Robert C
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Posts posted by Robert C
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All these openings are gonna make a bunch of coaches a bunch of money. Like 10 years @ 9.5M money. Remember when 10 years @ 7.5M for Fisher seemed insane? At this point, I'm half expecting A&M to tell him "did we say $9 million per year? We meant $12 million. Do you want a pony too?"
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18 minutes ago, supremebve said:
The thing about all those schools with the racist history is that if nothing else the football programs have tried to distance themselves from that history. Texas has specifically and explicitly tried to hold onto it.
Honestly, A&M is the biggest mystery to me. I think the first time I learned about the corps of cadets, I was completely out on everything they have to do with. If you want to play army man, we have an actual army, go be all that you can be. But walking around your college campus acting like you're in the military, except without the danger of being in the military...I can't support that type of behavior at all.
A large percentage of them do go directly from school to the military - the ones that do are committed by their junior year if I remember correctly. Last game I went to, they had the leader of the band from a couple years earlier (that's a really big deal at A&M) on the field at halftime. His face was essentially gone. He wasn't playing army. The ones that don't commit, well there's a reason why the term "boot chasers" was created, referring to girls being attracted to the seniors in their high top leather boots.
I never thought about joining the corps. Probably a good thing, since I was engineering major. Freshman year classes were full of guys in corps uniforms. By the time I got to upper level engineering classes, there wasn't a corps uniform to be found. I probably shared as many upper level classes with football players as I did corps members.
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1 minute ago, JLowe said:
A&M football integrated in 1967, two years earlier. They have a statue of Sul Ross, a confederate general, on their campus that the students wanted removed, and Kellen Mond spoke out about.
The administration's approach to that thing is beyond gutless. They've announced the Texas legislature, which sure as shit ain't gonna do anything, is the only body that can remove it. I'm an Aggie, and I'd gladly push the button to blow the damn thing up.
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5 minutes ago, supremebve said:
@Robert C , I can't dispute what you wrote above, it's all 100% true. My point is that Texas' history is the only reason any of those other schools have a chance in recruiting. Do you think it's an accident that Oklahoma is a preferred destination for kids in Dallas? Texas didn't allow a single black player on the team until 1970. Every black football player in Texas has someone in their life that remembers that. I grew up in racist ass rural Ohio, and trust me when I tell you that your parents and grandparents remember all of the racist ass institutions throughout their lives. Ohio State never comes up. Texas has never even tried to distance themselves from their history, and all those other schools benefit from it. There is no reason Baylor, TCU, A&M, or Texas Tech should get a recruit over Texas other than Texas wants to be Texas, and that means a lot.
I can certainly understand avoiding a school due to racism. I'm a white guy with an over the top southern accent. I fit right in with the good ol' boys. My wife isn't. She turned down a full ride at Notre Dame, which her family was pushing hard, after visiting their campus. Her direct quote was something like "it was the first time I felt like I didn't belong somewhere because I was Mexican".
And I'm definitely not defending Texas. If it was up to me, they'd never win a game ever again.
If playing that awful song every time they gain four yards keeps the recruits headed to A&M, more power to em, I guess.
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17 hours ago, supremebve said:
Completely different. If Texas would get it if their own way, they'd have every reason to have expectations. They just are more committed to their own bullshit than winning. They are the school that matters in one of the 3 biggest football player producing states, and can't recruit locally. That is 100% an institutional failure. Mack Brown's goofy ass won at Texas, none of these other assholes (and most of them have been assholes) have any excuse. Seriously, Oklahoma is the Michigan to Texas' Ohio State, and Oklahoma has no issue recruiting. Seriously, if you had a choice to spend the next 4 years in Austin, Texas or Norman, Oklahoma, why the hell would you go to Oklahoma? That sales pitch can't be that good, unless Texas' is that bad.
Oddly enough, I think making that exact assumption is a large part of Texas' problem. They assume that the place (both school and city) will recruit itself. I'm sure that works in some cases, but they've got decades of evidence that it doesn't work in general staring them in the face. 18 year old kids make decisions for a lot of different reasons, and those reasons aren't necessarily the ones think they are. Football specific reasons just make those decisions more complicated. Even when they're good, a lot of Texas kids don't want to go to school in Austin. A lot of Dallas kids' first choice has always been OU. Same with Houston and all of east Texas with A&M and LSU. Then there are some who just want to go further abroad. Used to be those guys ended up at Florida schools. Now it's Alabama/OSU/Clemson.
I have a good friend from high school who was a multi year starter at Texas in the early 90s, and I spent a fair amount of time around some of his teammates while I was in school. Another guy I graduated with was a multi year starter at A&M. My wife, and several friends, worked for Texas' football team while we were in grad school there in the late 90s/early 2000s. I got to know a bunch of the players then, and became friends with a few of them. Periodically, recruitment stories would come up - usually the crazy stuff they saw in the process, but occasionally the reasons why they went where they went. Not once did any of them mention the city in their reasons. Oddly enough, the only constant that all of the guys that went to Texas mentioned was their reason NOT to go to A&M, which was that RC Slocum was the worst negative recruiter they ever encountered.
I grew up in Austin and have lived here almost my entire life. The start of my awareness of college football pretty much coincides with the end of Darrell Royal's career and the beginning of Fred Akers' tenure here, in the mid to late 70s. So I've been here for seven Texas coaches, covering a span of 45 years
Fred Akers (10 years) - had a couple of really good teams - having Earl Campbell didn't hurt - but never could win the big one. Only won two bowl games in 11 years. Was guilty of not being Darrell Royal. Pretty mediocre the last few years. I was there for his last game. The "Fire Fred!" chants were amazing.
David McWilliams (5 years)- Was a good ol' boy, but not much else. Will say his players loved him, but I don't think anybody else did. Lost to a terrible Baylor team by 40+ points. Had that one good year. Dolfan can tell you how THAT worked out in the end. I was there for his last game too.
John Mackovic (6 years) - Amazed he lasted six freaking years. Texas fans HATED this guy, because he wasn't a good ol' boy raised from birth by Darrell Royal. Had one good year, mainly because he had Ricky Williams at RB.
Mack Brown (15 years) - This is where Texas fans got confused, or maybe spoiled. They thought of this guy's success as the baseline, when post Royal it's really the anomaly. Ran him out of town when his last few teams didn't match his earlier success. Thought they were gonna get Saban to replace him. Oops.
Charlie Strong (3 years) - Yeah, they got this guy instead. Didn't bring Teddy Bridgewater with him. Never had a winning record in any season. Lost to Kansas. Made Bret Bielema aroused.
Tom Herman (4 years) - Better than Strong, at least. Insisted on losing to Maryland, for some reason. Somehow got a Sugar Bowl win with a four loss team, which I guess was the highlight of his time. Thought they were gonna get Urban Meyer to replace him. Oops again.
Steve Sarkisian (I guess he'll make it through the year?) - Looked good at the start. Stumbled into two absolute stars at offensive skill positions. Had his team at 4-1, and had a 21 point first quarter lead on OU. Now he's 4-6, he lost to Kansas, his best player is out for the year, and his best recruiter's stripper wife's emotional support monkey bit a kid on Halloween.
Two of those guys were successful, in general (yeah, I'm counting Akers here). One of those two won a national championship by the skin of his teeth with the best college football player I've ever seen. The other missed winning one just as narrowly. The rest are somewhere between decent and awful, and have about win percentage that works out to just about exactly a 6-5 record between em. Texas will probably be a top team at some point. But it's not as simple as just getting a guy who doesn't suck. They're gonna have to find a special coach to get them back there, just like they did with Brown. He may not have been the greatest coach, but he instantly took their recruiting to a place it hadn't been in at least 15 years, and where it hasn't been since he left.
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Both of the schools I went to average about $140 million in football revenue per year (granted, they're the highest two). Major professional sports typically spend about 45-50% of their revenue in salaries. That'd be a bunch of money going to the players if the schools paid out even half that.
Also, don't think I saw this here. Kinda interesting (by ESPN standards anyway) read on paying off fired coaches
https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/32355679/dead-money
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Finished up our fall baseball season. Unsurprisingly, we finished 0-10. The kids did get better, though 3 of the 12 never hit a ball all year. Low point was the game where we played five innings and only hit two balls. My son grounded out for one of them, then the kid who knew the least of all of them going in (first time he tried to hit, he faced directly away from the pitcher) not only hit a ball, but actually got a base hit. I don't know which of us had a bigger shit eating grin when he got down to first. The last game of the year we were actually tied as late as the third inning, which was a huge improvement from where we'd been.
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Neighbor six houses down shot and killed his wife Friday afternoon, then tried to kill himself. Not a lot of info coming out, but he seems to be alive still. It's an awful tragedy, but should've been a preventable one. He's been suffering from dementia. Never should've been a gun in the house. Folks in that condition are just too unpredictable.
Between this and the guy who decided to get in a gunfight with SWAT (who turned out to share some some patents with one of my professors from grad school) shits hitting a little close to home.
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Saw this somewhere. Going into yesterday, Kansas had multiple wins against exactly one team - Central Michigan. So Texas joins an exclusive club. Guess that’s nice for them.
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5 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:
For the first time in school history Kansas has defeated Texas in Austin.
There’s the cheering up I needed after the Ags got their butts whipped. Gonna get me a recording of that game and a stupidly powerful outdoor sound system. Then I’m gonna set it to max volume the next time my shitty Texas fan neighbors decide the whole neighborhood need to listen to Neil diamond at 2:30 AM. Let em enjoy it till the sun comes up.
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Mississippi is beating the crap out of A&M at the half. 15-0, but that score is grossly misleading. Could easily be 35-0, or worse.
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On 11/3/2021 at 6:37 PM, jstout said:
Goofed off to see the Halloween stuff, but the only thing I got was a Christine attack. I had to die to figure out it wasn't another player in a flaming car.
Small, chill room. Everyone was minding their own business making money to buy the approximately 200 cars they've added since I was last on.
Amateurs. Everybody knows you go to Cayo Perico to make money. That’s what the cool kids tell me online anyway
im still playing on and off. I’ve shot a total of one dot since the last update. It’s a weird time in Los Santos.
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It won't happen, of course, but in a perfect world Love Wally Pipp's the hell out of Rodgers.
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That looks eerily similar to the Oilers/Bucs game I watched at the Astrodome back in 1995. Went with a friend because his employer couldn't find any clients who actually wanted to watch the game.
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And speaking of a million years ago, I didn't remember that the guy that Patterson replaced at TCU was Dennis Franchione. There's a name I thankfully haven't hadn't heard in forever. Remember that time he turned down a ten year contract and bolted Alabama to lead A&M further into the wilderness than it already was during Slocum's last years.
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4 minutes ago, JLowe said:
To all Texas fans. Three straight blown double digit first half leads.
And one stripper monkey.
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The first half of the Oklahoma game must seem a million years ago to Sarkisian right about now
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The full scale alien invasion is a nice touch. Nighttime is downright creepy looking. Downside is I keep having to dodge UFOs while trying to prepare to rob Rubio for the nth time
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Stupid New York teams. Can’t trust em to do anything. Even to lose correctly.
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7 minutes ago, Raziel said:
There is no such thing as overestimating the danger in guns. The second you *don't* overestimate their danger and stop respecting them for what they are, is the second that the probability of someone getting seriously injured or worse jumps astronomically.
I get what you're saying, but I think you're confusing my meaning or maybe my meaning just wasn't very clear in the first place. The danger absolutely has to be respected 100% of the time. When that doesn't happen you get things like that Rust shooting. There are procedures that should've been followed that would've made for a reasonably safe situation. They weren't, and that combined with the fools using that gun for target practice cost a woman her life. That's inexcusable.
I grew up with a guy that shot and killed himself accidentally when we were 14. Smart guy, but did something stupid (incredibly stupid to my thinking, but I wasn't there) and ended up dying in a horrible manner in front of his father. Without exact firsthand knowledge of what happened, I've always thought he must've disrespected the danger there to do what he did, and he didn't get a second chance.
But respecting guns isn't the same as being afraid of them. You respect the real danger a gun poses, not the imagined ones. I've been around folks that are so scared of guns that if they come into contact them their fear actually increases the danger level. Barring a massive failure of the gun itself, the danger is only comes from getting shot. That's a very real danger. So you make sure everybody handles the gun in such a way that nobody can get shot.
If you you handed me a spider I'd freak out and try to get it as far away from me as possible, probably end up throwing it, with out paying attention where it went as long as it was away from me. Some folks have that same reaction to the mere presence of a gun, and that clouds their judgement. Their fear blocks their ability to handle things correctly. Respect for a gun is necessary. Outright fear makes people do stupid things. That's what I mean by overestimating.
I've been around guns my entire life. I absolutely acknowledge the danger. I've been hunting for nearly forty years, so of course I've seen what they can do. But only twice have I been scared.
Once was when my girlfriend at the time picked up a 9mm pistol, assuming it was unloaded, and pointed it at my head as a joke. The gun wasn't loaded, but she had no way of knowing that. She didn't know guns, and so didn't know any better, so she just assumed. That's rule #1 of right there - the gun is loaded unless you've proven for yourself that it isn't. And then, of course, she broke rule #2 - a gun should never be pointed at anything it's not safe to shoot, no matter what. Partly of course that situation was my fault. I should have never allowed her to handle the gun without making sure she know what not to do. I wasn't used to being around somebody who didn't know better, so I just assumed she'd know not to do that. Fortunately she didn't pull the trigger, and the gun wasn't loaded, so I got to learn from that mistake.
The second time was when I was double-checking a rifle after I had unloaded it. The slide magazine on that gun is difficult to check visually, so after unloading it and counting the rounds, I was intending to cycle through about ten more times just to make 200% sure. On the sixth or seventh cycle, I out popped a bullet. That shouldn't have been possible, but it happened. Obviously it was an issue with the gun. That one scared the living shit out of me, because I'd done everything right. That last check shouldn't have been necessary. Been nearly 30 years since that happened, and I haven't fired that gun since. Not sure I trust it.
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2 hours ago, J.T. said:
That is fucking crazy. I am starting to think that the need to be curious or capture video for social media has robbed us of our survival instinct.
Partly that, I think. And partly a general cluelessness about guns that causes people to somehow both underestimate and overestimate the danger.
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14 minutes ago, Ryan said:
I wonder if she was filming it for posterity or just standing there watching like a goof.
The answer is yes.
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Thanks JT.
Ended a bit after the fire started. Looks like everybody who wasn’t in the house is ok. News said the shooter had critical injuries, which is a strange way of saying they took him out of the house in a bag.
Dumbass friend was standing in her front yard with her six month son in clear view of the shooter while the shots were going off, apparently thinking rifle bullets aren’t lethal at 60 yards. Fortunately she listened to my wife and got her ass back inside.
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Been an interesting day. So far, there's been a murder down the street from my parents and a Swat standoff two houses down from a friend's house. They had shots fired this morning. Now they're having heavy gunfire and explosions as I type this. Getting a play by play over text is more than unsettling.
Even better. House is on fire now. With gunfire still going on.
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NCAAF 2021 - WEEK TWELVE
in FOOTBALL
Posted
Weird. I never had a single conversation with them during my visit. Maybe it just depended on who was running it that day.