Tom Herman is worse than Donald J Trump: Convince me I'm wrong [NO FOOTBALL]

[SimonBolivar 10931]

23 hours ago, Bullneck said:

"So, we're going to replace the Eyes.  With something better, much better."

 

In two weeks!

[Bama Chick 28596]

As fanbases go I can't think of one that's more in denial over its own racism than ours. We love to think we are different from flagship schools from other Southern states because we like to think "We're Texas, we're not Southern." That's debatable and a complex question but the fact is the people who founded the university and many of not most of those who attended right up until maybe the 1970s pretty much all regarded themselves as Southerners and Texans. Leaders in this state were still naming schools after Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee right up until the '60s but we like to think that kind of crap is the sole preserve of Mississippi and Alabama.
It's not, obviously, because some of those schools still have those names and people are fighting to keep them. And no, it isn't just East Texas -- outside of El Paso and the Valley pretty much every town in Texas was founded by and for White Southerners and has the racial track record to prove it. And in the Valley, just sub in Brown for Black and it's pretty much the same deal. 
If you actually listen to Black people talk about UT and athletics, our track record is poor. There are those in our fanbase who are a little too proud of those all-White national champs in 1969. Bomani Jones was just talking about that the other day. He is a rare Black UT t-shirt fan; I am not sure how he came to his fandom, other than maybe he was forced into it by growing up in Waller, surrounded by Ags, and he being the son of two professors, was naturally appalled and thereby chose the smarter option, but anyway, he is, and he was talking about what could have been had Royal and the BMDs of his era did anything other than lag other Southern schools in the 1960s and '70s. Instead extreme conservatism reigned and recruiting Black athletes in-state has been way more complicated than it should have been ever since. Bomani was reminiscing about how jarring and bizarre it was for UT to be trumpeting James Brown as something of a novelty who would help us with the "inner city kids" as late as the mid-1990s and it was plain our 1990s teams were not exactly melanin-enhanced to competitive standard, as attested to by an entire decade of almost universally leadfooted linebacker play and the short/unathletic/wildly inaccurate White QBs of the 1980s.
Jones said to imagine if Texas had actually led the way instead of lagging behind schools like UH, SMU and even Bama, or if Royal had been able to prevent Switzer from raiding Houston, Dallas and East Texas at whim in the 1970s. Where would Texas be today if it had started banking goodwill in 1968 instead of just a few years later? 
And he also pointed out that in his lifetime, only Mack has managed to recruit Black athletes without some kind of cloud hanging around the whole enterprise. I've been following football in Texas pretty seriously since 1982, and when I think of the sheer number of Black Texans who've starred not just at instate rivals but all over America it makes me sick and sad, both. As the pre-eminent football school in this state, we should not have been losing players to Notre Dame, Miami, Colorado, Oklahoma, Ok. St, LSU at the rate we've almost always done and are continuing to do now. 
He noted that Strong was a whole 'nother ball of wax; you can't argue that race was not an issue in his time here, regardless of performance; Herman, as Strong's successor, has to deal with the fallout of being the guy who is seen to have effectively conspired to take Strong's job for at least a year before he was hired. 
Some of y'all can and will scream until your blue in the face about how Strong was the worst coach in Texas history and the numbers do back that up, however, now as then, y'all ignore that he had no QB or offensive line in his time here, and football-savvy people know that, and many thought he was not given a fair shake, Kansas loss or not. (Strong cratering at USF was a godsend to be brutally frank, because had he not done so, we'd be even more fucked with Black athletes than we already are.) 
And I think some of y'all overestimate Austin's charms in terms of a destination for young Black people. It's a White city and the largest American city to actually be losing Black population.  Outside of Mack's time here, our two biggest stars were Earl and Ricky, two Black guys whose personalities gibed with Austin in ways those of many other young Black men do not -- good ol' boy Earl with his pinch of Skoal and love of Willie Nelson, and hippie mystic Ricky, with his love of ganj and eastern religion. I've talked to quite a few Black Houstonians who've lived in Austin and they say it's, um, different than Houston. Not so much harsh, as having to deal with condescension and well-meaning idiocy from earnest liberal Austinites all desperately seeking that one Black friend. 
So now we have this Eyes of Texas deal and our fan reaction to it, all coming as the nation's race issue is heating up again and as  the program is circling the drain on the field. I am a fourth-generation Horn and I used to sing my kids to sleep with the Eyes. At the time I didn't know the skit it originated in was delivered in blackface. A few years ago I did learn that, and then I realized that the song itself did not have racist lyrics and intent, so we were probably okay. Black athletes thought and continue to think differently and since they are the stars of the show, it is up to them to decide. And tbh I have come to see their point -- it doesn't really matter if there are racist lyrics or not. The song was created in racist milieu and was almost certainly sung first in exaggerated Black dialect  -- De eyes ob Texas iz 'pon youuuu, or some such shit as that. Why should they want to join in on a relic like that? And who are we to tell them how they should feel?
This also gets to this idea of Texas as a school or a football factory. For Sam it is a school. He is living the dream of pretty much everybody on this site, in that he gets to quarterback the team of the school he has always loved. It's a great heartwarming story and I never get sick of hearing it, but it is very atypical for modern-day college football players for reasons we all know. They want a shot at the NFL and to have fun doing college shit in the meantime. (Many also esteem the value of a UT degree.) Its some balance of those factors. It's not having grown up viewing the world through Burnt Orange glasses like Sam and so many of us on here. 

Fantastic post.

And that mentality you mentioned about y’all somehow seeing yourselves as different or not southern is what I was getting at in my earlier post in this thread.

I can objectively state that 55% of my fellow Alabamians and 40-45% of my fellow Bama fans are like the people posting in the Football Board thread.

I see it manifested on this board all the time - pot shots at the politics of Alabama, which are well deserved but little self awareness that Texas’s politics is - up till now - just as shitty.

Like, at least we elected a Democratic Senator. Until y’all stop electing twatwaffles like Cruz and Cornyn and Abbott and Patrick and Paxton, y’all are in the same boat as us SECSECSEC assholes.

I have faith that Texas will turn blue eventually, and Alabama never will, and I’m thankful for it because Republicans will have an almost impossible time winning another presidential election without Texas. But pretending Texas is already there is just all hot air until it actually happens.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

3 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

Fantastic post.

And that mentality you mentioned about y’all somehow seeing yourselves as different or not southern is what I was getting at in my earlier post in this thread.

I can objectively state that 55% of my fellow Alabamians and 40-45% of my fellow Bama fans are like the people posting in the Football Board thread.

I see it manifested on this board all the time - pot shots at the politics of Alabama, which are well deserved but little self awareness that Texas’s politics is - up till now - just as shitty.

Like, at least we elected a Democratic Senator. Until y’all stop electing twatwaffles like Cruz and Cornyn and Abbott and Patrick and Paxton, y’all are in the same boat as us SECSECSEC assholes.

I have faith that Texas will turn blue eventually, and Alabama never will, and I’m thankful for it because Republicans will have an almost impossible time winning another presidential election without Texas. But pretending Texas is already there is just all hot air until it actually happens.

Yeah I spent half my young life ping ponging back and forth between Nashville and Houston and the two were way more alike in those days ('70s and '80s) than they were different. They are both different from what they were back then, and in different ways (Houston has become way more international and Nashville has gotten more like Austin), but on a state level, the people we send to DC are about equally shitty. 

[TexArcher 37518]

On 10/10/2020 at 5:13 PM, Covri said:

Who would find a way to lose first in a game of 4-D candy land? 

Trump would spout gibberish while raping the game board and Herman would find a way to lose anyway.

[MissingInAction 24822]

Even my tech friends are making fun of me now.

That is something that should never happen. 

[Goredho 17348]

Well, one’s negligence has resulted in the death of more than 210,000 Americans and the other lost to TCU and OU in consecutive weeks, so I would say they are about on par with each other.