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statsman

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Everything posted by statsman

  1. Damn! How many of us were there? I was there, too.
  2. 1981 SMU game. #10 Texas playing at (Texas Stadium) #8 SMU. SMU had Dickerson and James in the backfield. Texas won 9-7, holding the Mustangs to 205 yards (70 came on one pass play for the sole Mustangs TD). Sims had 11 solo tackles and four assists for 15 total tackles (SMU only had 68 plays, so Sims tackled over 1/5 of them). He had two sacks (McIlhenny went back to pass 23 times, but was only able to attempt 15 passes as he was sacked eight times), and four other tackles for loss. He forced a fumble and recovered a fumble (I can’t remember if it was the same play). https://stats.texassports.com/custompages/sports/m-footbl/archive/stats/81/ut-smu.htm He got hurt against TCU later that year, but there was a reason he was the number one draft pick.
  3. Baylor is a pissant program that had been freeriding on UT for decades, hypocritically claiming to be of higher morals while demonstrating it was happy to break any rule or law if doing so brought more wins. Its basketball program paid players illegally for decades, going sometimes to criminal lengths to hide it. Its football program paid tens of millions of dollars to buy rape victims’ silence, so it wouldn’t have to admit that the program’s greatest teams were built on a culture of gang rape. Is that logically coherent?
  4. Naw. Arkansas is a rival, and their flame to a 1964 MNC is the FWAA vote (Alabama won the wire polls, I believe, before losing to Texas in the 1965 Orange Bowl). Look, the FWAA did that vote every year, and even awarded a MNC trophy. Is a school that just had a great season supposed to say, “Naw, Dawg, we can’t accept that, the UPI voted for someone else”? I scoff at the MNC claims based on after-the-fact ratings (usually many years later).
  5. No, the point is that context should matter, and the dumbest way to pick a MNC is loss column bias. Example: BYU in 1984. The SEC in the ‘50s and early ‘60s was not the SEC of later decades. It was a bunch of little white guys that rarely ventured out of Dixie for a game. Again, the FWAA saw them play and voted them MNC. Why do you want to argue against that?
  6. LSU was an all white team that never played a game outside Dixie. Iowa arguably played a tougher schedule, was integrated and played other integrated teams. If contemporary sportswriters were willing to vote them MNC, I have no problem with it.
  7. You’re right, Bolverk. I have nothing to offer to this discussion. Won’t make the mistake again.
  8. Let’s not get carried away. France and Germany are still buying Russian energy, three years after Bucha. (Others may be, too, those are the ones I googled). I know, energy is a commodity, but I have to think that rejecting Russian energy would allow Russia’s remaining customers (China, India) to start screwing them on terms. The EU has issued a white paper on how a renewed Euro interest in defense could manifest in spending nearly a trillion Euros over the next few years. The EU has suggested that budget restrictions, keeping them from borrowing to spend on defense, could be lifted. I don’t think they have enacted it yet. (The UK is not in the EU, and they could be increasing spending on defense right now, but aren’t. Does it take a vote in Parliament? I really don’t know). The WSJ had a sourced news article this weekend. After the disastrous Oval Office meeting, Zelensky flew to London to meet with the European leaders, where they affirmed their support for Ukraine. Then, Macron and Starmer told Zelensky he needed to go back to the U.S. and make nice. https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/inside-the-frantic-european-negotiations-behind-ukraines-cease-fire-deal-f4ad538c?st=7JFhED&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink Is the U.S. acting childish? Sure. Are the Euros acting like adults? Well,…sort of, almost,…we’ll see. Russia rolling into Crimea in 2014 didn’t spur them to wean off Russian energy or increase their defense spending, going into Ukraine again three years ago didn’t spur them. Let’s hope they do so, now.
  9. Perspective- China has killed nearly as many Ukrainians on accident as Russia has on purpose (and many millions more worldwide), and no one is (or will) holding them accountable
  10. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/opinion/covid-pandemic-lab-leak.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare#
  11. They were named MNC by the Football Writers Association of America in 1958. It was awarded after the bowls, in a year where the AP and UPI awarded the MNC before the bowls to LSU, who then lost their bowl game. I’ll allow it.
  12. No sarcasm. More than anything, amazed that they have fallen so far behind. S&C is a science, and the very best are lifetime students, constantly trying to learn more. Madden wasn’t, and maybe Schmidt isn’t.
  13. I was listening to the Ikard-Lehman podcast, where they were discussing OU’s pro day. -don’t worry so much about the number of NFL scouts that showed, they said- you need a top QB and Edge rusher to get a bunch of them. -a lot of comments about players I rarely heard of during the season “maybe they get invited as a camp body, and anything can happen after that” - after discussing how much they like CB Woodi Washington as a person, they noted that his times would be good for a DT prospect - a lot of comments about players physically looking better now, than during the season. Is it possible that Schmitty, demonstrably better than Madden as a S&C coach 20 years ago, is demonstrably worse than Becton, now?
  14. 1942 Cotton Bowl (Alabama vs TAMC) watch. Has to be rare- rosters were smaller and there are probably a number in a bomber cockpit on the ocean floor, or in an old dresser in France (“some nice American gave that to Grandma for something”). Would trade for a Texas bowl watch I need.
  15. Deion really wanted CU to join the B12, because he thought he would have Texas as a recruiting territory. Turns out that with Texas out of the conference, exposure to Texas athletes (the best ones) is just a fraction of what it was.
  16. It could be worse. I was talking to a friend that went to the game in CS last November. He said he tried to get “Poo-oo-oor Aggies!” Going in the 4th quarter, and it just didn’t take. It is possible that, with a 13 year break in The series, younger Texas fans don’t know that we do that, when the win is almost certain? We need to do that next year, and remind them why they hate playing us so bad.
  17. You have to love holding both “sips are pathetic for getting excited about coming in third” and “hey, 2012 and 2020 were pretty damned great years” at the same time.
  18. You know who has been really serious about building their military? The PLA. I am of the opinion that the single most important strategic foreign policy goal of the US should be to deter China.
  19. The DOD and Commerce Department have a lot of laws limiting the sharing of IP, both for defense and dual use (commercial and defense). The U.S. spends 916B on defense, per year. The U.K., France and Germany, combined, spend $200B annually. Europe could increase defense spending by 50% (they are discussing increasing 10-20%, phased over three years), and their market is still dwarfed by the U.S. Remember- Russia invaded three years ago. That was not enough to make Europe get serious. In those three years, they have spent more on Russian energy than they gave (loaned) to Ukraine. The U.K. has about 70K active duty army troops. Do you think they are sending 20K to Ukraine? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-army-troops-ukraine-defence-b2701635.html Europe is showing signs of seriousness. They have introduced legislation in Brussels that would allow them to break debt limits for defense spending. That’s the first step. The second step is to dump the net zero mandates to allow production of weaponry.
  20. I think I would take Mateer in the Texas 2-deep. He has so much more playing experience than Owen- that has to mean something, right?
  21. Honestly, wrt Georgia and Crimea, the answer is we don’t have the reports of soldiers raping civilians, seemingly as a tactic, nor reports of mass graves of executed civilians. I think that’s a big part of it. And of course, that’s followed by the targeted bombing of civilian populations, and infrastructure. WRT Tibet, the PRC is much, much better at managing its image through pressure on western media companies and control of social media channels (how many here have TikTok on their phone? Ever query it for info about Tiannemen Square? It is no better than RT or Telegram, and probably worse. Cute videos, though). I mean- the PRC has ethnic concentration camps, race slaves, and credible reports of harvesting organs from living internees, and an income stream from sales of fentanyl ingredients to cartels, and there is no comparable western rage (our Europe allies all have national economic strategies of further engagement with the PRC). All I can figure is that they are much better at messaging than Russia.
  22. And that is less than half of what Germany paid Russia last year for energy (I know- that’s gross sales, not profit, but still,…in the third year of the invasion?) https://www.ft.com/content/81f60240-9f01-4dd8-85b0-1fec654a5257
  23. Reading comprehension. I said it was correct to blame Russia. I contrasted that with Russia’s ally, China, abstaining. Both votes are bogus, and maneuvers to try to be the broker of peace talks.
  24. Contrarian view: Trump did two things of note this past week, wrt Ukraine: 1. He had America vote against a UN resolution (correctly) charging Russia with starting the war. (Note- Russian ally China, also offering to broker a peace, abstained, instead of voting against. Wonder why?). 2. In the Oval Office televised discussion before the breakdown, he affirmed that U.S. weapon shipments, approved last year, would continue. Which of these actions is most significant, most telling? Zelensky wants guarantees of security. Trump has proposed a minerals deal for ores that are underneath the current battle lines, where commerce only happens in the advantage of US and Ukraine, if they are not under Russian control. I get that Zelensky wants his whole country back. He should. The truth is- no one has ever offered a plan or resources to accomplish that. Zelensky is not Churchill; he is Thieu, and he is balking at a deal that Thieu would have given his left nut for. He better hope that Budanov doesn’t start looking at him like Diem. Maybe Europe will offer a better deal. Maybe they will offer munitions and troops.
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