statsman

I was disappointed after 5-7, feeling that bowl eligibility had been possible, if Sark had made a couple different decisions. In retrospect, I have to admit to being wrong; since his decisions put us on this arc where we are in the playoffs in year3. List of coaches who turned things around in two years: Stoops Carroll Meyer x 2 Tressel Helfrich Saban took three years to get to theBCS title game. Most of the above coaches inherited better talent on their rosters. I don’t know that we’re going that far this year, but we’re in the playoffs and this team’s success (unlike 2004-2009 Texas teams) isn’t based on the QB carrying the team. The foundation of this team looks very solid. Arguably, Sark is outperforming early years Mack. Can anyone make a counter argument? I suspect that if Texas doesn’t want to pay him market salary, there are other programs that happily will.

Yep. Undefeated ACC being treated like undefeated AAC. That’s not going to make FSU feel like they’re good staying put. Plus, Boo Corrigan was the ringmaster of this circus, and he is an AD at an ACC school.

I think Riley sets his sights a little higher than Gabriel. Gabriel is good, in his sixth year, but he doesn’t have the amazing arm and isn’t a big guy.

Palestinians are not Nazis, nor are they “like” Nazis. Hamas sure as hell is like Nazis. I would compare the Palestinians to the non-Nazi party citizens of Germany. They wanted Germany to win (patriotism, nationalism, social pressure, whatever), were not really given any choice in things (authoritarian government), and suffered for their government’s decisions. I’ve said before, on WWII threads, that Nazi Germany was hell- the first eight years, the Germans were the demons. The last couple, they were the damned. Palestinians, under Hamas rule, never got the period where they had the upper hand, never were the demons. They just get the part where they are the damned.

I work with a lot of aerospace engineers from OSU. They’re cool.

With yesterday’s loss, Gundy is 9-10 against Texas.

I'm on my 5th Makers Mark Central Markwt sells an Old Fashioned mix that makes those a whole hell of a lot better.

I don’t know. I don’t know who won the Pacific Coast League in baseball, either.

I may be going out on a limb, but I think the guys who grab a 14 year old girl, rape her by forcing her ankles up by her ears, and break her legs and pelvis by dropping all their weight on her in that position, and then put a bullet in her head after finishing,…those guys are terrorists. The guys that take an infant and put it, living, into an oven, turn on the heat and walk away? Those guys are terrorists.

Does that make sense? Isn’t there supposed to be a benefit from the crew used to working together?

Great points. The easiest solution to the very problem you describe is for college football to do like baseball and basketball, and have the officials work for theNCAA, not the conference. It’s so screwed up as it is now. That Alan Eck crew in 2015 absolutely swung that game. They kept those Texas seniors out of a bowl game. Texas went along, like a good conference mate, like it always does (until it doesn’t). Really, the conference should have announced that they reviewed the tape, that they saw. Nothing that affected the result (a lie) and not assigned Eck’s crew to a game for a week (no announcement) and not assigned Deterding to any games again ever (no announcement). That way, the conference would save face, Texas could be placated and the officials would know there are limits to their fuckery.

On the original tweet, there was a mention of “#Texashateweek”…what the hell? Is that a real thing? Does OSU also have a Baylorhateweek and a KansasStatehateweek? Or, are we and the Sooners the only ones that lucky?

Now I understand why we’re going to the SEC with OU. Of all the teams we play in this conference, those toothless, inbred meth heads are the most normal and well adjusted.

I bet Sark also realized that this game will be a huge factor in whether his next annual salary is seven figures or eight.

I am inclined to be pro-Israel. Reading accounts of Israeli atrocities is tough. I would like if someone could explain them away, or provide a plausible reason to deny them; it would make me feel better. Or maybe something else happens, and I can ignore them. But, you can’t deny or explain many of them. They are just really bad, even evil, things done by members of a group I have an affinity for. I have a saying- “the truth is not always your friend, but you can’t let it be your enemy”. I get why some Palestinian supporters want to deny some of the 10-7 atrocities, or blame them on the IDF. Same deal. As an American, I can come to terms with My Lai. (It helps that an American warrant officer, Hugh Thompson, stopped it, after so many innocent Vietnamese civilians were slaughtered. It would be even more shameful if Calley’s group “finished the job” and covered it up, and Americans were given an opportunity to deny it happened). Those were bad men, they needed to be punished, far worse than they were. We just have to live with that shame. Mahmudiyah was another example of shameful criminality, perpetrated by US soldiers. We did a better job of punishment; those assholes will never see the light of day, again. Again, denying and explaining is a stupid exercise. In these incidents, I think a helpful tool is to remember to blame people for what they do, and not who they are. Hamas terrorists/militants are committing horrible war crimes and they deserve punishment. Any IDF soldiers that commit war crimes should also be punished. (I don’t believe bombing civilian population centers where the enemy is harbored is a war crime; the war crime is hiding among innocent civilians). Palestinian civilians, no matter what views they may have, haven’t done anything. I see no reason to hate or punish them for Hamas’ crimes.

Yes, this Hamas activity is not about fighting Zionism. It is about deriving satisfaction from torturing and killing Jews.

At the time, didn’t the announcer (Joel Klatt?) say that the way they called it, review really couldn’t fix it? And the review result (Bama keeping the ball but punting) was kind of bogus but the best they could do in review to unfuck it?

He doesn’t hate Texas. He just really, really doesn’t want to be seen as a “homer”. He desires that his press box fellow journalists view him as an impartial writer. To support that, he is extra critical of Texas, the hometown team. It’s too bad that he is a mediocre enough writer that his press box mates assume he is a homer anyway, and assume he is telling the truth when he speaks the worst about Texas and Longhorn players.

I mean, they (Hamas) also killed the four year old brother and the mom, too. Damn.

The 10 month old hostage is dead. Hamas says the death was caused by IDF bombing. I suspect they (Hamas) just can’t help themselves when they have a chance to kill Jews.

I actually believe that if a Palestinian were to clearly explain to his countrymen that an impassioned and logical appeal to the professed principles of the people of Israel, and the world, arguing their case, and eschewing violence, were the best approach, and that their leaders should be selected by the people, freely and regularly, a lot of Palestinians would have different views. The problem is that Hamas, or its like, would put a bullet in that guy’s head tout suite.

I think people can surprise you by how awful they can be and by how amazingly awesome they can be. Sometimes it’s the same people; the circumstances and how they are presented matter.

I don’t put too much stock in the Gaza polling. There is a range of political choices from Fatah to Hamas. They don’t get to hear stump speeches from Christian Democrats, or Tories, or Labour, or Reagan Republicans. Hamas has been in charge for over 15 years, and Hamas executes Palestinian dissidents. Yes, Hamas is truly awful. So were the Nazis (Godwin’s Law!), and they were elected and supported, and then suppressed dissidence lethally. Ten years after WWII, with mandated exposure to liberal democracy, the FRG was a pretty solid state citizen again. The trick is getting from there to here (Duh). It may be impossible for it to happen organically. You can say that they need a Jesus, a Ghandi, a MLK, but all three were killed while promoting non-violent social transformation. But, yeah, I’m not ready to write off the Palestinian people just because the group in charge are monsters.

A funny thing about SEC history- for the first several decades, there was no insistence on a regular round robin schedule, where every school played every other, eventually. Some schools played five league games, others played six, and this was a league with double digit members. If two schools weren’t getting along, there was nothing to force them to play, and they could still be in good standing within the conference. I wonder if this had the effect of forcing schools to enforce fan behavior. In the SWC, a TAMC student was killed in a brawl at halftime of a game with Baylor, and the schools stopped playing…for two years.

I was driving past Baylor Stadium, returning from UT’s KSU game. Baylor was going into OT against UH. From the freeway, you could see the upper deck was near empty (the broadcast was in ESPN+). Per your chart, listed attendance was 41,180, about 93% capacity, when in actuality the stadium was maybe 70% full. Maybe. In other words, attendance for a Baylor-UH game in 2023 was about what it would have been in 1995 or 1975. That killed the SWC.