Jump to content

SL Xpress

Full Members
  • Posts

    4238
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Everything posted by SL Xpress

  1. I want A&M to go undefeated the rest of the way so our game means more! Ha. No I don't. Fuck them. I hope the biggest hicks in this Hicksville of a conference take the Aggies out.
  2. I didn't even find it that heartbreaking. You know what I've found heartbreaking? The overall irrelevancy of this program from 1984 to 1997 and then again from 2010 to 2022. You know what I don't feel any more? Like this program is irrelevant any more. Hey, the OU game sucked last year, too, but is there anyone on here who can't feel like we've turned a corner? I know many of us feel snake bit. I do. But talking about last year as if it left a bad taste in your mouth. I don't get that. Last year was awesome. This year is more awesome. We're trending in the right direction by nearly every metric. I've watched a lot of football in my life, and it's amazing to me that with all the resources we have and the emphasis on fielding a winning football program so many people around the university share with me, that we've been so underachieving for so long. I'd watch our team and then I'd watch the best teams out there, and I'd so often think, "Geez, we're not even playing the same game they are." Now I watch us play and then I watch other teams play - including Georgia - and I think, "I'm not sure they match up at every position. I'm not saying they couldn't win, but they have glaring deficiencies I don't think we have." We're bigger. We're faster. We're more clutch. Our receivers rarely drop the ball. Our schemes play off of one another without getting so enamored with how tricky we can be, the way we did under Mackovic. We get receivers the ball while they're on the move, something I thought was written into the NCAA rules that Texas wasn't allowed to do. There's no more asinine Greg Davis play calling, or a high school coach having to come in and convince Mack Brown to maybe put Vince Young in shotgun and try running a little zone read. Our wide receivers are the best downfield blocking unit in the country. Our defenders never give up on a play. Our reserve wide receiver who is allergic to fair catches to the point I think he's going to get his head ripped off someday beat all 21 other players down the field to recover a critical fumble in the end zone. This team is really easy to root for. This coaching staff is really easy to root for. We have absolutely no quarterback controversy other than what's been manufactured by outsiders. We're recruiting lights out in the high school ranks and out of the portal. We have what may be the single biggest recruiting weekend in the school's history, which is hard to even imagine is possible. The student section is finally one contiguous group and isn't consigned to the corner of the east upper deck. The athletic department seems to understand the difference between making more money so the football team can win more rather than the other way around. NIL has completely negated the worst competitive disadvantage we've faced in our history by allowing us to have one of the biggest payrolls in college sports. This is our time. When is Washington going to be relevant again? Who gives a flying fuck about that game? Well, I do, admittedly. But it doesn't eat at me, because it feels like we have an opportunity as a program to possibly be in the mix every single year. Washington can't even keep their coach. OU can't keep their coach. Notre fucking Dame can't keep their coach. I'm so pumped for this game tomorrow. I feel like this is our time to shine, as a football program, as a fan base, as an institution. I'm going to revel in it. And Quinn Fucking Ewers is going to ball out and so is everyone else around him.
  3. Texas has had inept offensive lines pretty much ever since Mackovic's recruits left other than the 2005-ish group with Lyle Sendlein. A lot of it started at center. We constantly fielded multiyear starters who wore roller skates. But all it takes is one weakness among the 5 and the whole group looks ineffective. It didn't have to be center on any particular play. I remember my Dad ran these analyses back in the 90s examining great OLs around the country. His conclusions weren't necessarily dramatic. It feels intuitive. What he found is that the two dominant factors for excellent offensive lines were lots of upper classmen from year to year (prodigies excepted), and...here's the kicker...plus 15 OL on the roster on a consistent basis. Until Flood got here with Sarkisian's complete and utter buy in, we simply weren't doing a good enough job getting big humans who could move in space, and even if we did, we didn't get enough of them. Coaches with good recruiting staffs - and I'm looking specifically at Mack Brown - do not want to fill up a lot of space with OL because if they don't work out they can't be spun anywhere else. A defensive lineman who isn't quite quick enough to beat the block can be moved to the OL and become a quality player a lot easier than the other way around. There's virtually no offensive linemen I know of that were highly recruited, but when they didn't pan out on that side of the ball they were moved over to defensive tackle where they became a terror. But it does work the other way. Rarely, I'll admit. But it's possible. I'll also say Flood/Sarkisian finally have schemes that give the OL a chance to be successful. Yes, they're recruiting big guys who can move remarkably well in space, and then they're recruiting a bunch of them, because not everyone works out. And then they keep bringing in a bunch with every recruiting class. All of that is fundamental. That's where the success comes from. But then you add to it the blocking schemes and offensive philosophy we're using. It's fundamentally sound. The schemes build off of one another from one play to the next. We run a TON of zone blocking. But we also run a lot of pulling action. And what we're doing with the pulling action is not even remotely obvious. Many times we're literally pulling players in both directions. So for defenders trying to follow the flow of the play, Texas will get them moving in one direction, and then the ball goes in the other. My point is the scheme is constantly allowing the OL to get leverage on the defender they're matched up against. And if they can't conceivably get leverage because they're moving two spots down to punch a defender in the earhole, the success of the running play isn't predicated on getting a complete seal on that defender. So much of past staffs seemed to just demand the OL get tougher and more physical, without giving them any schematic tools to ensure success. I guess the proof is in the pudding in terms of whether the OL excellence we're seeing is repeatable year after year, but it feels like we're FINALLY doing all the things programs with great offensive lines have always done. Recruit big bodies who move well in space. Recruit some guys who may not have big bodies but have the frames to carry more weight and let them season. Recruit a lot of them every year rather than getting so enamored with freak athletes that you're loading up with skill position players and defensive studs that you're running on the bare minimum of bodies for the OL. And then scheme in ways that give your OL their best chance to be successful. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but of all the things going on in this program, the emphasis in every way of being effective in the trenches has me most excited about our long term future. And there's a lot that has me excited about our long term future right now.
  4. He's great. Both in substance and the way he conveys it. I like making fun of the collective SEC fan base, but there's no questioning the passion for college football in the southeast. The amount of content - much of it pretty high level - compared to what we saw in the Big 12, is night and day. Even if Nebraska, A&M and Missouri stayed in the conference it wouldn't have come close to matching what I see week in and week out with the SEC fandom. Colorado, of course, never mattered. There is no way that school keeps Sanders if he can manage to win. They just don't care enough. That's what makes the SEC fun to be a part of. Nearly every week we're facing a fanbase whose whole identity is based around how their team does the upcoming weekend in ways that rarely happened outside of OU in the Big 12. There's some wishcasting with SEC fans. I certainly think Georgia can win this game. They're still Georgia. But the collective hope being invested by the SEC faithful in a Georgia win is downright heartwarming. It would be fun to see the rug pulled out from under them.
  5. Hey, scream SEC to your heart's content. I'm not stopping you. I'm glad you're proud of your new Alabama overlord and their greatness under Saban. Oh, and Saban comes to Texas if Mack Brown and Deloss Dodds don't sabotage the move. So stick that in your analingus elephant worship. And yeah, what happened 50 years ago means a great deal to me. Stopping Joe Namath at the goal line means a great deal to me. Losing to Georgia in the Cotton Bowl means a great deal to me. And beating these bourbon soaked Deliverance banjo playing cultists is going to give me a great deal of pleasure. They call it DKR stadium for a reason. Maybe you should look him up sometime.
  6. The path to power for ambitious Palestinians is going to remain hate towards the occupying Jews and calling for martyrs. Anyone making peace with Israel is going to be painted as weak and a traitor. Recent events are making Hamas, Hezbollah and by extension Iran less effective in prosecuting their anti Israeli behavior, but the underlying motivations and cultural identities persist. It doesn't take a majority of Palestinians wanting to fight Israel with their last breath to create an effective armed opposition. It takes a relatively small percentage - say 10% - being more hardcore than anyone else where everyone around them goes along with their agenda because to not do so places their family and social standing at risk. Also, outside funding is necessary, but there's no shortage of wealthy benefactors who would like to make Israel uncomfortable for a variety of reasons. They may not have the spigot Iran has had, but they've got enough to arm the next generation. Even if this results in some kind of short term peace, it's not going to change the overall calculus. But making your enemies less capable has its benefits, and Israel certainly has done that. Sinwar is a big one, obviously, but the overall campaign has been impressive from the standpoint of disemboweling Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. It has required a level of ruthlessness that is off putting to many people around the world, but without that ruthlessness there's a good chance it wouldn't have been nearly as effective. I'm interested to see how effective this conflict is at pushing the two state solution rhetoric to a more successful conclusion. I do not believe a two state solution is sustainable. IMO it simply leads to a more effective platform for Palestinians to make Israel's existence more precarious. But there's a new impetus in sympathy to what the Palestinian people have undergone. I'm interested to see what comes of it.
  7. I want to add on to this a little bit. First of all, Alabama is our bitch. The only time you've ever beaten us - the only time you'd ever be able to beat us - is by knocking out our starting quarterback. Scoreboard still counts, but we've always had the better teams. We own you, and that's the way it's always going to be. Two of your best coaches had Aggie running through their veins. Bear Bryant never could beat Darrell Royal. He also was a pissant for not figuring out a way to play Ken Hall. There. I said it. I'll never forgive him for that. He also had his greatest successes as a coach copying UT's offensive scheme. You guys are the poster children for made up national titles. You and your sisters in College Station have a patent on it. If it's not AP or coach's poll, they don't fucking count. It's not that difficult. Gene Stallings has so much Texas envy all the fiber and laxatives in the world won't ever enable him to shit it all out. Fuck the 92 championship season and that boring ass offense. OMG I wanted to stab myself with a fork watching those Crimson Tide teams. Jay Barker was the Trent Dilfer of college quarterbacks. Bragging about conference pride is a loser mentality. Let you lesser mouth breathing fan bases soak all that shit in. A&M has been sucking collective Alabama, Georgia, and LSU cock since they entered the conference. As usual, their greatest games are the ones they "almost" won. Or the ones where they happened to beat a great team but then didn't capitalize on it. They have been so proud watching other teams carry their water. Fuck. That. Hey, good for you for beating that Miami team and starting the stupidest chant in college sports. What a thing to be proud of. I'm glad I now have a rumor of how it was born. What's going to be way better is when the Horns Down becomes the unofficial hand signal of the SEC. It's already almost there. We'll see Alabama fans soon throwing them down when Texas isn't even playing, the same way everyone else loves to. And I'm going to enjoy soaking it in. You and Auburn can scream SEC at each other while paying University of Texas licensing fees for the upside down Longhorn decals pasted on the wrecks you keep in your front lawn.
  8. I love Scheffler and the way he represents. But all I can think when I see that is, "Nobody gets a crowd fired up quite like a golfer!"
  9. And then the guy turns around a day or two later and picks Georgia 38-35 on his live show. But yeah, I really enjoyed that segment. Georgia has been talented enough they don't hide their coverages as much as OU did last Saturday. But this year they don't get to the passer as well and they've had breakdowns in the secondary. I'm not saying they're terrible on defense, because they're not. But they haven't been as dominating as the Georgia defenses in the past. What they haven't done as well this year is play with good eye discipline - which of course, is one of Sarkisian's strengths with his offense. Objectively, without even commenting on Saturday's game, they really need to be able to pressure the QB better. That's true for the rest of their games this year, too. I've seen Georgia fans poo poo the threat of Ewers because he doesn't beat teams with his feet, the way, say, Jalen Milroe does. And that's completely fair. "Honestly, I'd be more concerned if Manning were the QB," says ignorant biased homer Georgia fan. Of which there are thousands with their own fucking internet show. I had no idea so many hayseeds in rural Georgia even had access to the internet, much less the wherewithal to stick a camera in their face and record their hot air thoughts about the upcoming game. But I have no room to criticize. I'm the one watching. At least for a minute or two until I'm so tired of attempting to decipher their broken English and the youtube automated subtitles are just printing, "I give up." Ewers is at his most dangerous outside of the pocket in ways someone like Milroe isn't because he's elite at keeping his eyes downfield, he has an uber quick release, he's extremely accurate on the run. Also, he's not stuck in concrete. He can get a first down every now and then with his legs. He's just not looking to run the ball like someone such as Milroe or OU's Hawkins is the first sign of trouble. He's looking to get the ball downfield to one of his very talented receivers. The closer this game gets the more and more I want a beatdown over these ignorant fucks. I'll take a win. But I really want to see Georgia and SEC fans entering the same kind of soul searching I've seen out of Sooner fans. They're on the precipice. You can just see it. We just need to push them the rest of the way over the cliff. An exciting game like Oregon-Ohio State or Georgia-Alabama isn't going to do that. I respect the program Kirby Smart and his bag men built at Georgia pre-NIL too much to say that's going to happen for sure. But that's what I'm wishing for.
  10. I think OU is coached better on defense. Which is not really a knock on Georgia. Venables cut his teeth playing and coaching under Snyder, then coaching under Stoops, and then being the highest paid assistant in college football for years under Sweeney during Clemson's peak years. Venables is going to field really good defenses. People being dismissive of OU (and that's not anyone I see on here, that's media types trying to discount UT's performance) don't know what they're talking about. Georgia still has a lot of NFL talent on that defense, and Kirby Smart is a very good defensive mind. I just think Venables is an even better defensive mind.
  11. The SEC chant by Texas fans in Tuscaloosa after the Alabama game was out of reach is a highlight for me as a fan. The kicker being we weren't actually in the SEC at the time. I like sarcastic SEC chants. I don't like it when we're celebrating the entrance to the SEC and the athletic director starts it from stage with a microphone in his hand, but what are you going to do? That's going to happen, and people are going to join in. But I don't like it even a little bit.
  12. The internet is going to speculate he'll announce Arch Manning is entering the transfer portal.
  13. What I sense is that there's a difference between college sports shows kind of centered in the south, versus sports shows on the coasts or Midwest. Texas gets the benefit of the doubt outside of the south because they've just played better so far, even against lesser competition. So you see Klatt, or Cowherd, Eisner, or some of the national betting guys taking Texas. Sports shows centered around the SEC give that same benefit of the doubt to Georgia, because they're still questioning whether Texas is really SEC ready. Also, I consistently detect a little rooting interest against the newcomers. It's often combined with "a great deal of respect for Sarkisian as a playcaller" from his days at Alabama, but Texas as a football program and fan base deserves to be handed some humble pie in some regard, and there's a hope that Georgia as the flag bearer for SEC dominance is just the program needed to deliver it. Gerry Hamilton made a great point (as he so often does) that the Georgia game is less of a threat in certain ways because the players are going to be so amped up for it. It's the Vanderbilt game in Nashville the next week that he's pointing to for a potential Texas letdown. But we have to get there, first.
  14. Fuck all of them. I hate the SEC and I hope the SEC hates us back. I'm glad to be a part of the conference. In many ways I'll admit we needed them more than they needed us. College football is now going to be centered around the Big 10 and the SEC in all kinds of ways, and without a membership in one of those two conferences we wouldn't have a seat at the table. But I'm glad we didn't join this collection of hillbillies sooner. I've watched/listened to so many SEC centered internet shows over the last two years, and you can just feel the sense that we're outsiders oozing out of everyone. And it's not the same kind of outsider vibe a school like Missouri gets, because they're not really seen as a threat. Or A&M, which everyone understands is just a little different, even if like the Aggies love to brag about, no one really understands why. We do, but they don't. There's a sense we just think we're better than everyone else - which we do - without really deserving to feel that way - as if that has ever really mattered to us. There's also a sense there's something inherently wrong with the football program that we've underachieved for so long. People love to bring that up over and over again. Not just SEC fans. Big 12 fans loved to do it. College football fans loved to do it. If you don't have the right coach all the resources in the world aren't going to help you. And if you do have the right coach, sometimes they can make a huge difference in not having as much resources as everyone else. We have never had a coach we fired or forced to resign go on to great success anywhere else. Not Akers. Not McWilliams (who never went back into coaching). Not Mackovic. Not Brown. Not Strong. Herman is still a little bit up in the air, but I'm hoping for his abject failure as well. We've made bad hires. That's it. Now, some of that can be blamed on the hiring process, but I've seen completely borked hiring processes manage to get the right guy. Pete Carroll at USC is my biggest example of that. But you have to get the right guy, and we haven't on a regular basis. That's it. That's the issue. In any case, I'm going to enjoy thoroughly being the heel in this conference in a way this conference has never seen. Not Florida with Spurrier. Not Alabama. Not Georgia. Because we literally think we're better than all these other cocksuckers, and that's going to rub people the wrong way the same way it always has. Especially when we win big. I'm going to enjoy all the discounting so much. But we have to win, and eventually we have to win a national title. I just like the general direction the program is heading in under Sarkisian. Regardless of the outcome of this particular game, which I do think we're going to win.
  15. Texas still isn't ready for the SEC. The SEC is just having a down year.
  16. It's an interview from the Dallas Morning News. It came up in my feed two days ago because of the Geogia game this Saturday. It's an awesome interview. I think about Blake Gideon missing that interception against Texas Tech all the time. He's put that past him and is on the coaching staff. I think of Curry's dropped punt as way less egregious, since he shouldn't have even been out there in the first place. That was as much on Akers as Curry himself. Probably more so. But even if Curry could get to a point of not blaming himself - which as a human being he deserves to get to - as a fan it was such a heartbreak. I still wish that Texas team could have played that Nebraska team instead of Miami. Also, regardless of whatever else Osborne did or didn't do as the leader of the Nebraska football team, I'll always admire he went for two at the end of that championship game instead of kicking the extra point. It was the right thing to do, but coaches like Parseghian didn't have enough competitive integrity to do it. Anyway, the DMN article is behind a paywall but I found a free version of it I'll copy/paste here. It was written in 2005 reflecting in part on what it would mean for the team to win a national championship that season, which as we all know they did in the most exciting football game ever played. I felt like it was a great read. Thanks for bringing it up.
  17. We have our own Georgia moment. We're currently 4-1 against them. The .800 winning percentage is the highest winning percentage against the program from anyone who has played at least 5 games against the Bulldogs. But, man. That one loss. Man.
  18. There's some fishes and loaves and women with loose moral standards somewhere in there, too. And yes. I can delightfully hear the Aggies' plaintive cries of, "See? See? We TOLD you how horrible they are!"
  19. It would tickle me to no end to hear SEC bots talk about how the SEC is down over the next few years if Texas can manage to dominate the conference. Fuck those guys.
  20. How much economics have you studied? You can argue the blanket statement as much as you want. You are certainly entitled to your opinion. But in this case your opinion is wrong. Talking about something as inflationary doesn't mean it's inherently bad. Spending money on something that isn't meant to be consumed or assist in making other goods and services is inflationary. The fact that it helps all that other stuff continue to occur is salient.
  21. But the output itself does not. I am not making an argument countries should reduce their military spending. In fact, I am of the opinion we are not spending enough on our conventional forces right now. I am particularly biased towards the Navy, which is the key to our projection of power. Which sounds absurd given how much our spending dwarfs everyone else, and how much of the national budget consists of defense spending. But it's still my point of view. Nonetheless, regardless of all the wonderful benefits of spending money on our defense industry, there are opportunity costs, and one of the overall costs is that defense spending is inherently inflationary. It's just that at 4% of GDP the inflationary contribution is negligible in ways that at 41% of GDP it is not.
  22. Sure, and the fact that the US has the most powerful military with the most robust projection of force in the history of the world helps in regards to having the world's reserve currency and subsidizes the cost of our debt. There are tremendous financial advantages to being stronger militarily than our neighbors. It's the equivalent of other countries offering us tribute for our protection. Everyone sells us goods, and then either keeps the dollars they earn as a reserve currency, or agrees to buy our debt (and our assets) so that we can continue to enjoy a standard of living we're not currently actually producing enough goods and services that other countries want to pay for it. But Russia doesn't have that advantage. And it still doesn't make an effective counterpoint that spending on the military is inherently inflationary. It is. Just to review, the article was specifically about how Russia's economy is spiraling into a hyperinflationary economy. They list a bunch of reasons why spending 41% of their GDP on their military is helping to create that issue. My basic point is that the military spending by itself is also inherently inflationary. The US's ability to parlay our military might into advantageous economic relationships via both our friends and foes does not apply to Russia in the same way, especially as they're subject to severe sanctions by most of the developed world, and are mired in a battle of attrition for assets in the Donbas that aren't currently of a great deal of economic value, since in order to take control of them Russia has to obliterate them first.
  23. Military expenditures can increase productivity indirectly. Talking about military expenditures being inherently inflationary refers to military items themselves not contributing to an increase in productivity. An aircraft carrier is not going to make the economy more productive. A trebuchet is not going to make the economy more productive. Which is not to say the resources shouldn't be spent on those items. But it is an inherently inflationary investment. I would argue that in the US, military investment is basically our only national investment in manufacturing at this point, in ways that I would argue are critical for our long term economic output. But that still doesn't change the concept of military expenditures as being inherently inflationary. But yes, all kinds of advancements have come from military investment. Mainframe computers simply being one in a long long list, going back to the dawn of mankind. I will say that often it's because military use can demand the expenditure of resources because of its existential nature that the same civilian R&D would not. Not to mention humans are galvanized in a different way when faced with extraordinary circumstances. Then there's the simple fact that if one tribe invests in their military and the neighboring tribe invests in their civilian economy, history shows that the tribe that invests in their military simply takes over their neighbor, in which case we can wonder how much of a consolation it is for the latter tribe that they invested in the less inherently inflationary activity.
  24. That's exactly my point. You and I are on the same page. And that's the problem. 1) In my view along a long enough timeline nuclear weapons will eventually be used 2) The fewer countries that have the capability of using them, the better, with the ideal being zero, second best being one or two, depending on whether you agree having two nuclear adversaries is better than one country having a monopoly. I lean in favor of one, but there are legitimate arguments for two. I'm just not going to go down that rabbit hole. Mind you, we're talking existential terms, so whether the country with all the nukes is benevolent or comic book villain evil is less important than the fact they're less likely to end the human race if they're the only ones with the weapons, at least for the sake of the discussion I'm engaging in. The more countries that possess them after one or two, the greater the likelihood they'll be used. 3) To have fewer countries possess nuclear weapons, there have to be incentives for them not to possess them. The incentives must be greater than the current incentives to possess them. Right now the incentives for giving up nuclear weapons are not aligned with my goal of having fewer countries possessing them. For example, North Korea and Iran have both faced severe sanctions and isolation to give up their nuclear weapons programs, but possessing them and suffering the consequences are weighed against what has happened to Ukraine, which has had their country torn apart, first through subterfuge and then by direct invasion. Something that would have been given pause on some level if the threat of nukes had existed. So securing a country's sovereignty even after they give up nukes is paramount, but also making the consequences of keeping them has to be elevated to an existential level to some degree, otherwise the incentives to give them up fall short.
×
×
  • Create New...