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SL Xpress

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Everything posted by SL Xpress

  1. I knew some of them, but I only know what happened to a few. And yeah, speedgoat was awesome.
  2. UT baseball and softball are still playing. This has the potential to get so much worse (better). Neither Texas team is a juggernaut per se, but they have some clutchiness. I have to acknowledge while I predominantly root for our teams because I want to see Texas do well, there's also this part of me that wants to see us do well simply to watch the Aggies completely implode.
  3. It probably was Aggie, but it could have been a Sooner family, too, being in Plano. Horns down is literally their hand sign. They've been doing it since the 1970s. Aggies caught on from them.
  4. What takes the cake for me is she called you out by your internet handle rather than your real name. It feels like that would add to the awkwardness.
  5. That's dumb. Why keep a username from that old site? Also, that site only allowed 8 characters No spaces. So I know that's not true. Don't ask me how I know. - slxpress
  6. These are great examples. It's stunning to me overall how all in the staff has gone in recruiting nationwide. It's not just dipping their pinky toe in California, and maybe grabbing a kid from a neighboring state. They've been successful in Florida previously, and certainly we've seen players recruited from other hotbeds like St Louis and Georgia. But we're going after kids wherever they are. This is the widest net and with the biggest numbers of out of state targets I've ever seen. That any of us have ever seen. I really like the way they're doing it, too. There's no desperation. It's utter confidence. Last year I was really nervous around this time. Now I feel an utter state of calm. They're going to make their big push on the June official visits. They've brought in the creme de la creme. There's no fat in these June visits. No bread. And they've kept their powder dry. So many other schools leading with a premature ejaculation. Texas ensures there's some interest and fit there beyond the payday. No process ensures you hit on every target, and regardless of what kind of environment you have, kids are going to transfer for more playing time if they're talented and it's tough to see how they get on the field in the time and manner which they're looking for. But the methodology Texas is choosing to employ is the best way to manage personnel. The only thing is, you better be an apex predator to do it this way. You have to be uber confident in your product, your sales pitch, and your ultimate ability to close. It's not like Texas is the only game in town. But I really love the approach they take, and I'm convicted it's going to pay dividends come the early signing period and beyond.
  7. I don't know about y'all. It's just me. I have never found the broadcast networks particularly sensitive to what in stadium fans have to endure to attend a game in September. It's the same complaint every year. Yes, it sucks to have midday kickoffs in September. 6pm and after is still hot, but it's better than the sheer misery of a 2:30pm kickoff. And yet, we've had plenty. They fill up their broadcast schedule with sometimes esoteric reasoning, none of which we're privy to. But one thing for sure is they don't give a shit about the wishes of that particular school. Oklahoma has spent years dealing with morning and midday kickoffs in the Big 12 to the point their local businesses and fan base have been complaining even more vociferously than Ohio State. No one gives a shit. What Fox has or hasn't done in the past to or for Texas doesn't have any bearing either. We're not going out of our way to punish Fox. We're not going out of our way to help them, but if a Sunday night kickoff made sense for the Texas football program we'd accept the offer. It doesn't, and we're not. I'm just saying here's a very limited example of Texas not agreeing to what a TV network would like to do, and it's fully within UT's rights to do so. If there was a contractual obligation to play on Sunday night, sure, Texas would play on Sunday night. But there's not. People are going to find ways to laud and hype Texas in ways we may not earn. It's always been that way. At the same time, people are going to find reasons to take shots at us. I'm just delighted to be a legitimate part of the football conversation in the offseason, and feel like it's not some kind of outlier where the rug gets pulled out from under me as a fan. If people want to boo hoo us about not accepting the move to Sunday night, let them. I don't care if the source is Fox, Ohio State, Texas haters, or click bait blogsters. It's an absurd line of reasoning. It's not going to stop, so I'm going to choose to be contemptuous of their rationale, because that's what it deserves.
  8. I'm just saying we said no when there aren't a lot of programs around the country that would turn down an exclusive prime time spot on Sunday night.
  9. Yes. Regardless, it was ridiculous. But it was 10 out of 11. I was trying to make it worse than it was.
  10. They just said no to a prime time game on Sunday night. Not completely their bitch. Just mostly. Mostly their bitch.
  11. I mean, losing 11 out of 12 to those bumblefucks nearly put every one of us out of our minds. There was nothing "brief" about that time period. As far as I'm concerned it was the birth of feelings of rivalry with them. Before and after they're a nonentity. We've gone 13-5 starting with James Brown limping us to victory in '95, including that Kafkaesque matchup in '99 after the bonfire collapse, where Mack Brown leaves the halftime locker room a little too early and has the whole team kneel down to pay respects to the fallen while the corps finished paying tribute to the victims. To me what makes them more insufferable nowadays is how inescapable they are. At least here in Houston. If they still had the numbers they had in the 70s they'd be nothing more than a fly in the ointment. I just can't conjure the kind of hate for the Aggies I can for the Sooners. It's like hating a mentally challenged little brother.
  12. I don't agree. I like the sentiment, but I don't think it's completely accurate. Texas has always thought of ourselves as pure as the driven snow. For the longest time I was extremely proud of that stance. That changed in the late 2000s as Alabama started paying trainers and coaches to bring kids to their summer camp, throwing around hundreds of uncommittable offers, paying for multiple unofficial visits to build rapport and to get them invested in the team and their incoming teammates. And of course financially compensated the players and their families for playing at Alabama. It had gone on before, but Saban industrialized it and built a recruiting strategy around it that was unparalleled in its comprehensiveness. And then, of course, everyone else followed suit, with Mack Brown sitting on his laurels, preventing assistants from going anywhere outside the Austin area during the football season, and playing the mark for Garrett Gilbert's dad. And Charlie Strong had some of the same vibes. No interactions with trainers. No paid unofficial visits. To me, negative narratives about Texas thrive because other fan bases perceive we think we're better than them. It's hard to combat something that's true. I think indifference is a more effective response. In any event, if guardrails are put up regarding student athlete compensation, the enforcement mechanisms better be robust, draconian, and swiftly applied. I do not personally believe any of those things are going to be present, which means gifted players will continue to be compensated well above their ability to bring value to a company via their endorsement, by boosters who see their real value as being able to help bring victory on the playing field for their alma mater. If Texas doesn't play ball on some level, but chooses to take a firm stand in an effort to help curtail the escalation of player compensation, then they'll pay a price in terms of success on the playing field. We're not there yet, so it's hypothetical. We'll see how everything plays out. I'm especially curious as to what would come out of Congress and/or the President. I think that's the only place that can affect some kind of solution that doesn't involve a never ending series of court cases - and even that would almost certainly result in challenges in court. But some kind of antitrust exemption especially could be handy to either the NCAA or whoever succeeds them as a governing body. I'm not saying it's a good thing. But it's tough to see how we experience anything other than a lurching chaos from now until the foreseeable future unless there's some kind of national legislation (or, I guess an executive order, since that's a big part of how we're operating as a country these days) addressing collegiate athletics.
  13. Just to go back to the stupid Ohio State argument that Texas is scared to play in the Horseshoe! At night! Because more articles came up on my feed this morning, especially after Del Conte addressed it at the SEC meetings yesterday. A few points: 1) Ohio State/Big Ten agreeing to the massive television contract with Fox, CBS, and NBC is the principal issue here. Not Texas. They love to crow about how much bigger their contract is compared to everyone else. Well, the golden rule applies, boys. He who owns the gold makes the rules. Welcome to noon kickoffs, Buckeyes. Don't like it? Too bad. You signed the dotted line. No one forced you. You're the sacrificial lamb for the rest of the conference because you're the biggest draw, especially when Michigan has a down season. Tough titties. 2) Ohio State fans and Texas haters, plus click bait artists, love to project fear on Texas for not wanting to play in The Horseshoe! At night! But that's not it at all. If Ohio State was playing almost any other program, they'd readily move the game to Sunday night. Why? Because nearly every program in the country is desperate for more exposure, and would sell out living relatives to garner an exclusive prime time nationally broadcast window on a Sunday night. Forget about the consequences. But Texas doesn't need prime time exposure. We'll get plenty of prime time games this year, because we're Texas, and we're not saddled with an albatross of a television agreement with Fox like we were in the Big 12. Sucks to be you! What people are enjoying ascribing to fear, is actually arrogance. Ohio State is desperate for a prime time game at home. Texas is not desperate for prime time exposure. We don't need it. We don't have any reason to move the game to Sunday. It creates issues further down the line. So what if San Jose State is not the most fearsome opponent on the schedule. Sarkisian wants to establish the season's rhythms as soon as possible. It doesn't matter how much of a difference it makes on the win/loss schedule. Our program priority is winning a national championship. Moving the opening game to Sunday night puts us further from that goal, regardless of how much impact it has. It has some impact. How much is hypothetical, but it's also entirely unnecessary. I remember years when that wasn't the case. When the athletic department would schedule games with Hawaii simply to have an excuse to take the entire athletic department on a paid trip for them and their families, never mind the negative impact it would have on the players and team. One of the best moves Mack Brown made early on was to cancel that silly boondoggle. He got the same kind of grief about Texas being scared to play a Hawaii team that was going to be terrible after losing their entire roster. Ohio State is going to be good. They're literally always good. They don't really have down years or bad coaching hires the way everyone else does. But there's no incentive for Texas to do the Ohio State fan base any favors. "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." Sort your shit out with Fox. That's not our problem.
  14. That 66-3 UCLA game in 1997 was the most miserable I've ever felt. I'm sure there have been hotter games, but sitting there in the stands because I never leave a game early felt like the most pointless gesture in the history of my most pointless gestures. And I'm a real champion for pointless gestures. On the east side, too. I felt like God's judgement was searing down on me that day.
  15. Carl Torbush says, "Wow!" Edit - Already referenced.
  16. Meh. There's something in our human wiring where every generation acts like that to one degree or another. The truth is that an element of ignorance is required for almost any action to take place. We have to discount what came before us to go to somewhere new. And being ignorant of the consequences of this new path is often helpful to actually taking steps towards that path. Unfortunately, sometimes that path leads to going over a cliff. But we're purposefully wired to create independence from what came before us. There is also the need to synthesize, so that happens too. I think the huge difference now is that our evolutionary methods of socialization don't work the same way any more. There have been challenges previously. When we moved from small hunter gatherer tribes subsisting on the edge of extermination in East Africa, feeding off bone marrow after the apex predators and the carrion eaters had their fill, to larger multi family tribes who shared oral traditions and passed down knowledge from one generation to the next in a way that had never been done by any other species, to larger city states with their domesticated food sources, to the invention of writing, to horses, ships, roads, and various empires, fast forward to the printing press, and the various speeds in communication. With social media we now have a world where no matter how outlandish your views, there's a community out there that shares it. We all have this push/pull of separating ourselves from a community so we can better understand who we are outside the confines of that identity, but also craving the connection and shared meaning that comes with being a part of something bigger than ourselves as an individual. With social media, no matter how toxic those views are, we can find a community that shares that same toxicity - thrives on it, even - and so we can have both. A big example, and I use it often, is there are online communities devoted to suicide. If someone googles "how can I kill myself" or other thoughts on suicide, a message board/chat room comes up in the search algorithm. In there, people ostensibly offering help, providing a sympathetic ear, are actually jockeying for who will be the person who convinces the latest victim to pull the trigger and kill themselves. This is horrific, and they know this. But they are socializing each other to engage in this activity by their shared actions. Think of it this way. Let's say 10% of the population is born with psychopathy - the innate inability to empathize with others. Raised in a certain environment, they will learn to mimic empathy, even though they don't feel it themselves, in an attempt to fit in with those around them. Here's a decent article about a neurologist who discovered he's a psychopath. He wrote a book about it. The Neuroscientist Who Discovered He Was a Psychopath Social media has "helped" us leapfrog evolutionary mechanisms to assist us in living together. We're not evolutionarily designed to live in large groups. We're evolutionarily designed to live in small groups. Say, less than 50, but probably even way less than that. We were just such a successful species we grew larger co-habitation environments, and adopted strategies to co-exist. But by and large we still have huge genocidal tendencies. We instinctually bond by identifying other enemy tribes. It's as simple as rooting for similar sports teams while hating our rivals. Or being annoyed when an android user joins a group chat and the text turns from blue to green. Or demonizing the opposing political group. What keeps that from happening to some degree is the socialization process. We resent the socialization process. It feels like it diminishes our free will by compelling us to take on the values of those around us. We feel like ants in a hive. But without a socialization process we have break downs in social order, as various tribes within a larger construct start competing with one another for resources in internecine warfare. What propels those individual tribes to form is linking together to identify common enemies. Often times extreme views can produce the most extreme loyalty to the tribe. They're identification markers. More moderate view holders tend to have a looser connection where the bonds aren't as strong. So what we're seeing with this generation as much as anything are dynamics as old as humanity itself, exacerbated by technology and the breakdown of traditional socialization techniques.
  17. It's in the title of the clip. Joyeux Noel. True story. It's based on this book: Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce: Weintraub, Stanley: 9780452283671: Amazon.com: Books
  18. It says there Missouri went 3-27 in SEC play. Does anyone know who those 3 wins were against and where they played? Must have won them at home, right?
  19. The only person in my family that I'm personally aware of who died in service was my grandfather's younger brother, George Wolgamott (even though pretty much every male in my family served in the armed services). My grandfather, Don, flew B-17s but was so good they made him an instructor and told him he was unavailable for deployment. He was too valuable as an instructor. George and Don were two of 5 brothers. Don was second youngest. George was the youngest. They also had 7 sisters. Tenant farming community in Hartford, Kansas on the border with Oklahoma. Parents immigrated from Germany. Don and George were 1st generation born in the US (along with all their brothers and sisters). Don signed up the day after Pearl Harbor. George signed up when he turned 18. George wanted to be a pilot like his older brother Don, but his eyesight wasn't 20/20 like Don's. He ended up flying a prop reconnaissance plane over enemy lines in Europe, and was shot down by the Germans. Granddad always felt like if he could have deployed, he could have saved his younger brother's life. It doesn't make realistic sense, but that's always how he felt. I wish I could have known my grand uncle and the family he never had. I had two cousins. My Dad was an only child, and my Mom had one brother. Uncle Roka had two kids. Both served in the military. The older cousin, Rocky, wanted to be a pilot like his grandfather. He ended up retiring as a warrant officer as an instructor flying Apaches. He's still flying missions in Europe as a contract employee. My younger cousin, Brodie, served in the Army, deployed mostly in Germany. Got out after his single 4 year enlistment. Every Memorial Day weekend he would make a post on social media explaining to everyone in his social circle the sacred difference between Memorial Dad and Veterans Day, and tell the story about our grand uncle George. Brodie died almost 5 years ago in a motorcycle accident at the age of 50. Every Memorial Day since then I think of George, and I also think of Brodie, who did his part to remember our family member who gave his life in defense of his country. Thank you to George and to all the brave Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our country regardless of conflict or even in peace time operations. This day is for you.
  20. You mean forever? Is that what you mean by many moons? There is zero chance Texas is ever going to be accepted as one of them. And good. We're going to win too much. We're going to be way too arrogant about it. And at the end of the day, we really do think we're better than everyone else in this conference, and that's never going to go over well.
  21. I don't understand how changing it from a collapsed bonfire to a collapsed dumpster fire is fixing it.
  22. "I'd run through a collapsed bonfire for Michael Earley."
  23. I hope Ohio State gets another 7 Big Noon kickoff games this year. It's going to be hilarious. See if Penn State will move their kickoff to a different day to make that a prime time matchup. It's the Horseshoe! At night! Hahahahaha!
  24. People also underestimated how big he was. AJ Hawk, the Ohio State linebacker, said tackling Young was like tackling a tree trunk. I remember watching him in high school and defenders just bounced off him. When Vince was behind the line of scrimmage looking to throw downfield he acted as if opposing players weren't even there. If he ever happened to get sacked it literally looked like a tree falling down, with Vince looking baffled as if this could ever even happen.
  25. Bruce Feldman had a recent article for The Athletic where he rated Vince Young the #7 rated player overall of the 2000s. He had Cam Newton and Reggie Bush as #1 and #2. Kirk Bohls sent him a thumbs up emoticon. No Colt McCoy anywhere on the list. It seems crazy to say, but Vince Young is underrated nationally for how good he was. The best player I've ever seen. Better than Earl Campbell, high school and college, and I don't say that lightly. I say that to emphasize how unbelievable he was. What he did with Madison HS his senior year shouldn't have been possible. Even his first year in the NFL was incredible, until poor personal decisions and playing for Jeff Fisher caught up with him. But he had a sensational second half of a season that year after Fisher let him take over the starting role. What could have been. Ah well. I cherish all the memories I have.
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