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SL Xpress

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Everything posted by SL Xpress

  1. I like Gallipoli as an example.
  2. All I know is I watched her at Minnesota for two years and wasn't excited about her coming to Texas. Part of that isn't Wenaas's fault. I was spoiled with our outsides. Wenaas had no chance to match up with the recent history of outsides we've possessed. And she didn't. Another problem is that Nebraska beat us head to head on virtually every recruiting battle we had with them for a couple of years (and everyone else, for that matter). Thankfully that's been changed the last couple of years, plus we received some incredible additions from the portal, including 3 from Nebraska (and Ames!). But even Blackwell this past year - who we could have used as a middle a lot more than Nebraska - we lost out on. We also lost on a couple of littles that could have been difference makers for us. Maybe Wenaas was the best option. I don't know. I just know I wasn't excited about her commitment out of the portal. I've had frustrations watching her the last couple of years. Again, it's not all on her. We won a national championship with her for goodness sakes, so there has to be gratitude around her for that. She went through some rough times and in my opinion showed a lot of mental fortitude. Especially when she was getting pulled early in the 2023 season. That hug from Elliott after the national championship said a lot.
  3. I honestly never completely understood why we brought her in. She's easy on the eyes, I'll give her that. And she tries hard. I never had an issue with her effort.
  4. It's not all on her, but I will be glad to move on from Wenaas. I'd like to say it was a frustrating season, but the truth is it comes following back to back national championships and an absolute blowout of Nebraska in last year's championship game, so that makes it a whole lot less frustrating. It never felt like we took advantage of having Rutherford on the roster. Really missed having a 3rd quality little in the back like the last two years.
  5. I'm not talking about right or wrong here. When it comes to college sports I'm not righteous enough to feel like I know what is right or wrong. As I established with a previous post on this thread - not that I expect you to have memorized my practically incoherent ramblings - I feel like there's a cognitive dissonance we all agree to with college sports being a multibillion dollar entertainment enterprise within academic institutions that fundamentally I'm uncomfortable with. My ideal world would put the genie back in the bottle in ways that aren't practical, where there's an oppressive overarching organization that negotiates the television contract for all college teams, evenly distributes the revenue, heavily enforces no payments to athletes, NIL or otherwise, colleges have much smaller athletic budgets than they do currently, and there are professional options in each sport if athletes want to go that route. I don't think NIL propels college athletics forward in productive ways, personally. It's a mess. It's basically impossible to enforce. It further separates the haves from the have nots. But as a fan of a have, it certainly benefits my fandom. So if this is going to be how we move forward, I'm thrilled Texas is exploiting it as much as possible. I don't blame O'Bannon in any which way. It's absolutely against the Sherman Act, so it's tough to see where the Supreme Court went wrong on a 9-0 blistering unanimous decision. We can blame the NCAA, but I'm not sure what they were supposed to do to get ahead of something I don't think there's any way to implement in a way that wouldn't be tossed out. Congress hasn't been in a position to act on college athletics for at least a decade, if not longer. Maybe work harder to get something passed in 1984 after the Supreme Court ruled against the NCAA negotiating television contracts? But I don't think that would have resulted in anything the average fan wanted to see whether it would have been good for my personal model of college sports or not. But I'm not thankful for O'Bannon, that's for sure. And it could have been a comment you were making to a general audience, but you made it as a reply to me, and so I responded in kind. I'm not mad at you, O'Bannon, the Supreme Court, the NCAA, or any of the individual actors who have led us down this path. I'm just an old man who doesn't like the direction things are going in and see it as unsustainable, but I'm too busy railing at kids to get off my front lawn to do anything about it.
  6. Did you catch the part where I'm not a big fan of NIL? Not that I consider this O'Bannon's fault. But no, no thank you or holiday gift basket from me.
  7. I guess. I'm not completely sure who deserves what. There's a lot of people who deserve a whole lot of things that are doing more benevolent things than playing college sports, and they're never going to get it. It's not a compelling argument for me. Regardless, they're getting it now, and it's not going away. It's going to get bigger. But if I had my way - which I don't and won't - college sports would have much smaller budgets, there would be a professional option in all sports, the players in college would only be paid with a scholarship and a small stipend, and anyone who was caught paying them more than that would be punished severely, SMU death penalty style. And television revenues would be spread in an egalitarian way among participants, a la NFL. I don't understand your argument in italics. Paying players in college is not a direct competition with the professional leagues. It's a direct competition with a minor league. If the NFL developed a minor league the same way baseball has and the NBA has done, college games would still outdraw in attendance and television ratings any product they put out there because the identifications for the college teams are so much stronger. I'm not sure how that's debatable, regardless of whether college football came before the NFL or not.
  8. I can't get enough of this, Longhornfrenzy. Thank you for posting these.
  9. One of my favorite arguments from people regarding NIL is that prices will stabilize at some point. Prices aren't going to stabilize until there's some kind of transparency and enforcement mechanism limiting payouts, or the whole system comes crashing down in some kind of existential way. This is how markets work. Especially markets that aren't exclusively tied to monetary incentives. There's a lot of emotion around our favorite school doing well that goes beyond return on financial investment. Just ask Phil Knight for one. What else is he going to spend his billions on that will bring him more satisfaction than Oregon's first national championship before he dies? How does that work with fiscal responsibility? People talk about how a more reasonable sentiment will prevail when money is spent on players that don't pan out, but that's not how it works. It especially doesn't work that way when the teams that dominate the sport have the highest payrolls. That says if you want to compete you better be spending the money. We're like Rorschach in Watchmen that's been put in the SEC, and is now letting all the inmates know we're not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me.
  10. You could stick late era Fred Akers, David McWilliams, John Mackovic, late era Mack Brown, Charlie Strong, and Tom Herman in there, too. We've had quite the run. Thankfully we got peak Mack Brown in there for 10 years or it would truly be depressing.
  11. There's a cognitive dissonance I willingly create with college sports. I personally do not believe a multibillion dollar entertainment enterprise should be housed within the confines of academic institutions. In my ideal world the NCAA or a similar institution would have overly repressive powers. They would negotiate a single television contract and then evenly spread out the proceeds, the way they did prior to the 1984 Supreme Court case. There would be no NIL allowed for athletes, simply because it's impossible to truly determine legitimate NILs from pay for plays. It's not a legitimate argument that can be applied across all cases "well, I'll know it when I see it." But that's not the world we live in, and it's not ever going to be. In this world college sports is a multibillion dollar enterprise, and it's built in large part on the shared identification we have with our favorite schools. People talk about how the players deserve the money because they're the ones doing the work, and that's certainly true to a degree. But we've seen how college sports can attract an audience in the way professional minor leagues can't. On some level it's not the athletes, as much as we love (or hate, lol) to follow them. It really is the brand. And there's a symbiotic relationship. College sports builds an identity with a school long after departing the campus in a way no other vehicle provides with the same effectiveness. It brings many alumni back on a regular basis. It builds a mutual tie and brand loyalty that goes beyond just getting an education there. In any case, in this world if we're going to compete in a sport. I'd like for us to win. And that's exactly what we're doing. We're no longer an administration who wants to see the football team succeed so the athletic department can make more money. We truly see it as we want to make more money so we can win more games. That's an important distinction and I'm glad it finally exists.
  12. I'm not a big fan of NIL. It changes the nature of college sports in irreversible ways. But in the last twenty years I've been screaming for kids to get off my lawn on the subject, I've always stated declaratively no program in the country will benefit from opening that pandora's box the way Texas will. And that was before 20 more years of Austin growth and still no professional sports team in any of the 3 major sports on the horizon. It didn't happen by accident, but I'm very appreciative of the Longhorn alums who got off their ass and actually did something to move NIL forward rather than being a keyboard warrior like me. Watching programs like Alabama, OU, Georgia, Clemson, LSU (I guess A&M? they never did anything with it, though) et al have their advantage in their willingness to provide under the table inducements to players and their families, oftentimes at unprecedented game changing levels historically, be completely annihilated through the Supreme Court eviscerating the NCAA's ability to enforce...well...just about anything, has led to a golden era in UT sports. Add in we're not going out of our way from an administrative level to put competitive obstacles in our path - or at least not as much as we used to - and it just feels like we're in the midst of seeing something really special. It can still all be screwed up with the wrong coach, but thankfully that doesn't appear to be our issue. For me this feels like a big fuck you to all the paying of players and their handlers to grab instate talent that otherwise would have naturally signed with Texas that happened over the past 70 years. It's an even playing field in that regard now, but like the pigs say at the end of Animal Farm, "We're all equal here. We're just a little equaler."
  13. Everyone's a guru when everyone says yes. "I knew it the whole time!"
  14. My guess from context is this is a question posed to classes on a regular basis by aforementioned professor Hamilton when students debated the merits of various legal positions.
  15. One of the great joys in life I receive is knowing Texas is paid money for every piece of official merchandise with an upside down Horns logo sold to an OU or A&M fan. I don't want to live in a world where that goes away.
  16. While I agree, he wasn't a lone wolf. Plenty of shades of Robert McNamara in that one, IMO. I hate the way the US has handled Ukraine the whole way through, for the most part. A lot of empty promises and inferences of support. A lot of half assedness to prevent escalation. But always my biggest thought is however maddening the approach has been, the alternative would have been worse. And now the alternative is here. I feel like there was a golden opportunity to throw off a terrible yoke on Ukrainian society/culture that's loomed over them for hundreds of years, and now it feels like the window is closing. For me it's like watching Sauron win.
  17. Thank you for the mention. I have a tough time with Terry as our head coach. He's recruiting well enough. I'll give him that. I follow the team, but it's tough for me to be excited about the program, and I don't really like it when I'm posting as a Debbie Downer all the time. I'm with you on Wulaw Horn and longhornmatt. I've disappeared for long stretches before. Hopefully longhornmatt makes a return appearance. I'm heading to Eugene this weekend to watch the Oregon Ducks men's basketball team take on Montana. I didn't even know they were playing. I arranged the trip to see my niece around the Nebraska Oregon volleyball game and the Maryland football game on Saturday and she tells me yesterday she can get us in for free (she interns with the athletic department while she plays lacrosse and earns her master's), so I said "why not?"
  18. Well, mass production of almost anything. We don't make things, relatively speaking. It's an existential problem over the long term regarding our security, both militarily and economic. We don't even have the supply chain infrastructure to do so in many instances.
  19. A mnemonic trick I've used to help remember people's names when first being introduced to them is asking them to spell it. Especially if it's a name that has multiple common spellings. Bob is a tough one, for example. But Shawn/Sean, Kathy/Cathy, etc. are good ones. It's amazing how important the spelling of one's name can be to people, especially when it has multiple spellings. The bad side of it is if you have some kind of extended conversation about the spelling of their name, and then 10 minutes later you still can't remember it. I also will often have extended conversations about people's names. Not always, but asking about their name's origins, if they know of any. Also, if they have a name with multiple common spellings, after they tell me which way their name is spelled, I regularly respond with, "the way it's supposed to be spelled."
  20. I wrote out a long reply, but it all segues away from the original post in ways I'm not comfortable with. I'll just say I probably don't think there have been as many political misadventures as you do. The problem is we're an isolationist country at heart who found itself the most powerful nation on earth, run by elites who saw US intervention as important and necessary with a general population that doesn't really care about what happens in Canada and Mexico, much less anything farther away. The general voters didn't even really want to get directly involved in World War II until after Pearl Harbor. There are also a lot of fair criticisms of this country, just like there is with any organization that's extremely powerful. Being powerful means making mistakes, because there are things you can do that others can't, and there are things you choose not to do that you could have. That's not the issue with the powerless. But if a society lacks conviction, it becomes hard to do difficult things, regardless of whether it should or shouldn't be done. Part of what creates that conviction is a pride of identity. Currently it's challenging to teach about having a pride of identity, because there's an important focus on what we should not be proud of. It can be difficult for people to hold both concepts simultaneously. In any case, I love the original post. It's an important battle to talk about. Richard Pryor had a segment in his standup routine in the 70s (I tried to find it on youtube but couldn't) where he talked about the reason why Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor is they were only acquainted with laid back west coast Californian Americans. They didn't know about the Deep South Americans. He didn't mean it as a completely serious comment, and I'm not quoting it as one. I did think it was funny, even when as often was the case with Pryor there were multiple meanings behind it.
  21. At some point it became culturally important to be seen as critical of America's past. I do believe if we whitewash and glorify everything, we can learn the wrong lessons. But when the heroism and bravery of those who came before us is allowed to be diminished and unacknowledged, we lose a sense of pride of who we are and where we came from. There's a healthy spectrum there somewhere. In my opinion as a society we've leaned way too far to the critical side of things. At least from my perspective.
  22. I'm just not sure what the point of the democracy is if it ceases to exist. On some level it feels like actual survival should be an important metric. But maybe that's just me? I think the opposite argument can be made, too, btw. What's the point of surviving if it's some kind of dystopian serfdom. Maybe there's some kind of spectrum a society could exist on? Don't know where on the spectrum would be ideal, though. BTW, we all have inner primordial brain feedback mechanisms. I hesitate to call them ape brain because we didn't actually evolve from apes, but we all have a common ancestor.
  23. You say that like it's a bad thing. I've seen us win plenty of games over the years we didn't deserve to win. I'm perfectly fine with every single one of them. It didn't happen here, but I would have been perfectly fine with it if it did.
  24. You're right. I have missed your point. It would require some level of explanation from you to understand it. I'd be glad to read and respond if you care to make the effort to further explain yourself.
  25. I feel like there's a natural conflict of being a completely open society and our national security. I'm not quite sure how we actually exist as a country over a long enough period of time without some kind of emphasis on our national security. I'm also not sure how we exist as a completely open society while also creating organizations dedicated to our national security. The two seem incongruent. Since I think humans at our core are genocidal maniacs, and whatever freedoms we experience as a collective society aren't worth much if we're wiped from the planet, I probably lean on the national security side a little more than someone with a different mindset. I also find the concept that every taxpayer/law abiding citizen has a right to all the knowledge available to the people responsible for our core elements of national security extremely naive. But I do acknowledge there's a natural tension. If someone is all in that we should be a completely open society, then it makes sense they'd have a problem with any secrets being kept. I don't agree with it, but it has a certain internal logic.
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