to coach right now. As a dad who occasionally struggled to provide for my kids when the economy was bad, paying $100+ for a ticket to a college football game was completely out of reach. I don't have the answers here, but am just saying that that all of us are paying for this shit, one way or another.

I'm sure the convo went something like this: Oklahoma AD: "Hey Mr. Big Cigar, USC is offering Coach Riley a bajillion dollars to coach there, do you want to counter?" Oklahoma Big Cigar: "LOL Nope"

Wow. He actually wasn't lying when he said he wouldn't be the next coach of LSU last night, LOL. I think this will be a good move for him. Pac-12 is a shitty conference whose best team didn't even bother to show up last week and got fucking steamrolled by Utah. If Riley gets most of the SoCal talent to stay at home and implements his offense at USC, they could become a real juggernaut in that conference in a few years. They will probably need to schedule some SEC teams to bolster SOS for the CFP, though.

Yep. I've never been sold on Jimbo to LSU. Why would LSU choose to outbid aggy for Jimbo's services, when they could probably pay someone else a lot less and get same if not better results? If it's not Riley, then I'm thinking LSU goes after someone like Aranda.

OU is three hours away from DFW. Their floor is probably at least five wins based just on talent that they can pull out of Texas. And I'm not sure UNM has ever been nationally relevant in college football.

NGL, I'd kind of like to see the SEC poach the Pokes from the Shit XII someday. Although I'm not really sure how it would work...

Oh I probably will anyway, because I'm a glutton for punishment...but it's annoying when certain players on the field clearly don't give a fuck, and have played like they don't give a fuck for most of the season. Thank God some of those people finally got benched today. But if they're going to play like they don't even care if they are on the field, why should we go out of our way to watch them not give a shit? Hopefully the turnaround starts now.

I can respect giving a senior like Foster every opportunity to buy in. But at some point, the players need to understand that the team comes first, and everyone is accountable to the team, regardless of seniority. This is why Saban has been so successful - he demands accountability from his players, and there are consequences when players do not perform to the level that they are capable of performing. This is exactly the mindset we need in this program. I think this is a great first step, and I would really like to see it continue to develop under Sark's tenure.

Addition by subtraction. Won't be sorry to see Foster and the others in question here go. RoJo is a badass motherfucker, though. We need more dudes like him.

As much as I know the extra practices would be good for building for the future, I am really not interested in seeing a 5-7 Texas team get blown out by Southwestern North Dakota State University.

Just changed my profile pic, oldie but goodie from the last time we had a losing season. Hard times, man. Hard times.

Someone who is not a Texas fan pointed out to me that the SEZ looks like a giant uterus. And now, goddammit, I can't unsee it. Then again, a big gaping vagina seems to be the perfect symbol to represent the mediocrity of this program lately.

Full disclosure: I haven't lived in Texas in over a decade, so I can't really offer an informed opinion on the current state of affairs there. You might well be correct about the soft part. But stop and think for a moment about how many states in the SEC have just one or two credible football programs in the whole state. Louisiana? Only one - LSU. Arkansas? Only one - Arky. Kentucky? Only one - Kentucky. Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee? Two each, although some of those states only have one school in the SEC. I think only Florida is perhaps in a similar boat as we are, although I would argue that the rise of UCF and USF hasn't hurt UF all that much yet. Contrast that with Texas, where there are at least a half a dozen quality (okay, I'm using that term loosely when it comes to some, including ours) football programs: Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU, maybe even UH. Plus we lose some of the top talent to out of state schools like OU, and lately - schools like Alabama, Ole Miss, and Clemson. We have almost a half a dozen programs fighting for the leftovers in the state. And Texas hasn't been relevant in over a decade. I don't realistically see how you can convince a prospect to choose us over say Baylor right now, and it really fucking pains me to write that. Hopefully the move to the SEC will help, but only time will tell.