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SL Xpress

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Everything posted by SL Xpress

  1. You're right. I don't get it. Arizona State is not the caliber of the other marquee opponents, and comparing Arizona State to Texas doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. It makes sense to you, and that's all that matters.
  2. I've watched goal posts being torn down from fans after wins against Texas teams with a losing record. Ain't nobody doing that with Arizona State. You're making a false equivalency. When Texas comes into town it makes for a big time game regardless of how good the team is. That's just the power of the brand. Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame have the same kind of draw. So does Alabama and USC. It's odd to compare Arizona State to those Texas teams.
  3. At least those 2011 and 2012 teams were pretty much hot garbage. The 2000 and 2003 teams were pretty good and had no business coming out of there with that outcome. Same with the shutout in 2004. The whole approach to that game was terrible. Also, while Mack Brown beat Stoops 6 times, he only won 2 conference titles. That made a big difference, too. Even when he won he couldn't win.
  4. Michigan. Ohio State. Notre Dame. LSU. Arizona State.
  5. A few comments on this. Texas tried for decades to get Michigan and Ohio State on the schedule for a home and home. Those programs did not want to come down to Austin in September. There were talks of making the game later in the season, but with OU locked in, and neither program really wanting to interrupt conference play, they couldn't work it out. That's why Texas hadn't played either program in its history until the 2000s. There was a time when Texas was trying to play Notre Dame as much as possible, but the Domers didn't want to lock in their schedule with Texas with so many other teams they wanted to play regularly. Heck, there was a time when Deloss Dodds was under the illusion he could get Notre Dame to join the Big 12 to replace departing teams, or at the time teams that were threatening to depart. As far as us not playing A&M hurting college football, did it really? One of the qualities I really admired about Dodds was his sheer pettiness. I loved that he refused to play UH in anything after Bleachergate and the whole debacle that led up to it. I loved that he refused to play A&M in anything after they left for the SEC. I think this is the right thing to say, but if we ever left the SEC for some reason, it wouldn't bother me not to play the Aggies any more. And no one actually cares about OU/Nebraska any more. I get a little nostalgic about the great games in that series, but I'm old. Those games haven't been any more relevant to college football for a long long time than the Arkansas/Texas battles of the 60s. Also, we do have Arizona State as the marquee game in the future. If Dillingham is still there they'll have something, but otherwise it's a trip to Phoenix. Not a trip to play the Sun Devils. The chances of that matchup mattering aren't great. But that game will be played at the edge of my mortality, if I even make it that far, so I'm not terribly concerned one way or another.
  6. Nobody in the old Big 8 thought of them as classy other than OU. They would go on the road and roflstomp teams in their own stadium, with the cornhusker fans taking over home field advantage. OU and Nebraska fans did have a weird love affair with one another. Much like A&M, Nebraska fans have a self image of how classy they are that doesn't exactly align with reality. The difference being Nebraska actually produced top 5 teams with some regularity.
  7. I don't know why a bigger fish didn't portal tamper Corleone away from Cincinnati. I guess he has an NIL deal with a local restaurant that serves the Godfather Burger in his name, so maybe that was too much to overcome. He looked like Suh going against Chris Hall in the Big 12 championship. Had his way with the Nebraska OL. Maybe he's just that good as a 5th year player. He's been pretty good previously. But he looked dominant against Nebraska. I thought he was the best player on the field in that game.
  8. How many girlfriends do you have, and what are some of their connections?
  9. Maybe Nebraska gets better this year? I don't know. But that game was not impressive, even if they won against Cincinnati. They lack talent. They can't tackle. They can't rush the passer. They can't stop the run. They can't cover in the backfield. Their wide receivers aren't very good. Their tight end looks like he runs with cement shoes. I don't like Raiola as a QB. Emmett Johnson runs hard but he doesn't look like an elite talent. I like him, though. Their punter is good at punting inside the 20. It's the season opener, but I felt like they were saved by Cincinnati calling so many pass plays with an inept QB and receiving corps, including throwing into the end zone instead of continuing to run the ball to kick a field goal to tie the game and send it into overtime. I thought they would look better, just because I trust Rhule to evaluate and develop talent. The Big 10 has a lot of bad teams, so maybe being mediocre is enough to have a decent season and then they build off of it.
  10. He let's his saliva drip out of his mouth then slurps it back up over and over. Oh, wait. No, that's a different head coach. I can't remember who.
  11. What a terrible play call. Counting on Sorsby and these receivers to win this game when you're gashing Nebraska on the ground.
  12. There is no reason for Sorsby to actually let go of that ball on a passing play. Spread the field then run it.
  13. 27 years out of the last 40 Texas hasn't striked fear into anyone, with a welcome 12 year reprieve between 1998 and 2009 and then the last two years. And OU, our biggest rival, pwned us in the Big 12. I wish we struck fear in all our opponents, but that hasn't been the case.
  14. Prop 48 to get players in who couldn't meet the NCAA minimum, have them sit out a year, then become Academic All Americans at the braintrust that is the University of Nebraska. Lose your soul by playing a horrific woman abuser to win a national championship. Those were some dominant teams, though.
  15. Always remember there's nothing easier in this world than spending someone else's money.
  16. Thinking about Switzer rooting for a team reminds me of watching his coach's shows back in the day. Coaches' shows were invariably boring as all get out. Slocum's, for example, were about as fun as watching paint dry. But Switzer was one hell of an entertainer. He'd be watching the highlights like it's live and his comments could affect the outcome, just like a fan. Probably the same charisma he used to fuck Larry Lacewell's wife and to get Eve to eat the apple.
  17. I didn't like hiring an assistant. His track record at Washington and USC was a little underwhelming. The problem is, Dabo Swinney, Nick Saban, and Urban Meyer kind of sucked all the oxygen out of the room by dominating the national championship game. LSU money whipped Brian Kelly, and USC did the same with Lincoln Riley. I wanted Texas to do something similar, like what you're talking about with Jim Harbaugh. The first two seasons I questioned the approach of hiring Sarkisian. Now I look at my past self as a dumbass. It turns out it was a great hire at a great time. I love how Sarkisian has built his staff. I love the resources that have been put at his disposal. One of my favorite interviews of Sarkisian is where he goes through Carroll's and Saban's career at their stops and compares it to his journey at Texas. I'm pretty sure it was 3rd and Longhorn's interview with him. Anyway, I couldn't be more happy with where we are now. I know a lot of us feel that way.
  18. So a paleolithic human tribe is scratching out an existence, foraging for food, killing wounded animals, following herds, with what would be considered a horrific infant mortality rate. They're competing against a nearby tribe for resources. Which tribe ends up existing into the next generation, and the generation after that? The tribe with the well balanced leader, with great work life balance, little ego, who wants peace and harmony? Or the tribe with the leader who wants to annihilate all opposition, who demands obsessive devotion to no quarter. Who regularly calls out the manhood of members of the tribe when they're not sufficiently ruthless? There is something very basic in us, cultivated over tens of thousands of years, that rewards the most ruthless among us. There is also something in the rest of us that recognizes that, and tends to want to team up with that kind of leader, because we feel like he has the best chance to win so we can pass down on genes to the next generation and the generation after that as well. If ruthlessness didn't serve some kind of real purpose, it would have ceased to exist long ago. The truth is, the ruthless among us tend to win, because they want it more, and they're willing to do things to accomplish victory the rest of us end up not having the appetite for. "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing." "Winners go home and fuck the prom queen." Being successful isn't all about being ruthless. It's about being able to identify talent, cultivate it, make it loyal. It's about having resilience. About making other people believe in you. But there are times when a certain sense of ruthlessness trumps other qualities. I would guess that every single one of the most successful football coaches in the history of the game had a certain amount of ruthlessness about him. John Wooden certainly did, who was mentioned above. Labels like sociopath, narcissist, etc. are helpful. But all of these are on a spectrum. Heck, dysfunction (I can't tell you how much it bothers me that's been misspelled twice now in this thread) is on a spectrum. I would argue by definition a successful head coach is not dysfunctional in a clinical sense of the word. These are qualities that have always existed, that modern psychology has now put a label on to make it more easily identifiable and analyzed. But all of these qualities contributed to the human race existing as the species it is right now, otherwise they would have died out. We too easily want to throw out these qualities as harmful or destructive, as if people who exhibit them should be erased from the gene pool, when that's not actually possible. If I'm in a contest where extinction is the penalty for losing, I will gladly take the most ruthless psychopath to be my leader. Better for the opponent to face extinction rather than me. At the end of the day, that instinct for survival is what we're tapping into with any confrontation or challenge. It may not seem like the outcome is of that kind of importance, but the person who is able to convince themselves on some level that what is in front of them is an existential threat has an edge on someone else who is not able to do that, all other things being equal. I don't want an Art Briles level of sociopathy to be the head coach at Texas. But I do want a certain amount of single mindedness that winning is critical for their job security and emotional well being. It's not the only quality that's important. But it is important. I like Steve Sarkisian as a person, at least what I see from him. But I do not need to. I need him to win at a very high level without embarrassing the university while doing so. There's the video out there of him screaming at the official, "Don't fucking touch me." It's probably my favorite Sarkisian clip. I also liked the psychopathic smile and snarky attitude he answered Kirk Bohls with when asked about red zone deficiencies in a recent press conference. Nice Guy Steve is fine, but I like a little asshole rolled in there, too. Which is not to say coaches shouldn't be judged for crossing lines. I was and am in favor of Chris Beard getting fired. I thought it was horse shit when Tom Herman hired Casey Horny on the staff. But there's a lot of behavior that many of us would classify as abusive that's meant to bring out the best in each individual player and the team as a whole. A lot of that is how the world actually works, particularly in highly competitive environments. Probably my favorite movie on this dynamic is Whiplash, because it shows the titular villain in the worst light, and then at the end of the movie it turns out the methods worked. Band of Brothers shows something similar. More than anything, we get the same behaviors and the same mindsets because they work.
  19. Good point. I know better. I couldn't help myself.
  20. My overall point remains that there are issues at Ohio State that were not handled at the AD level. They're not going away. If the same circumstances were to occur at Texas we would not react to it in the same way the Ohio State fan base has. It's one data point among a myriad of them. Bjork is making a series of odd moves as the AD this offseason. I question whether the Ohio State athletic department is in competent hands that will keep them on their current trajectory. And that's still a huge bump in salary to depart a position that you're allegedly dead set to leave in any case. It's not just more money to leave. It's a 40% pay raise to move to another program.
  21. I get that. He still got paid $3.1 million to take the job at Penn State. If he was so miserable it shouldn't have cost a $900k bump in salary to get him. He's not entertaining offers if there's more zen in the staff room. But Ohio State didn't exactly try to golden handcuff him there, either. Regardless of the reasons, there's an identifiable issue when your ace defensive coordinator leaves for an annual in conference opponent with a $900k bump in salary while the AD is demonstrably trying to cut costs around the athletic department. There are all kinds of narratives that are going to come out of that. To me it would behoove you not to believe every single one of them. Again, if Pete Kwiatkowski left for...say...Georgia...I would have a serious problem with that. I realize that's not apples to apples, but if OU is the analog to Michigan, there's not a great analog for Penn State. A program that is very talented that we beat every year with a head coach who can't win the big game. All I know is if another SEC program hired him away I'd be really pissed and wonder what is going on in the program. Instead the borg that's the Ohio State fan base just shrugs it away and says we have NFL defensive master mind Matt Patricia. Profit!
  22. Ohio State will need to figure out what they want to do with NIL long term. Currently Bjork wants to hold the line with payroll costs, and that's simply not doable and still maintain a championship level team. They're getting outspent right now for the 2026 recruiting class in ways they weren't the last few years. They also got money whipped for Jim Knowles. Penn State shouldn't be able to do that to Ohio State for a lateral move. It's like if Pete Kwiatkowski got hired by another SEC school as their DC. We'd all be wondering wtf? I don't think that happens if Gene Smith were still the AD.
  23. I appreciate all the comments on this thread observing the litany of mythology the OSU fan base has about their team. I remember them being the same way in 2005 prior to that game. There's a culture thing going on there. As far as Arch Manning "tapping out" I've seen several references to him suffering a concussion in the Cotton Bowl on the 8 yard run and unwilling to go back out on the field, unlike the tough Quinn Ewers who was obviously the better quarterback anyway because Manning couldn't beat him out for the starting job. Also, it's a common refrain that anything Texas did well in the game last year is dismissed as "and we still beat them by 14 points!" Never mind that 7 came on a fluke screen pass that if we just put the guy on the ground the half is over. I consider that a worse mistake than the scoop and score that put the game out of reach. Look, the better team won that day. Ohio State earned the victory. But acting as if the game was a blowout and dismissing anything Texas did well as something OSU was easily able to overcome is simple lunacy. I don't believe Ohio State will be able to run consistently on Texas fielding a light box with 6 defenders close to the line of scrimmage. I believe Texas will be able to field the safeties in umbrella coverage again. There's going to be tight windows in coverage just like there were last year. If Sayin can make those throws the way Howard did, more power to them. I do not believe that's going to be the case. I also think too much importance is being put on this game. I think it's natural, but to me the more important aspect for both teams is how much do they improve from this game to their next legitimate opponent - Washington for Ohio State and Florida for Texas. Both teams are going to have to improve to reach their season ending goals, and unlike 2005, this isn't an elimination game. It's an awesome barometer for both squads. But for entertainment purposes I'm hoping for a beatdown so I can watch the Ohio State fan base completely crumble. I also want to watch the rest of the games that day, and that's going to be difficult if I've smashed all my electronics watching a defeat.
  24. Phil Fulmer, Lloyd Carr, Larry Coker, Gene Chizik, Les Miles, Jimbo Fisher. Orgeron is probably worse than all of those. Maybe Coker or Chizik are worse. It doesn't matter. All of those are mediocre head coaches, in my opinion. Coker, Chizik and Orgeron are flat out not good.
  25. It has been astounding. There's no other program - and I mean not one - who has consistently made good hires. I would start with Woody Hayes rather than Paul Brown. Paul Bixler and Wes Fesler weren't exactly amazing. And unlike other programs that put together amazing runs, it's been a series of hires. Hayes coached for 28 years, but after that it's Cooper at 13, Tressel 10, Bruce 9, Meyer 7, and now Day in his 7th season. Programs like Penn State under Paterno, Nebraska under Devaney/Osborne, or FSU with Bobby Bowden had super long streaks with one or two coaches, but once they were forced into the game of having to make successive hires, they get into the same problems other blue blood types have. Some of them like USC and Texas make several subpar hires, and the record reflects it. And it's not like the hiring process is always smooth sailing. Tressel in particular, it seemed like they looked at every one but him until finally they needed a yes and knew he would give them one. I guess Meyer was lucky, but he seemed like a complete slam dunk at the time after his successes at Utah and Florida, he was available, and Ohio State seemed like one of the very few jobs he'd actually accept. I don't think Ohio State was taking much of a chance there. I thought Cooper was a great hire, too, even if he ended up being a bit of a disappointment for his Michigan and big game struggles. Being a major program in a football crazed state - I'd also add having a healthy population base, unlike say Nebraska - has helped, and yes, luck has been a factor, but regardless of the reasons, I find it a remarkable and unprecedented streak in college football. One that I'm envious of, quite frankly.
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