orangebird

Winter is coming, motherfuckers.

Ah, I see SEC officiating is picking up right where the Big XII left off.

Oh shit...if the Pirate could hold on and pull out the win here...on the same day Texas beat back the Cockroaches... Stop, I can only get so erect.

I'm not gonna lie. After all the jawing Frog and their supporters in the Texas Legislature did at us over leaving for the SEC this summer, it felt really good today to get scoreboard on them, put them in their place, and hopefully shut them up for good on our way out the door. It wasn't the prettiest of wins, and I feel like our guys could have played a lot better. Though all too often in the past, the game before OU was often a trap game where we got caught looking ahead. Our guys did just enough to win today, and credit to Sark for that. I didn't like the play called on 4th and goal where we got stuffed, but overall, I thought Sark did a good job. Some of our previous coaches (ahem, Turtle Tom) were really bad about trying to pound a round peg into a square hole when it came to playcalling. Sark took what they gave us today. Pounding the rock with Bijan was working, so he kept going to that. Good stuff. It's 8:23 p.m. in Austin right now...and OU SUCKS!

Great win over TCU in a hostile environment. Could have played better, but I'll take the W.

Should have taken the points on that last drive.

Really we should hire Turtle Tom and fire him again, just on principle for his abject incompetence for not using Bijan last season.

I'm stuck drinking at home, and I really don't want to wake up with a goddamn hangover because my kid has his first game of fall baseball tomorrow morning. Welcome to hell.

North Dakota State would run train on this team if they played the way they played tonight.

Gonna be real fun being the team that the SEC pencils in as an automatic win in a few years.

Are we sure we can even beat KU this season, at this rate?

Not much we can do with an OL that is pure garbage. It all starts in the trenches. Going to be a long season, I'm afraid. Hope Sark has a plan to shore up OL recruiting.

Guess I'm going to go mow the lawn for a while.

True, but those fucks would probably try and find some other way to fuck with the university if given the chance. I should know...I'm related to Tech alums. Some of them have the biggest inferiority complexes this side of Lubbutt, particularly when it comes to UT. Not saying I completely agree with it, but I could see cutting a deal like this to smooth things over with the Tech politicians could be a distinct possibility as a motivation to get them to lay off of UT in the Legislature in the future. Thing is, we don't really know what is going on here, or what exactly is driving this. It might simply be part of the negotiations to lessen the amount that UT has to pay to GTFO of the Big XII as soon as fucking possible. If it's not this or for political reasons, then there is no other obvious benefit to UT. It certainly does seem that things are moving forward, given that the Big XII just invited four new schools to join, and the AAC has given permission for their schools to leave before 2024. I don't see UT and OU sticking around to 2025 to party with the new schools in the Big XII, so things are moving in the direction of an early exit sooner rather than later.

NGL, Boise is probably better than half of the Pac-12. Which, admittedly, is a very low bar. UTEP...is UTEP. They are exactly what we thought they were.

Yeah, I'm thinking this has to be a leak of the negotiations that are ongoing to get Texas out of the Big XII ASAP - ideally with minimal interference from the West Texas politicians, and perhaps also some support from Tech to budge on the GOR. Hopefully 20-25 years is just a starting point, and we are working on negotiating it down to something more reasonable. I trust that CDC knows what he is doing here.

Personally, I'm enjoying this bit of schadenfreude way more than is probably healthy for me, after the butthurt way they left the Big XII over a decade ago.

Illinois is my second school after Texas, so I watch their games on occasion. Have to admit I wasn't a big fan of the Bielema hire, but he was probably about as good as they were going to get. That said, congrats to Coach Traylor and UTSA. They whipped the Illini in their own house today.

I really liked what I saw today, for the most part. After a decade of late-stage Mack, Strong, and Herman all underperforming, I will admit my expectations coming into this game were fairly low. So I was very pleasantly surprised by a number of things I saw today. It feels like there is a bit of a Saban-esque quality to this team, which is no surprise given that Sark tutored under Saban for a few seasons at Alabama. It was quite refreshing to see a fairly disciplined and well-coached Texas team that, for once, mostly did not beat itself with stupid penalties, turnovers, and mental mistakes. Card looked very poised and made some really nice accurate throws. OL play needs some work, but I think it will be at least serviceable sooner rather than later. I really like the ground-and-pound offense, where they kept pounding the ball and wore down Louisiana's defenders over time. Being ready for the onside kicks that Louisiana kept trying on special teams was huge. I liked the playcalling, in general. If this team can build on what it accomplished today, I think it has as good of a chance as anyone of competing for the conference. OU didn't impress me today, after giving up 35 points and nearly losing at home to Tulane. Iowa State was underwhelming against Northern Iowa. Kansas State was impressive against Stanford, though. Texas Tech will be somewhat interesting with Shough, who transferred from Oregon, although I'm not sold on them yet. They did rally late to beat UH in Houston. It was nice to see Maryland embarrassing a different Big XII team besides Texas for once today. Can't really tell a whole lot about the rest of the conference from today, as most of the rest of the teams played scrub OOC opponents. That said, I wouldn't bet just yet on this team winning all the rest of its games this season, but I am very hopeful that Sark is already moving this program in the right direction. Can't wait to see us go to Fayettenam and take it to Arky.

This. Conversely, it's not like everybody is setting their DVRs to be sure they don't miss Kentucky and South Carolina going at it in the SEC.

The hammer and sickle is actually a perfect metaphor for the Big XII, come to think of it. Texas and OU propping up the rest of the conference is straight up communism.

Yep. Texas hung with the eventual national champion (from the SEC) in baseball this year, so I feel like they will be competitive right away there. Beard is a good coach who has been recruiting like crazy, and I think there is a very high probability of near-term success there. Football will be more of a project, but being able to sell SEC to potential recruits to keep them away from aggy will only help us. Sark worked with Saban and hopefully picked up skills on how to run a tight ship. It will just depends on how well he can execute here.

So, short of poaching B1G or SEC members (not gonna happen - less money) - then the only other option for the ACC is to stand pat. There are no other big brands out there, waiting to be tapped by the ACC.