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statsman

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  1. There was no way to prepare the allied forces in the Pacific in the 1930’s and ‘40s for the dichotomy of the Japanese- at home they would be kind and considerate to a fault, and at war they would kill surrendered prisoners and eat their livers. Similarly, this staff will just have to learn about Ags for themselves. Luckily, it’s a night game this year, right? So no breakfast denial shenanigans
  2. Three games on ESPN or Fox on Saturday is pretty good for them. Kansas/TCU streaming is something
  3. Drew Kelson made the point that, although OU and the Ags are in a similar place, they got there from different directions. Sooners are so used to good football, they have cognitive dissonance. The Sooner fans cannot conceive of a crappy offense wearing crimson and cream with paper clips in their helmets. It doesn’t compute. Meanwhile, the Ags expect their crappy offense to excel because they have no idea what good football looks like. Driving home this morning, the Sooner podcasts were more entertaining than the Texas podcasts. I suspect Venables is much like the Sooner fanbase- he has been attached to not just good, but exceptional offense for over a quarter of a century, and he doesn’t quite get how much planning and good work goes into having one (although he will either learn or go back to being a DC). This is why Castiglione gave Venables a preseason extension, so as to not be forced into a premature decision. OU is much like the Dallas Cowboys right now. They gave a lot of money to Arnold, Burks and Damonic Williams and expected them to be great, because they cost a lot. It doesn’t work that way. Now, Arnold might have a future. Who knows? OU has gone decades since not having a capable QB on the roster (interrupted by short stints of Bell and Breville). Making decisions without having solid answers is a new territory for them. If Arnold has a future, can OU commit to it?
  4. I believe it. In 2013, after the embarrassing BYU loss, powerful boosters were unhappy. Mack told them- “you won’t have to fire me. I’ll resign at season’s end.” A couple of games later that became, “If I don’t win the conference, I’ll leave gracefully”. After the loss to Baylor, he told them that he thought he saved his job by playing for the conference title on the last weekend.
  5. Without getting paid
  6. The Texas schools in the B12 have a lot of history, and should care about playing each other, but I’m not convinced they do. Baylor and TCU have one of the longest rivalries, and yet, only occasionally played each other while not in the same conference. TCU is declining to continue its SMU series. The dynamic you see repeated again and again- the school perceived to have (or believes it has) the superior status is less willing to schedule its longtime nearby rival if it’s not forced to by its conference.
  7. That is an amazing quote by Taurasi. I mean, in the NBA, touted rookies come in all the time, take a while to get their legs and catch up to the speed, and then ignite. I can’t imagine LeBron (who was a highly touted rookie like I just described) saying about any NBA rookie something like Taurasi did. Is the WNBA really that different?
  8. The cheat code for college HC’s is to have a HC with a rep for developing QBs. That allows the programs to have QB depth at a discount, and makes the OL and WR recruiting pitch simpler. I see theee programs like that in P2: Texas, USC and Bama. Who are the Mid2 and G5 HCs (or OCs looking to move up) with that rep? That’s who Florida should be looking at.
  9. As for the Texas schedule, when opponents were announced in June 2023, MSU had just come off a 9-4 season and Florida had been 6-7 in Napier’s first season. I don’t think anyone expected both of them to challenge Vandy for the wooden spoon.
  10. In a nutshell- the B12 does great on Friday night, competing with HS football. It suffers on Saturday, going up against good games. Oh, and people like to watch Sanders’ CU team.
  11. Sure. And the Big XII is similarly dumb for not having UH play TT these next couple of years, as well as TCU dropping the SMU series.
  12. I enjoy that aspect. I find my needs for nearby games and rival fan interaction are met just fine by having OU, TAMU and Arkansas on the annual schedule. I think Baylor fans needs are met just fine by having TCU, UH, and TT on their annual schedule.
  13. From Sooner Scoop: WR Nic Anderson: Probable WR Andrel Anthony: Probable DB Kendel Dolby: Probable OL Troy Everett: Probable OL Jake Taylor: Questionable OL Branson Hickman: Questionable TE Kade McIntyre: Questionable LB Dasan McCullough: Doubtful OL Geirean Hatchett: Out DB Gentry Williams: Out WR Jalil Farooq: Out WR Jayden Gibson: Out
  14. So, what is the problem? You’re a Baylor fan, and if you lived in Texas, you could go to regional games, right? Baylor is in a league with UH, TT, TCU, and schedules Texas State and SMU. So, what is your concern about how things are or will be?
  15. But, really, it’s only a change for Texas and OU, right? Baylor, TCU, TT, UH, TSU, UTSA, OSU, Tulsa… they all still get to play each other and shit talk each other. They still have nearby travel, right?
  16. I did a little exercise. To rank game difficulties, for Texas, OU and TAMU, I took the opponents’ Sagarin Predictor ratings, and subtracted or added three points for home and away. This is to serve as a rough metric for how tough a scheduled matchup is. For Texas, there are only three games of reasonable difficulty. The toughest appears to be UGA (88.92), followed by TAMU (86.18) and OU (83.87). Now, OU really did get screwed on schedule. Their game this weekend, Tennessee, has a rating of 84.99, higher than Texas’ third most difficult matchup. What sucks for OU is that this weekend’s matchup looks to be their sixth most difficult, with @LSU, @Mizzou, Bama, @Ole Miss and Texas all looking more difficult. (You hate to see it). @Auburn rated just a tick lower than Tennessee. TAMU really got an easy schedule. Their toughest game is hosting Texas, followed by @Auburn (OU’s seventh toughest), hosting Mizzou and @S. Carolina. It really is an easy schedule.
  17. I don’t think FSU/Clemson would go along with this (did they have anything to do with its creation?) if they had offers from the SEC or B1G.
  18. I liked the Ag comment, “The noise at Kyle will present a problem for them”. Sure. In 1986. Offenses have had signals to deal with noise for decades.
  19. Hell, it might have been enough for the league to issue a bland statement (much like they did) and then quietly not re-sign the officials for the next season. That way, they could have sent a message to the crews that fuckery isn’t tolerated, while telling the rest of the league that they didn’t dance to Texas’ call. But, they couldn’t do that. Deterding still works for the B12. The message to UT was that the Horns may be Gulliver, but the Lilliputians were going to work together to tie them down.
  20. This is nuts! I guess this is a result of a 16 team league yielding four teams with one or two losses? You notice none of the top B12 teams are playing top SEC, B1G or ACC teams in non conference. Still, the algorithms for power rating will kick in and settle this down. The TV ratings are in: https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/ Playing on Friday night is good for the B12. Texas and Oklahoma schools don’t bring ratings when they play at the same time as Texas and Oklahoma. Woof!
  21. That is an interesting idea. FSU and Clemson feel they need to leave because they need more media revenue to compete (assuming they can get into the B1G or SEC). The ACC is thinking about unequal revenue sharing to entice them to stay, similar to the old SWC and old B12. It seems like kicking the can down the road. If the options are: 1. Status quo 2. Unequal revenue sharing 3. FSU and Clemson split, then the ACC preferences are 1,2,3 and FSU/Clemson preferences are 3,2,1,…if FSU/Clemson can go SEC/B1G. If FSU/Clemson can only go B12, their preferences are probably 2,1/3.
  22. You know, the Sooners and Hurricanes had some great outlaw program tilts in the ‘80s (won by Miami mostly). If they played now, can you imagine the conflict in the concourses between the cartel guys and the Indian Casino guys?
  23. https://www.wsj.com/sports/football/arch-manning-texas-quinn-ewers-0729c8a2?st=gAFyt5&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink
  24. I so badly want to see that program falter, but… OU, for all its foibles and struggles, is 13-3 over its last 16 games. Hasn’t lost a home game by double digits since September 2016 (#3 tOSU) There is a lot of pride in that program, and their fans are spoiled and entitled to a degree that would shame Texas fans. Cracks are starting to show in that foundation, and it’s not going unnoticed. There is a whole lot to play out, and if Tennessee wins (by no means certain), it is only one step on a very long staircase. (A very enjoyable step, should it happen)
  25. I went down a wiki rabbit hole, wondering whatever happened to Mark Farris, Dustin Long, Reggie McNeal, Stephen McGee, Jerrod Johnson… Amazing. I think there are at least three DCTF cover boys in that group of discards. A lot of post college play in the CFL. Most of them (exception: Jerrod Johnson) were taught by their experiences to hate the sport, evidently, as they are out of the game and onto other things.
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