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Everything posted by Hayduke
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Beer 2025: sith_horn drinking more than the rest of us combined
Hayduke replied to HenryJames's topic in Food and Travel
First time I found that in the grocery store up here, I was overjoyed. Now Shiner products appear regularly at our Sunday happy hour. Bock is appreciated often and somebody picks up a Shiner sampler pack once or twice a year so we get to try all the prickly pear, peach, pecan and other stuff they're tossing into their brews. Shiner's another place on our pilgrimage list. Do they still pull a keg outside every afternoon, or is that a tradition they've let go of? -
Beer 2025: sith_horn drinking more than the rest of us combined
Hayduke replied to HenryJames's topic in Food and Travel
Thanks, @ztejas. Anybody who walks this earth and does some good deserves a tribute, however small. Craig wasn't a Longhorn but he loved to drink a beer and spend time with family. As rough as Surly can get, it's a place that understands the value of raising a toast, remembering to hug your loved ones, and help 'em out as you can. This is a great thread for that. So here's to y'all, too -- although it's just with morning coffee right now. -
Beer 2025: sith_horn drinking more than the rest of us combined
Hayduke replied to HenryJames's topic in Food and Travel
That is a good one. Took a case to my uncle in Galveston last year while he was incapacitated but still able to enjoy some beers, and the bock brought him a lot of pleasure. They just had the Point Bock Run a couple of days ago -- always the first Saturday in March and celebrates, in part, the brewing of each year's batch. The race is generally pretty cold, which is why the ram on your fridge has a muffler and mittens. My neighbor worked it this year and said the cups of water had a layer of ice on top by the time they handed them to runners. But there's plenty of bock at the end! -
Beer 2025: sith_horn drinking more than the rest of us combined
Hayduke replied to HenryJames's topic in Food and Travel
Was planning on a Fat Tuesday beer and had something in mind, but got word this afternoon that my younger brother passed. He had ALS -- a brutal, brutal disease. We saw him at Thanksgiving and I was able to get out to the Detroit area to see him late last week. It was tough. We're all grateful he got his meds adjusted and died peacefully today. He was an unpretentious, big-hearted guy who never had his own kids but took in the kids of his two ex-wives and gave them a home. The first wife was a nutjob and he cared for some of those kids long after she was out of there (and long after a couple of them should have been, too). His second ex-wife came back and did most of the hard work of these last few months, repaying him for some of that generosity. The only time he got out here to see us, he spent a ton of time on the porch and deck smoking and drinking Point Special, which he loved until the end. There was still a full, and very old, bottle of it up on his shelf in November. Here's to you, Craig. Love you and glad you're out of pain. -
Smokey arroyo (grapefruit juice, rosemary simple syrup, lime, mezcal) was the cocktail we made with our neighbors with that first bottle of mezcal. Great stuff. Bought some premade cucumber and lime juice at Spec's on the way out of Texas last year and didn't try it with mezcal, but will next time. Thanks, @Matuka!
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Got a recipe for that? I've been in Wisconsin 18 years and the OF is pretty much the state drink (along with beer, of course). But I was somehow here for eight years before drinking my first one. Just started on mezcal a year ago and love it, but this was not a combo I had considered. Have tried a few other variants, though.
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Beer 2025: sith_horn drinking more than the rest of us combined
Hayduke replied to HenryJames's topic in Food and Travel
I would be willing to sacrifice and force myself to drink a beer so that my kids could see some goats. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: They Can't Keep Getting Away With This
Hayduke replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Our no-sunshine QB of the post-Manning future reminds everyone that Disney courtly romance stories are not our standard. -
Beer 2025: sith_horn drinking more than the rest of us combined
Hayduke replied to HenryJames's topic in Food and Travel
Bartender at HOMES Brewery in Ann Arbor said this was his favorite of their offerings last week, but only in pint cans, so I brought home a four-pack for happy hour. APHOS Czech Dark Lager. A little toasty, crisp, refreshing. Also had a Surly Axeman and a few swallows of Drekker's How Strange It Is hazy. Both good, but Axeman is better, IMO. @elguapo, given the other opinions above on Jester King, what's your take on their beers? -
Beer 2025: sith_horn drinking more than the rest of us combined
Hayduke replied to HenryJames's topic in Food and Travel
Can never go wrong with that one. Fairly common to find it on tap up here and it never disappoints. My happy hour buddies and I keep talking about a Michigan road trip and that's definitely on the list. Looks like they have a cafe with live music. I just drove through Kalamazoo a couple of days ago and If I hadn't been trying to get back home from Detroit by midnight, I might have stopped there. -
Beer 2025: sith_horn drinking more than the rest of us combined
Hayduke replied to HenryJames's topic in Food and Travel
Had never heard of Jester King, but looked it up. How's the pizza there? I don't suppose we'll be in danger of getting any of their beer up here, but appreciate the opinions. There's a similar place -- Stoney Acres Farms -- outside Athens, WI, whose pizza is pretty good and I think is the only one in the state that brews its own beer. I remember the beer being solid but that was back before I started trying to keep track of my beer consumption and opinions. And the symbiotic relationship between beer and pizza always seems to make both of them better. -
"Playfly is backed by Access Holdings and Sinclair Broadcast Group and is led by CEO Craig Sloan." https://collegesportswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/sec/2025/02/28/texas-am-playfly-sports-deal-explained/80849836007/ That's an interesting combination of DEI-driven company values and fairly conservative backers. And the article linked says Auburn and LSU are also signed on with Playfly, which seems to have a pretty large portfolio of clients. Bottom line for A&M seems to be that their advantage in funding probably lasted as long as it took for the ink to dry. Standard Liucci hype here, probably explained by his need to focus TexAgs attention elsewhere than fields and courts where aggy is stinking it up.
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Beer 2025: sith_horn drinking more than the rest of us combined
Hayduke replied to HenryJames's topic in Food and Travel
HOMES Brewery, Ann Arbor. Bulgogi fries and a flight: SWELL Double IPA, Same Same Different IPA, METAFORM Key Lime IPA Sour, King Cold Brew Cream Ale, and Tri-21 Pilsner. SWELL (they love caps) was solid but my least favorite. The cream ale and key lime both surprised me in a very pleasing way. Really well made food and excellent beers, with IPAs their specialty, according to the bartender. Highly recommend. -
Maple and bacon is one of the world's great flavor combinations. A good maple-bacon donut or croissant will, in some cases, make a guy forget a crappy football game.
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Hard to argue with your reasoning. But ya never know; sometimes folks come up with interesting new approaches to harness people's greed, self-interest and even intertia in surprising ways. In the meantime, I'll just keep enjoying the place we're in now.
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Bravo, sir. Former neighbor of ours has started a family business here in Wisconsin, including different infusions and a cocktail syrup for old fashioneds. Can't beat the flavor of maple. Enjoy it ... and all the gratitude of your friends and family.
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Again, good points. But K-State found ways to be a national powerhouse under Snyder (and the influence of Jon Wefald as president was a major part). Mississippi State could also find the will to be that competitive again. Tough over the long term for lesser programs to do that consistently, but magical runs where underdogs break the dominance of the bluebloods happen. Bottom dwellers in a 64-team super league will still draw fans (maybe more) if there's still something to play for in relegation. Some of my most entertaining and satisfying sports moments in recent years involve Mainz (emotional ties for me) scratching out ways to stay in the Bundesliga. About once every 8-10 years they compete for the Champions League, but generally, their efforts to stay out of the relegation zone are enough to interest me when Bayern München only allows someone else to be champ about once every five years. Creative planning can make relegation drama work and smart revenue sharing keeps the entire sport healthier. Boiling it down to two big conferences with unsatisfying conference titles (at least this year) and half the country left out is less interesting. ACC and Big 12 teams are too huge a part of football to be cast aside. Definitely an awesome time for Texas, and I do love it. But sports are better when it's not the same four or six teams and regional rivalries abound. SEC dominance (illegitimate in my book, too) was boring. We haven't been back long enough for it to get old, but I can see looking back in 10 years and wishing we'd had someone besides OSU, Michigan, Florida, Georgia and Notre Dame as our Final Four opponents. Wouldn't be surprised to see us play in five or six title games but have only five different opponents in our last 10 or 12 semifinal and final games. Things are good, but they could be even better.
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Beer 2025: sith_horn drinking more than the rest of us combined
Hayduke replied to HenryJames's topic in Food and Travel
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Beer 2025: sith_horn drinking more than the rest of us combined
Hayduke replied to HenryJames's topic in Food and Travel
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Beer 2025: sith_horn drinking more than the rest of us combined
Hayduke replied to HenryJames's topic in Food and Travel
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Your post has a number of excellent points, especially your conclusion that there's no will to get things done. But the will -- or the outside pressure -- is coming, largely because we've got a couple of sizable, arguably monopolistic leagues that will need to keep expanding (and sharing) or face blowback. They'll have to take over the role of the NCAA and spread the wealth better. Otherwise, a healthy chunk of the country will ask why Mississippi State gets to keep feeding off of the SEC teat, and why a comparatively limited set of mostly public universities are part of a wealthy professional sports league. The public will question whether we produce too many Johntay Cooks but not enough athletes who finish degrees. Relatively speaking, nobody talks about graduation rates any more. That won't last long. The Washington States and Kansas States don't like the new order. They'll organize. There will be lawsuits. I haven't paid attention to how serious the effort has become in Georgia to exempt college athletes from income tax on their NIL earnings, but that's not going to sit well with a large part of the Georgia population. That's partly because there's a shiny-new-toy aspect to certain parts of college sports, especially for fans of teams like Texas and the other clear winners of the Big/SEC expansion sweepstakes. It won't last. Meanwhile, a lot more teams have been left out, and every state is going to start dealing in the next couple of years with the fallout of changing demographics and the enrollment cliff. Schools are going to close and most will shrink to substantial degrees. Publicly funded support for college sports is going to be scrutinized more. People will realize how much of a complicated mess has been made of what we once thought of as amateur, ancillary sports activity for students. And, as you've pointed out, Title IX and the money-losing nature of the vast majority of college sports, especially at the bloated upper level, are another can of worms altogether. The larger political environment and the earthquakes starting to rumble in D.C. will also be part of this. Personally, I like the old Big XII, but I might like the old SWC even better if there was a larger playoff system. I hate the loss of regionality. The new SEC/BIG and the NIL era, despite their obvious benefits for the program I love most, has killed much of what I thought would be the appeal of the just-expanded playoff. Feels like a cheat code for Texas. Relegation is already happening, but it's not organized and not equitable. It may need to be to help college sports keep thriving.
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That's pretty much the way I've always felt about it. 😁 On the other hand, there will always be that one-season stand we had together with Taylor. Scored 15 times, if I recall correctly. It was beautiful, especially the comeback against Oklahoma State, the crazy run out of the end zone in Columbus, and the touchdown against USC.
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Despite my claims otherwise, I have to admit that this thread is a whole lot less sad now than it would have been three or four years ago. This has ranged all over, from guys who did despicable stuff to guys who did stupid stuff and guys who just never lived up to the lofty expectations that come from being a Texas football player. Wonder if the players ever get together in Jester now and say, "Damn that @TreatyOak. And man, that Hayduke. What an asshole."
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Moving from eighth place in one top-level football conference to a lower level of competition the next year won't drop anyone's budget that dramatically. If your budget is only $70 million one year, you're not competing with the big boys very often anyway, but the fans (and TV) have brought you $70 million despite that. The top 20 NCAA programs in valuation all generated $151 million or more in revenue last year, and that low figure of $151 belonged to Oregon (valued at No. 17). Over time, that can certainly erode. But enough television money and attendance will remain at the "next 64" level (or whatever it is) to keep schools' budgets relatively stable from one year to the next. Easy enough to bake some revenue-sharing into the system, just like it's there now. Most revenue goes to the big two, of course, with the rest of the P5 getting the next level of money. So the revenue inequalities likely won't change much just because of relegation. And relegation might be "fantasy" for American football message boards, but it's absolute reality for the rest of "world football" and makes a whole lot more money that CFB does. The Premier League alone generates about twice the revenue of P5 football and the EFL adds more than another billion -- all in one little kingdom. Works great for soccer because, despite the intellectual inferiority of the rest of the earth to America, they've figured out how to make gazillions at the top level. Yeah, it flows down less and less as it goes. It barely trickles to the virtually amateur Wrexhams of the world, who remain Wrexham only as long as some famous guys don't figure out how to help them compete.
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It's already professional ball at the top level, so a 64-team major league with relegation is the answer. Eight regional conferences of eight teams. Conference round-robin plus three out-of-conference (10 games). Top two from each conference qualify for playoffs, plus eight at-large bids. No conference championship games -- just trophies at the end, with lots more co-champions and occasional tri-champions (some who might get left out of the playoffs). Tiebreakers suck, but very few deserving teams would be left out of the running. Straight seeding at the end, with top eight getting a bye in the first round. Five playoff rounds with a max of 15 games for the eventual champ and runner-up. Eighth-place finisher in each conference drops down and the top regional finisher from the next level moves up for the next year. Rinse and repeat with playoffs at lower levels. Bowls should fold themselves into the top-level playoff structure or die. They're relics anyway, with only a few historic or geographically sensible ones worth saving. Fights and playoff unfairness to some teams in the 15-30 range, but that's better than controversy in the 8-15 range. And relegation allows the James Madisons to move up if devoted to it. The TCUs and Rices of the world have faced de facto relegation for more than a couple of decades, so let's just get on with it. This way, folks in relegation territory have more control over their own destiny and some clarity on how things happen. Moving upward from the second level would get pretty interesting and controversial, but playoffs there should help clarify who's most deserving. This would work for a few years, until society utterly breaks down or until technological Utopia arrives, the AI bots decide the playoff participants, and we're all too mellow to really take it seriously anyway.
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