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Duane Moore

Burnt Ends
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Posts posted by Duane Moore

  1. 13 hours ago, MuellerHorn said:

    Washington State? However, that part of the country is beautiful, so they have that going.

    Fresno State is an apt comparison. Shitty school, shitty town, BFE California. 

    I had this thought as well about WSU since they used to be in a P4 conference. I’m sure the scenery is Eastern Washington is beautiful in its way but it’s still a backwater. Coincidentally, the three towns/schools being grouped together here - MSU, Tech, and WSU were the three schools where Mike Leach coached. 
     

    Also:

     

  2. 2 hours ago, closetojumping said:

    I don't see any "tell me about MSU" type of threads, but I have some unpleasant thoughts to put out into the ether. I've also spoilered some content that gets more voluminous on the banality of Mississippi State as an institution for tl;dr imbeciles.

    Mississippi State is perhaps the most boring brand in the entirety of major college athletics. 

    Someone lamented on the game week thread that "no one is excited for this game". I doubt I'm the only person who read that and thought, "who in the fuck gets excited to play Mississippi State?" Even if they were good, who would be excited to play MSU? "Dude, we've got Mississippi State this week!" Right.

    Does Ole Miss get excited to play them? Alabama? I guess, having watched 20+ Egg Bowls, I can agree that Ole Miss actually gives a shit but that's about it. 

    This is a brand and school that is as plain as grits and as competitive as a hippie commune. Starkville is as appealing as a destination as visiting a tire-making factory. I've tried thinking about who else rivals the Mississippi State melancholy as an opponent for anyone out there. Who can do it? 

    -Baylor? They are in Waco. But they've managed to institutionalize rape and murder cover-up. They have better colors, also. They're not completely boring. 

    -Indiana? Bloomington is supposed to be a great place to visit and they used to be a blue blood in men's basketball. Way better academically as well.

    -Iowa State? A case can be made here. They're marginally better academically. Their colors and uniforms are better and they've had some hot meme girls. I don't know anything about Ames. I don't know, maybe ISU is an analog. 

    -Wake Forest? They've been good before in other sports and Winston-Salem is a great town with some history. Way better academically as well. 

    -The best candidate is probably Texas Tech. The only thing saving Lubbock from being as shitty as Starkville is the fact that Lubbock is at least inside the state of Texas. Tech's academic ranking is just 10 rungs up above MSU's, coming in at 198 in the US News & World Report rankings. Also, Tech is about as futile as MSU when it comes to athletic performance. Maybe Tech really is an analog, and Texas just traded one shitty conference affiliate for another. 

    P4-wise, I am not sure who else could objectively be considered on par with being as moribund as Mississippi State, but I'm interested in other suggestions. This is a really boring, uninspiring pack of mouthbreathing gypsies with whom Texas has moored itself. It's grim. 

    Mississippi State's academics are on par with a third world country's.

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    The MSU US News & World Report ranking is 208th, nationally. That's currently 98 spots behind the University of Oklahoma, who is our standard bearer for academic futility. Originally Mississippi A&M when founded, the mission for the school hasn't apparently changed as much as the name. In short, this dumpster fire exists in order to educate, to some meager degree, farmers and their offspring.

    The acceptance rate hovers around 80% and that's with most applicants being from Mississippi high schools. My daughter taught in the Teach For America program in Mississippi for 2 years and then a 3rd mentor year within their public school program. When she applied, they asked her where she'd like to teach, anywhere in the country. She opted for "place of highest need", no doubt thinking she'd wind up in East Los Angeles, becoming the female version of Jaime Escalante.

    Nope. Welcome to the Mississippi delta, young lady! She was once stabbed in class; witnessed one student's dad murder another student's dad in front of the school pick-up line; broke up fights in the classroom daily; and taught 2-3 13 year olds each year, in the 3rd grade. You can't move on to 4th grade without being able to pass state standard reading and math tests. Mississippi State is taking roughly 80% of these erudite scholars.

    I'm sure Texas is benefitting in numerous ways from the research side of things in their deep collaborations with Mississippi State now that the two are affiliated. 

    I've been a part of employing and working with 1000s of college grads over the years, and I can recall working with only one MSU grad. We hired him as an analyst out of their business school at a growing start-up. I will never figure out what we were thinking when we did it, because the guy basically showed up underwater and was gasping for air before the end of week 1.

    Shit got worse from there. By the end of month 2, he'd been removed from all projects, was in a PIP, and an uncomfortable exit was coming. Problem was, we liked the guy and he meant well. Those are bosskillers, of course, but we figured out a role that made sense and it saved his career. We needed a receptionist. Dude took to it like a duck to water. Last I heard, he'd made his way to executive assistant several decades later. 

    I've made the argument that LSU is a shithole institution that is doing more harm than good to this country by handing out degrees and sending clowns into the workforce. I'd make the same argument for Mississippi State, but I'm thinking that maybe whatever farming their doing in that state could be benefitting from the reality that a lot of MSU grads can probably read and write better than when they landed in Starkville in the first place. 

    As pathetic as Mississippi State's academics are, their historical athletic performance might be worse than the academics.

      Reveal hidden contents

    MSU has an overall losing record, for their history, in football. It staggers me a bit when I think about how hard that is to pull off. These guys schedule 4 non-conference teams every year, always with 3 cupcakes. They're a founding member of the SEC. They've gotten to play Kentucky and Vanderbilt regularly, with Arkansas and South Carolina as well in recent decades. Ole Miss has mostly been equally shitty. How the hell do you wind up with a losing record for life with those cushions? 

    Mississippi State has won one SEC conference title in football, in 1941. They've had 3 consensus All-Americans. I looked up "backwater program in college football" and the first result from Google was "Mississippi State is often considered the best example of backwater college football programs". They think ringing cowbells is a competitive advantage and a unique and endearing facet for their football brand. 

    Across the span of the MSU athletic department, they've won one national title in college baseball, and nothing else in any sport. That's it. One. Within several years of that outcome, they fired the dude that brought that home for them. They're historically a top 15 baseball program and that is the apex of all of their sports. They're usually little more than a speed bump in every other sport besides occasionally being good in men's basketball and women's basketball (much of the WBB success is a direct result of Vic Shaeffer). 

    I guess there's some legitimacy to the notion that cupcakes are necessary in every sport, so we need the MSU's of the world in athletics. 

     

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  3. 19 hours ago, Hank Kingsley said:

    Says that the MSU DL is their weak link defensively so Texas OL issues won't be exposed as much. 

    As someone who listened to a lot of opponent previews this season, this is exactly what was said about the pass rush for UF and UK. Can’t get pressure on anyone - until they played us. 

  4. On 10/19/2025 at 8:53 PM, satyanash said:

    Heze Kent – Tight End / Offensive Tackle

    Listed as a tight end but likely to move to tackle in college, Kent brings a rare combination of size and athleticism at 6-foot-6, 265 pounds. He’s rated the No. 12 tight end nationally, yet his frame and movement skills make him a natural fit for the offensive line. If Texas looks to add another lineman in the 2026 class, Kent’s physical traits and upside make him an intriguing target. His versatility could make him one of the more valuable late additions should he revisit his commitment status.

    Sounds like another project. Great frame to grow into as an OT, but we don’t have the best development track record on the OL. Another Goosby seems best case scenario. 

  5. 15 hours ago, Thatguy said:

    Its like @Derka doesn't even listen to the coach. Sark told us years ago how he calls games and the whole Sark loop. He explained how he uses the run game to get the second level to react then he RPO's them. Then when the safeties walk down to deal with the RPO he hits them over the top. So basically Sark is telling us he coaches by the numbers. Wherever he has a numbers advantage he looks to exploit it. So it should be self explanatory that if Sark sees Kentucky, a team that plays primarily zone, basically playing man coverage all game with extra bodies in the run game he is going to try and exploit that with mesh concepts and man beaters. He did that but we couldn't hit the receivers. So when we see Sark abandon the run just look at what the defense is doing for an answer why. OU wasn't doing that so of course we ran a different gameplan 

    This is as good an explanation as I’ve seen and makes a lot of sense. Have you gone back and confirmed it on the game film (6+ in the box results in pass play and vice versa) or is this based on your first watch observation?

    1 hour ago, Codaxx said:

    in @BurntOrange&White defense, he is the most consistent poster on this board. His position is always the Qb sucks. 

    That and the LG position. 

  6. 31 minutes ago, MIkeHoncho said:

    I'm honestly more worried about Wisner.   Any word on if he will be full strength at MSU? 

    Not mentioned so I take that as good news. We’ll see when the injury reports come out tomorrow night. He certainly didn’t carry a heavy load against UK. 

    Will be watching MSU’s report to see about their big RB, Bothwell. Lebby said he was day to day after missing the UF game, and is the kind of RB that gives the middle of our defense problems. 

  7. 2 minutes ago, deech said:

    It'a a culture win bc the culture overcame the awful game management and play calling and won anyway. 

    I think there is something to be said for this observation. Take a look at other teams who started the season highly ranked, lost an early game, and then just imploded once their bubble was burst (Clemson, Penn State, FSU). This team still seems like it is battling, even if on one unit the battle is primarily against ourselves. At some point that may give out, but some credit is due to the players for playing hard this long. A team that has quit doesn’t make that goal line stand in OT last week. 

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  8. 44 minutes ago, BachelorTrek said:

    Royal to start.  Lulz.

    Got it. You just named every QB that started during my 4 years at UT (unless Donovan Forbes snuck in a start for a game or two I don’t remember)

    11 minutes ago, BachelorTrek said:

    You're just going to relive that 60-40 cougar-high debacle forever, aren't you?

    Kelley threw for 233 yards with a TD pass in that game, too.

    You don't have to tell me about it-- I was in the dome for that, myself, in the end zone where cougar high liked to put the Texas allotment.

    That was the unreported first time Bevo got loose and charged a cougar high player that taunted/provoked him as he jogged past during pre-game warmups.

    Funny how we remember specific games so well many years later.  We had just gotten on a bit of a run that season, upsetting a good Arkansas team in Little Rock on the last second Tony Jones TD, and beating Tech at home. U of H was not a good team and hadn’t been for a while, but were breaking in the run and shoot under Jack Pardee. I had gone to Padre with a bunch of buddies for the weekend and had been drinking at Blanca White’s in Matamoros, and when we got back to the American side we turned the game on the radio and listened to that game in anger and outrage in the parking lot of the border crossing station. I just remember kicking a bunch of cars, I was so pissed. Start of a miserable three year experience with those fuckers until redemption night in 1990. 

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  9. 2 hours ago, The_Great_Hornsby said:

    The thing I dont understand is how he can hit a throw on the run out of our own end zone on a dime against OU but then cant hit a stationary receiver with 10 yards of space around him in all directions. So frustrating.

    And that sporadic positive reinforcement is probably what makes Sark keep going back to his “long ball” play calls. The talent is there for the big payoff, it just isn’t consistent enough to win. He’s like a human slot machine and Sark is the old lady with her bucket of quarters. 

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  10. Good summary and compelling case, I just don’t think Sark will listen. He’s done better as the head of the program than I thought he would, and I think he’d probably get even better at self scouting and quality control if he didn’t have to be coming up with game plans and play calling every week. I go back to the fact that Jimbo is the only play caller head coach for either side of the ball who won a national championship this century. Josh Heupel at Tennessee is facing many of these same criticisms in his year 5 and most Tennessee fans want him to give up play calling duties as well. 

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  11. 1 hour ago, elguapo said:

    How bout that play call though! Third and 3 on the road with an offense that has been struggling on your own side of the field, let's dial up a low percentage slow developing deep shot trick play???

    They’ll never see it coming!

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