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statsman

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Everything posted by statsman

  1. Yeah, it’s great that coaches now understand that Expected Value is a “thing” for decisions. Next, let’s teach Sark the basics of binomial stats and option trees and we’ll all be better off.
  2. Ok, this is a guilty pleasure. There is an OU podcast from their On3 site. I occasionally check their synopsis/schedule to see if there is any to listen to. It’s been fun, because they are struggling in this new era of NIL and portal transfers. Evidently, Royal was right when he said that if Texas ever started buying players, other schools couldn’t keep up. There is a running theme about how unfair that other programs “tamper” to get theirs to transfer, that Venables is too honorable to buy players. Whatever gets you through the night, I guess. Anyeay, this is worth listening to, from the 20 minute to the 40 minute mark. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oklahoma-sooners-unofficial-40/id1114209557?i=1000652074369 The podcasters report that Jackson Arnold is looking rough, which is a problem, because their hopes all depend on him being terrific, and right away. These are the factors and variables they have to kick around… -could Arnold not be ready yet (it being unthinkable that he won’t be all that)? -could the OL suck? Or maybe it needs more time to gel? -The Mich State transfer, Brown, is running with the second team, and they were really counting on him. That’s not supposed to happen! -will there be more OL (especially a center) in the portal? -Maybe the defense is just amazing?
  3. I remember hearing that the largest hirer of SHSU grads is Alamo Rental Car. The Sewell car dealerships like to hire Aggies, though.
  4. Yep. The Ag give mind has mistaken the correlation of a once top 10-ish team falling to 8-4 consistency and the simultaneous end of their bonfire tradition, with causation. If the damned logs had fallen in 1984, not a one of them would be clamoring to bring it back.
  5. The Cowboys, under Murchison, were pretty much the smartest-run team. Under Jones, they’re pretty much the dumbest run team.
  6. On local WFAA news last night, they had a story about this. No mention of the school’s culpability in that outrageously operated enterprise, just comments about how it means too much to let it go. Those assholes are going to bring it back. For 25 years, my stance has been “Do what you want, if you just leave the University of Texas out of it”. But, they can’t, because it is all about the University of Texas.
  7. Just,…please tell me that UT’s Board of Regents doesn’t have a “Rivalry” committee
  8. There is no better documentary about raising teen daughters than “The Exorcist”, from the 1970s.
  9. https://www.barkingcarnival.com/2009/12/02/remembering-nov-18-1999
  10. No. I knew if we played them in CS in 2024, they’d make a big deal about the 25th anniversary. We should have pushed to play it in Austin, for the stadium’s 100th anniversary, but we just try too hard to be good sports.
  11. “I was a single mom, and that was my only child going to A&M. I was so proud of him and he was having so much fun. I trusted that school and campus, and frankly, I was let down. “Now, I’m old, retired, on a fixed income. I should have grandkids thinking about college, maybe even Texas A&M. But, I don’t. I spend holidays hoping for an invitation from my brother, so I can at least be around some people. When I’m alone in my thoughts, I think that at least no other mother will have to feel the pain and loss I feel. “Mr. Bellinger, you ask for my blessing for a new bonfire? I do not give it.” Bellinger, thinking to himself as he drives away, “She doesn’t get it.”
  12. Because the truth is, they really don’t give a shit about the dead kids, or their families. They just want to gin up the crowd’s enthusiasm, to beat Texas.
  13. It just pisses me off. I remember driving to work, early one morning, and hearing of the collapse. As the day wore on, more news came out about the death toll and injuries. Texas offered to cancel the game (the B12 south had already been clinched), but the Ags insisted on playing. (Some said, “that’s what the dead students would have wanted”. No, idiot, they would have wanted to live, but they couldn’t have that, could they?). Mack Brown heavily encouraged those outside the two-deep to give blood. There are two competing narratives of the game. From the Texas side, it was a shambles from the time UT checked into their College Station Hotel (phone calls to players’ rooms all night, breakfast canceled with a late morning kick off), through several bad officiating calls helping the Ags (Ag Brian Gamble drew a 15 years penalty for laying Simms out while yards out of bounds; Slocum convinced the ref to pick up the flag). The Ags remember the game as Aggie spirit saving the day after a disaster by helping the Ags defeat Texas. The full culpability of the Ag campus in the bonfire collapse wouldn’t be known until several weeks later. Incompetents put in charge, warnings ignored, just a screwed up mess all the way around. Of course they revere that weekend as one of their greatest moments.
  14. Those Goddamned stupid motherfuckers… https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/09/texas-am-bonfire-tradition/
  15. I’m looking forward to the new wave of SEC trolls finding this board, settling in, and then interacting with our old B12 trolls. “What? Why are you posting about the OSU Cowboys? Nobody gives a shit about them! Whoo-Pig sooey!”
  16. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-ceasefire-negotiations-northern-gaza-return-5d2597cc?st=bynlbpz2kivkhf5&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink
  17. Oil is a commodity. That means global prices affect us.
  18. Funny. Iran feels the same way about the USS Vincennes shooting down a plane full of civilians. The US also killed an innocent family of ten with a drone strike, in a screwed up retaliation at ISIS, two years ago. Mistakes happen. They’re awful. Decent nations acknowledge them (Russia, on the other hand, still claims to not be at fault for shooting down the Dutch 777 or the Korean passenger plane)
  19. I have probably posted this before, but… about 20 years ago, I was in a cross-functional meeting to plan a major new project. This one guy starts, “Let’s go around the room, say our name, and where we went to college. I’m Mike, and I went to Texas A&M”. The next guy, a respected company leader- “My name is John, and I got my GED in prison”. And that was the end of that foolishness.
  20. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/court/2024/04/04/482603/harding-street-raid-former-houston-police-officer-gerald-goines-reindicted-on-murder-charges/?amp=1
  21. It’s just one of several boxes to check or not check. When Texas was in the same conference, the answer to the question, “Why does Texas play home and away every year with Baylor, TCU, TT, Rice, UH and SMU?” was “Because Texas has to”. That answer is gone. Now, the question is “Why would Texas schedule any of those schools? What does Texas get out of it?” I’m struggling to think of a reason…
  22. No. Baylor (a school 90 minutes from Austin, and 90 minutes from DFW) and TT have stadiums that only hold about 50k. Texas needs at least 40k tickets. “that’s not how it works” because that’s how it never worked before. TT fans could be all kinds of asses in Lubbock, because Texas was required to play there every other year. These are “rivalries” created because of geographic convenience for scheduling over 100 years ago. If Hardin Simmons joined the SWC instead of Baylor, we would have been schlepping out to Abilene every other year. A proposal for a new realignment was offered upthread. Texas isn’t agreeing to anything like that unless its needs are met, or it is forced to. Ticket availability isn’t a good reason? Well, what is a good reason for TT and Texas, or Texas and TCU to play every year?
  23. There’s a little more. Texas is a “big dog”,…that had its state elected leaders tell it when it could move conferences and who it had to take with it (leaving the B12 was a fluke of timing- Texas legislature being out of session, media contract winding down, Texas Ex as governor). Texas is a “big dog”,…that was in a conference led by haters. Which makes sense, because most of the members hated and resented Texas. Back to the above proposal- Al mentions that revenue could be split unevenly. OK, there is one more problem- UT is done playing games in state, where it is only allotted 6,000 seats for fans (when it could easily sell 40,000 seats to Longhorn fans).
  24. I think you have to realize that Northwestern, Vandy, etc. understand that they get a benefit from the bell cows doing well. ISU was in a similar position, in the Big 8, which used to be nicknamed “The Big 2 and Little 6”. ISU understood that it benefited from OU and NU doing great. The SWC, and to a similar extent, the PAC were different. Those conferences were configured where the big schools (Texas, TAMU) considered the little schools’ locations their recruiting territory, breeding resentment at the little schools. Baylor fans, for example, resent Texas in a way foreign to ISU fans feelings about OU. Texas recruits Waco, and when Texas is doing well, Waco stores sell more Texas stuff than Baylor stuff. The small SWC schools have a shared interest in Texas being down. In the SWC, this manifested in the conference being OK with massive cheating, leaving it to the NCAA to clean up. A similar dynamic resulted in the Big 12. ISU may not have resented Texas, but Baylor, TCU and TT sure did. ISU and OSU certainly saw the opportunity to take advantage of with Texas down, circling those dates on the schedule. I’m sure some is Texas’ fault, primarily for allowing itself to falter, but the larger point remains- Northwestern doesn’t hate Michigan and Mississippi State doesn’t hate Alabama the way the Left Behinds hate Texas.
  25. The deadly airstrike on a convoy of aid workers in Gaza reveals the challenges and shortcomings of the safety measures Israeli forces have in place to protect civilians in war. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/world-central-kitchen-israel-gaza-military-d08b3bde?st=joexi5hme7oiqyx&reflink=share_mobilewebshare
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