Bevo's Daily Round Up 1.30.09
by dimecoverage on Jan 30, 2009 5:00 AM CST
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The Houston Chronicle is asking for votes on the greatest Longhorn football players in history. Vote here.
Basketball
Rick Barnes is getting help this season from some very unlikely sources.
The minutes will be there if you produce in practice, Barnes said, and that has to be music to a young player's ears. He is tired of hearing questions about his rotation. He doesn't have one. The player who is performing the best at practice will get the minutes, he (Barnes) says.
Football
Feb. 8th is Longhorn Junior Day. One of the hottest prospects making a visit to UT is Lache Seastrunk from Temple.
In case you are looking ahead to 2010, Inside Texas has the Top 100 prospects. To go along with riters Bill Frisbee and Ross Lucksinger discuss this year's recruiting class and other Longhorn related topics.
College Football Live ranks collegiate programs on their family atmosphere. Texas is No. 3.
The Texas program has enjoyed over a decade of strong leadership and coaching from head coach Mack Brown. Brown ensures his athletes avoid off-field distractions in a place where football players are treated with reverence. In addition, Brown is an advocate to several causes including the Texas Council on Family Violence.
Tom Luginbill thinks that Texas has underperformed compared to our recruiting classes.
Here’s one that might surprise you, and I’m guarding against even saying this, but I’m going to say it because I think the hype surrounding it hasn’t got them to where people think they should’ve been based off that, and that is Texas. As good a job as Mack Brown and his staff have done over a decade now, they’ve really only won one outright national title and one outright Big 12 championship and have been ranked in the top 3-5 of everybody’s recruiting rankings for years and years and years. That just goes to show you it isn’t an exact science.
Basketball
Texas A&M's point guard Donald Sloan has been dealing with serious, painful blisters, but fought through the pain the first part of the season.
Kansas State built an 11-3 record then they lost to Oklahoma. They are back on track with wins over Colorado and Missouri.
Rival's Jason King has his Big 12 power rankings. Texas is No. 2.
Baseball
A&M's Olsen Field is getting a makeover.
Make no mistake, coach Rob Childress loves where his Texas A&M baseball team plays.
“There’s not a better place in the country to watch a college baseball game,” Childress said Wednesday, “than Olsen Field.”
Problem is, when Childress usually shows recruits around, the joint is empty, revealing every scar and blemish of the grating old building that it is.
That’s why the Aggies are angling for a $16 million renovation for Olsen, complete with new dugouts, a wider concourse, new training rooms, coaching offices – the works.
Texas A&M baseball assistant Matt Deggs has been promoted to associate head coach.
Football
So why did Idaho State agree to play Oklahoma in 2009? Money.
The Bengals' rebuilding football program did not need to be a sacrificial lamb against the powerful Oklahoma. But two weeks ago, Idaho's deepening financial crisis made Tingey change his mind. The Sooners, after all, were offering more than $500,000 for the game in Norman, Okla. That's equal to 6 percent of the Idaho State athletic department's $7.9 million budget for 2008-09.
Oklahoma State's new defensive coordinator Bill Young explains why he left the NFL.
Rock M Nation looks at play-by-play offensive and defensive performances of the Big 12.
Not only do Big 12 teams have to worry about the competition between each other for talented recruits, they now have to worry about TCU.
With National Signing Day less than a week away, TCU has an incoming class that’s shaping up to be the highest ranked of Gary Patterson’s eight-year tenure as head coach — and it might be the school’s best class in 25 years.
The Horned Frogs’ list of oral commitments includes four four-star recruits as ranked by Rivals.com. In the last eight years combined, TCU has signed just five four-star recruits.
"We’ve always had great football and great academics," Patterson said. "The addition of all the great facilities has now given us something to push us over the edge."
Inventors want to improve football by replacing those first down chains with an electronic version.
Surveyors get very accurate measurements using gyroscopes and laser beams, he says. Why not apply that to football?
The result was an electronic version of the familiar sticks. Instead of just a chain, the sticks are equipped with a gyroscope and laser beam combination that, he says, gives a much more accurate measure of the first-down line.
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I don't think I agree with Luginbill
Texas actual ranking since 2002:
Scout Rivals USC (for comparison)
2002 1 1 13
2003 14 15 3
2004 10 10 1
2005 13 5 1
2006 3 5 1
2007 3 5 2
2008 16 14 8
8.5 7.8 4.14
I think he percieves that Texas is in the top 3 to 5 every year, but really it is only about half the time. Notice the 2002 team that made the core of that National Championship team? Also notice the 2005 -2007 recruiting classses that made up this year’s team, a team that really should have played for the National title and Big 12 title. This is the same team that will be ranked #2 going into next season.
I added USC for comparison (from Rivals), from 2004 to 2007 they were #1 three times and #2 once, shouldn’t that group have ended with at least one National Title?
What if James Henry decided bitches didn’t need to be kicked?
by billb on Jan 30, 2009 7:32 AM CST reply actions 1 recs
"shouldn’t that group (USC) have ended with at least one National Title?"
They did. They torqued Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl to win the 2004 national championship.
was going to comment on how many freshmen were on the two-deep in 2004...
…and went looking for a depth chart. Instead, I found this, which is pretty cool.
It’d be neat to see something like this for UT
Your right.
I was more referring to the years these players would have contibuted a lot, as opposed to just being on the team.
What if James Henry decided bitches didn’t need to be kicked?
I think Luginbill is off base
regarding the national championships. The Big XII titles are a more legitimate question to ask. Despite having very similar talent levels and even considering the controversy of last year, Oklahoma has 5 in the last decade compared to the 1 for Texas. That seems outside the normal distribution where luck is the sole factor.
Its a pretty small sample size and there are many variables...
I wonder if head to head would be a better comparison than titles. Texas plays more traditional rivals in the South (OU, Tech, A&M, and Baylor) than OU (UT and OSU), which is a confounding factor in OU’s favor. Injuries also play a part such as in 2006 when McCoy went down and cost us a chance for the Big XII title.
Here are OU’s Rival Rankings compared to UTs along with the head to head winner of the actual game:
OU UT Winner H2H
7 1 OU
4 15 OU
8 10 OU
3 5 UT
9 5 UT
14 5 OU
6 14 UT
Averages:
7.3 7.9 4-3
The averages actually show it better than looking at the individual points, but this is a close rivalry both in recruiting and on the field with the Sooners holding a slight advantage in both recruiting and head to head. The H2H numbers would obviously skew in OU’s favor if the data for 2000 and 2001 were available and I am not sure what their recruiting looked like in those two years. The conference championship disparity is certainly galling as a UT fan, but I wonder if OU were in the North rather than the South would they have half as many titles?
You guys should have more but...
Bob Stoops is in the way. Look at Mack’s record since 2000. Thats when he started bringing in his own players and it became his team. Here is his record since 2000 (in parenthesis conference record): 2000: 9-3 (7-1), 2001: 11-1 (7-1), 2002: 10-2 (6-2), 2003: 10-2 (7-1), 2004: 11-1 (7-1), 2005: 12-0 (8-0), 2006: 9-3 (6-2), 2007: 9-3 (5-3), 2008: 11-1 (7-1). In most other leagues that would be good enough to win their league. The only truly bad season you guys had was last year. If you guys wouldn’t have had that horrific showing against us last year you would have finished with the same record as the national champion and not even played in a BCS bowl. In any other conference he would have had about 5 or 6 already. He baiscally has to have one loss or less to win a division title.
There isn’t another head coach in the country that has to deal with a head coach and a program as elite as Bob Stoops’ in his own conference much less own division. Look at the other dominant programs. USC. Who does Pete Carrol have as a coaching rival and as a rival program? Jeff Tefford and Cal? Mike Reily and Oregon State? Who does Tressel have at OSU? Joe Pa? Even in the big bad SEC, Urban Meyer doesn’t have anybody near his level in his own division. Mark Richt is a good solid head coach but not a great one. Lane Kiffin could turn out to be that guy, but I doubt it and Monte Kiffin is too old and too out of touch to be able to slow down that offense of Meyer’s. Also, Charlie Strong chews up and spits out pro-style offenses. Nick Saban may be Meyer’s closest rival and competitor but he doesn’t have to play him every year and when he does its either for the conference crown or a game he can afford to lose in the regular season and still win the SEC.
Also when people say that Mack only has one conference championship in 22 years of being a head coach, people seem to forget that he coached in the ACC when Florida State’s second team could have won the conference. He had Bobby Bowden in his way back when Bowden actually was a coach and not just a guy on the sideline. He should have more but no other coach of an elite program has as big of an obstacle as Mack Brown to win his own division much less conference crown.
I’m not making an excuse for him but Mack Brown seems to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The guy sometimes can’t catch a break. But there is no excuse if you guys don’t go undefeated this year in the regular season. It should be a 13-0 season with a trip to the national title game in Pasadena.
SHOW ME YOUR LIGHTNING BOLT!!!!!!!!!!
by PrimeTime2012 on Jan 30, 2009 2:01 PM CST up reply actions
Agreed.
Stoops, especially when he had Leach and Mangino running his offenses, really took the whole conference by storm. While its easy to look at the numbers and just think that Stoops is a better coach, I think after Leach and Mangino left the competition has been closer to even and if you change the results of just one or two games, UT would have three conference championships and OU would have 4. This is where I think OU has the advantage by being separated from most of its old Big 8 rivals. I don’t A&M and Tech get up for OU quite like they do for Texas.
Just checked its you guys who haven't held up your end of the bargain!
Tech has beaten both UT and OU three times during the tenures of Brown and Stoops, two each since Leach took the helm. A&M has beaten UT 3 times but OU only once during the same period! Mack hasn’t lost to Baylor or OSU. But Stoops has lost to OSU twice, so there may be something to this older rivalry thing. If OSU had been anywhere near as good as A&M has been talent-wise over the past decade we might have made out even better over Mack’s tenure!
“but no other coach of an elite program has as big of an obstacle as Mack Brown to win his own division much less conference crown.”
I disagree with that. Beat Oklahoma and don’t screw up twice against lesser conference teams will get you there (minus last year’s controversy). The last non-OU or UT South Division representative was Texas A&M . . in 1998. The SEC East has been represented by Florida 4 times, Georgia 3 times, and Tennessee 3 times in that span.
Texas and Oklahoma are head and shoulders better than every other team in their division (and it shows). In short, if Texas A&M (or Tech) were a power on the order of Tennessee, it would be much harder to win the Big XII South.
“There isn’t another head coach in the country that has to deal with a head coach and a program as elite as Bob Stoops’ in his own conference much less own division.”
I’m not reading your comparisons (Tressel, Carroll, Meyer, etc.) as ‘Mack Brown is a great coach that’s gotten some unfortunate breaks.’ I’m reading that as Mack Brown IS the equivalent of Mark Richt, Mike Bellotti, or Michigan (i.e. the 2nd best program in the conference).
Mack Brown has a national title
None of those coaches that I listed have a national title unless you want to count Joe Pa but he doesn’t coach at all. When the “head coach” doesn’t give his team a talk at halftime during the Rose Bowl you aren’t the head coach. Those coaches don’t have a national title and don’t produce 10 win seasons like Mack does. Also all of those programs that I mentioned aren’t really elite power houses. Georgia and Tennessee are great programs but they aren’t the kings of the sport like USC, Texas, OU, Ohio State. They both have had some great periods but have never dominated the sport for a long period time.
Mack Brown is an elite coach and should be in the same regard as Carroll, Meyer, and Tressel. I would rate him the third best coach right now in the country behind Carroll and Meyer. If he adds on more perfect season next year he will be right up there with Carroll and Meyer.
SHOW ME YOUR LIGHTNING BOLT!!!!!!!!!!
by PrimeTime2012 on Jan 30, 2009 3:48 PM CST up reply actions
I think you missed my point . . .
but that’s mostly my fault.
I’m not arguing that Texas isn’t a top 5 program or worse than the programs mentioned above on a comparison basis. By “equivalent”, I meant that they are the 2nd best team in their own conference (and division).
Let me give a rough equivalent: Tennessee from 1994-2001. They won 2 SEC titles and 1 national championship in that timeframe. They were a top 5 program at the time. They were also the 2nd best program in their conference and division behind Florida.
As an aside, I don’t know how Stoops doesn’t rate ahead of Brown in your opinion (better head to head, a lot more conference titles).
Don't forget Nebraska
First, I am not sure how a big a rivalry you can honestly consider Baylor and UT. Second, while not in the South, OU certainly has a strong rivalry with Nebraska. So, for what it’s worth, the rivalry issue large evens out IMHO.
"Only angry people win football games." --DKR
That's the point!
Outside of OSU and UT Oklahoma doesn’t play any of its more traditional rivals (by this I mean teams who have a long history of playing each other, usually due to conference affiliation, but regardless of it being competitive). Each team in the South only plays 3 of the 6 teams in the North each year. Would OU have had better luck beating Nebraska every single year, even during this down period, than say Texas A&M? I would be willing to bet Nebraska or Missouri would have managed to take OU down more than the 1 time A&M has managed the task over the past decade.
hmmm...
That’s a really good story in the Star-Telegram about TCU recruiting!
As huge as those close measurements are to the outcome of a game, I can’t see myself accepting the shift to electronic measurements. It just wouldn’t be football without the chains.
by 4th generation fan on Jan 30, 2009 12:24 PM CST reply actions
the chains arent really accurate at all
I mean when they drag them to “measure”. How do they know where exactly on the field to place the chains. It is very crude when you think about it. Its all approximation. As far as needing electronics…if it aint broke who cares. I can just see the ref: “Official Timeout…photogates malfunctioning…”
It's accurate enough with the current chains.
There is no need to improve the systematic error of the measuring device, when the random error of the referee spotting the ball is orders of magnitude greater.
when they drag them to "measure". How do they know where exactly on the field to place the chains.
They clip a marker to the chain under a yard line, even paying attention to which side of the yard line they reference, as here seen.
The error introduced by the guy squatting down with the line marker, and the error from the tautness of the chain, etc., are small compared to the referee spotting the ball with his size 13 shoe, wherever he damn well pleases.
This is techno-gadgetry-salesmanship run amok, unlike the MacCAM used in tennis, which really does reduce/remove the human error.
You don’t want to get me started on whether I could build the electronic version for less money than the sticks and chain version, since PB doesn’t want us talking politics. ;-)
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