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SL Xpress

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Everything posted by SL Xpress

  1. Sco Ducks is dumb, btw. I thought there would be a cool story. Nope. It's literally just Let's Go Ducks shortened. They've got merchandise for it and everything.
  2. Unless/until they come to Texas. Then I hope we name a stadium after them.
  3. Just plug in Hero Kanu. Oh, that's right. They can't. He'll be on the sidelines for Texas. Gosh, that's too bad.
  4. Desperate times. Desperate measures. It's amazing what any of us will believe when we find our options limited and someone offers us hope. Even false hope. OU can see their relevance disappearing for lack of resources. They had to have hope a true salary cap was going to be instituted with the House settlement or other legislation/court orders. And then their approach would win out (I'm not saying it would - I'm saying that's the core belief). They still have amazing facilities, a decent athletic department revenue stream. They're not completely down for the count. They have a state population that's likely to subsidize the payroll with a tax of some sort, if that's permitted whether by permission or forgiveness. Same as LSU's fan base. I believe a diffusion of responsibilities is a great way to protect the incompetent. Who is responsible for the decline of OU football? Not me! I have answers, son! Diffusion of responsibilities in an organization rewards the people most gifted at finding scapegoats. I feel like Nagy has positioned himself where he won't be blamed for OU's decline for years. I'll also say that KSU did come close to competing for a national championship with Michael Bishop at quarterback. Probably should have. But that was a different era when Snyder exploited KSU's open enrollment and the junior college system in place at the time to help bring in players who had difficulties meeting the NCAA minimum entry. But that was 30 years ago and that dynamic hasn't existed since. Also, TCU competed for a national championship. But that was a one off. More the exception that proves the rule. Nagy can poo poo the recruiting services all he wants, but the truth is it's harder to find a diamond in the rough than it ever has been. There are too many paths to exposure. I truly feel like it starts with having the right head coach. The right head coach wouldn't have had an end around pulled on him like this. Nagy having the power he does is as much a sign of Venables being the wrong guy as much as his horrific offense and his win/loss record. Could you imagine this happening to Bob Stoops?
  5. OU is doomed to failure, IMO. I appreciate that college football has become way more transactional than it ever has been, but it's always been transactional on some level. OU fielding successful teams is the perfect example of that. It's still relational, though. The NFL's primary source of talent acquisition is the draft. Of course they can fill in gaps with free agency and trades, but if you're not drafting well you're simply not going to be able to compete at the highest level. College football's primary source of talent acquisition remains high school recruiting. At least for programs with national championship aspirations. Which OU may or may not ever achieve again, but that's going to be the fan base's expectation for the time being. The transfer portal is critical, but it's to plug gaps, not to overhaul the entire roster. And even there relationships can be important. OU is adding layers to their talent acquisition that are going to make them inherently less effective in recruiting. Not more effective. They are going to purposefully recruit guys who are undervalued in order to beat the system. But they're having the coaches recruit players they didn't fully invest in. That's an organizational issue. Also, Nagy says his goal is to win national championships, but that's not really his goal. His goal is to keep his job regardless of performance. OU fans and administrators are obviously desperate. They do not feel like they can compete in the NIL space so they're hoping Nagy is some kind of magic bullet. Castiglione has resigned/retired, in part because of the dynamics in play within the athletic department. Venables isn't happy having the power of building his roster taken away from him. He's on a short leash. If/when OU fails to meet expectations, who is going to get the ax? It's not going to be Nagy, that seems certain. He's going to be able to sell this form of bullshit for several years before OU people realize the Emperor isn't wearing clothes. They'll probably have to go through at least one more coaching change before they clean shop. OU's best hope is that Nagy is hired away to peddle his bullshit somewhere else. Because what kind of quality head coach is going to want to sign up for this mess? This is doomed to failure. They'd be better off hiring Larry Ellison's wife for the position. At the very least go after one of Harold Hamm's kids. Then hire the right coach like they did with Bob Stoops. I realize coaches like that can be a moon shot, but that's what it takes. Nagy is going to help run that program into middling status at best.
  6. Because if you're monitoring the numbers - and any good manager/owner monitors the concession numbers, because that's your lifeblood revenue source - at some point you can see the sales and ratios of sales/tickets sold are down. Doesn't matter by how much. There's a laser focus on those numbers. So then you suspect something. That's assuming the machines couldn't keep track of the voids, and most of them could. Every now and then at the theater I worked at they'd have some kind of hot dog sale. Buy some kind of combo and you got the hot dog for a cheap price. Anyone who got the item or items necessary - I don't remember if it was a large drink or large popcorn or a combination. Doesn't matter. But if anyone got the items necessary to qualify for a cheap hot dog but didn't get the hot dog, I'd simply not ring up the sale, then I'd tell everyone after that they could get a hot dog for the sale price if they wanted one, and ring up the whole sale at that time. We had multiple concession stands because it was a pretty big theater for its time, and inevitably the concession sales where I was working would blow the roof off of any other theater in the city. The general manager knew exactly what I was doing. He couldn't encourage me, but he sure was willing to turn a blind eye to it. What was critical is that the register balanced at the end of the night, but it always did. To be honest whatever concession stand I was working always had huge sales compared to everyone else because I was constantly hustling people to upsize or suggesting they add to their order. Shit works. Wasn't really incentivized to do it. I just enjoyed the process. On another note, one of my biggest frustrations at the time was the stupid way the concession stands worked. You'd have multiple employees there working almost an assembly line. One person would grab popcorn. One person would handle the drinks. One of them would handle special orders like hot dogs or nachos. One person would be on the register. But invariably the register took way longer than anything else, so it ended up being a bottle neck for the transaction process. I'd complain that we needed more registers and just have everyone use one and then get their own customers' popcorn/drinks, or at the very least just have one person doing all of that for multiple registers. It's not like the general manager was unsympathetic, but it was simply the way the corporation did it. Everyone did it the same way back then. Even when I'd attend old theaters, like the old River Oaks Theater before it was torn apart and remodeled into a dining theater, they did it that way. It was such a validation when theaters finally started going to the model with multiple registers. It's the only way that makes sense. Since I'm on the topic, one of the changes that happened about 20 years ago is that employees stopped going to movies. That was a huge perk when I worked in a theater in the 80s. You could see any movie for free pretty much at any theater. Even if the theater was another chain they had reciprocal agreements. I just told my manager I wanted to see a movie at another theater and they'd call ahead and get me passes at the ticket office. Any time I went to the theater - and this is into the 90s and 2000s - I'd ask the employees if the movie I was going to see was any good, or I'd ask what was their favorite movie the theater was showing. I don't know exactly when it was, but it felt like overnight suddenly the answer became, "I don't know. I haven't seen any." Not just that they hadn't seen any of the movies showing at that time. They really didn't see all that many movies in general. There's a big part of me that always wondered why would you work in a movie theater for low wages, no tips, poor hours, open every holiday, if you didn't like movies in the first place? Also, whenever I worked the ticket office, which was with some frequency, I'd regularly steer people away from the really bad movies and offer an alternative. There's no question I could have gotten in trouble for that, but I never got turned in for it.
  7. This video deserves attention. It's an interview with Rece Davis and Steve Sarkisian. I didn't find it insightful per se. It's about things I already knew. But Sarkisian comes across as so warm, genuine, at peace with himself and his job, and his vision for what he wants Texas football to embody. This video also makes me want to walk more, which is not a bad thing.
  8. It was a pretty big theater. 500 seats or so from what I recall. No concessions or anything. I saw a ton of movies there, but I couldn't tell you the name of the theater/building any more.
  9. Mack Brown was a field goal kicker whisperer. I'll always give him credit for that. Whatever magic fairy dust he sprinkled on kickers, we never seemed to miss late game field goals when he was head coach. Never.
  10. Oh, and that one, too. I mean there were movie theaters right on campus as well.
  11. There were several. There was one at the student union. Another was in a separate building. They were constantly showcasing films for the RTF students, so every semester they'd rotate through some real gems.
  12. Dobie Theater in the 80s was pure greatness. There was a terrific video rental shop in there, too. There was an arcade/pool table place in the basement. I remember some guys regularly breaking out some kind of massive table top game with intricately painted figurines. Turns out it was Warhammer 40k. I'd ask them about the lore of the world and by the end of the conversation my head was completely spinning. Movies that did well played a lot longer in the theaters back then. We had Nightmare on Elm Street at our theater for over a year, and it was still making money at the end of the run. Who would think that having a proprietary lock on content would be good for business? In any case, if there were any ladies from mid teens to early 20s that went in to see the movie, I would go in at critical moments with a pair of hot dog tongs and start clicking them together. It never failed to scare the living crap out of them. Maybe it's been mentioned before, but the tunnel scene in the original Willie Wonka is a classic. Wrath of Khan is almost universally considered the best Star Trek movie. A lot of great scenes in there, from the beginning where Kirk admits he rigged the computer simulation designed to help future officers deal with defeat so he wouldn't have to, the tremendous overacting from both Shatner and Montalban, the Master and Commander type cat and mouse fight between the two, and Spock's death because he didn't want to keep playing the character. How did that work out for you, Nimoy? But for me the signature scene in that movie was sticking that slug in the ear of Chekov so he lost the function of his free will. The way it swirled around to enter his brain through his ear was nightmare fuel. Also, Marathon Man. "Is it safe? Is it safe?" I think the book handles the scene even better, but it's hard to beat Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman on screen together playing such a horrific scene. The scene in Clockwork Orange where they pry his eyes open so he can't look away from the screen, can't even blink. Tons of others, but those are some good ones.
  13. I feel like he was penalized for hitting the goal post when that should have been worth extra points.
  14. He just needed more Sark pep talks right before the kick. That's what we were missing.
  15. This is among the craziest title songs to a movie ever made. 14 year old Michael Jackson, with a sentimental ode to a special friend. You'd never know the subject was an alpha rat ready to lead a rat army. Oh, and this just in, Michael Jackson had some pipes. Not that that's new, but man he could sing.
  16. I feel like last year's team motto should have paraphrased Rod Babers. "No one scores from the 1 yard line! Not even us!"
  17. Meh. It's pretty routine stuff nowadays. Here's the video Dr. Mann shows his patients to put them at ease.
  18. That's a great post. I feel like I was being more specific, in terms of Alabama already has a bunch of schools that consider them a rival. I mean, Georgia does, too, but more fan bases get even more pumped up about the Alabama game than fan bases getting pumped up for the Georgia game. A huge part of it is their success, but also the feeling of entitlement they have around their success. Alabama fans consider it a birthright that the Crimson Tide is excellent in football in a way that the rest of the SEC hopes and aspires to be excellent in football. But everything else you said there is pertinent and right on. If I could describe the UT culture in one word it's arrogance, and that arrogance seeps into the soul simply by association. It's not about football. It's about everything. We simply think we're better than you regardless of the context, or the factual evidence. Shockingly, that tends to rub people the wrong way. Who woulda figured?
  19. People believed the Iliad was a factual telling, and that's one of our first written pieces in western culture. It's often challenging to parse truth from fiction. It's especially difficult when it lines up with how we view the world in the first place. Not everyone has the bandwidth to employ critical thinking (I don't mean that in a judgmental sense - merely an observational one), and there's always the possibility of becoming a Cassandra type figure when you do, then you're socially ostracized whether you're right or not. I think it's more realistic in the Emperor's New Clothes to think the kid was taken aside, beaten and exiled than it is to think he changed everyone's mind about what was really going on. On a personal level I'm completely full of shit in real life settings. It's amazing the amount of far out bullshit people will buy simply because I say it with a straight face. I'm not even trying to lie. I'm saying something outlandish and then I'm astonished someone believes it. Most of the time my reaction is to double down and see how far I can take it.
  20. I'm with you. We are the talk of college football this year. That didn't happen even during the 2000s. In part because of USC in 2004 and 2005. I still think it's incredible ESPN pitched that season as the dominance of USC, and can upstart Texas even compete with the mighty Trojans? They could have pitched it as Ali versus Frazier but chose David versus Goliath. I still think they missed an opportunity there. Last year talking heads questioned UT's pass defense. They questioned how Texas would do in their first year in the SEC. There was this underlying conceit that we've seen Texas be a flash in the pan before. Is this for real this time? Completely different level this year. When we're not being talked about it's like we're the elephant in the room. The combination of the Texas brand and the Manning brand is making Texas the most compelling story of the offseason. It was a different time, but I don't think Texas has received this kind of attention from the people who cover this stuff since 1968-1970 when we rattled off 30 wins in a row, had the Game of the Century, and had the president anoint us as national champions. There's definitely a build-them-up-so-we-can-tear-them-down vibe about it. But vibe there is nonetheless. Ohio State is the other national bellcow, and I don't see the same kind of coverage of them at all. Same thing with all the SEC teams. Georgia, Alabama and LSU are playing second fiddle for the most part.
  21. The biggest issue is going to be the reduction in receptions because we're scoring so quickly over the top on every possession. Not to mention we're going to constantly have a short field other than the one time the opponent kicks off each game. And on a lot of those the offense won't even get a chance to take a snap because of all the kickoff returns for scores. I'm afraid we're going to be so dominant the offensive skill players are going to have some rather unimpressive stats overall. Oh well.
  22. I didn't recognize either of them. I thought one of them may have been you, and I wanted to put a negative X on that one. Also, no offense to either Sendlein or McGee, but this is funnier. The shots are meant for Mack Brown and Maddog more so than McGee and Sendlein. Regarding Sendlein specifically, he was an oasis of having a great center on the offensive line during years where we didn't have another one who was even average. Obviously his Dad is a legend, and it was so great having him and his brother on campus. He wasn't recruited as a center, but he owned that position. It was so nice having someone snapping the ball who didn't wear roller skates. Oftentimes our blocking schemes didn't do the centers any favors, but Sendlein was still a beast.
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