Burnt Orange Nation: All Posts by William E. Becker

Climbing the Mountain

2012-10-03T18:32:02Z

Texas has only played West Virginia once before and lost that one, 7-6, in a game that signaled the end of an era.

Modern Texas football really begins in 1957 when Darrell K Royal was hired to take the reins of the Texas football program. Even the youngest of fans know his name, at least some of his exploits and certainly recognize the now ordained Darrell K Royal Memorial Stadium.

There had been great Texas coaches and celebratory heydays before DKR but no national championships. The cupboard was bare except for Southwest Conference championships and bowl game victories. The sweet, sweet taste of the intoxicating wine of national success was more a dream than a part of any serious plan. It was the 1950s, the time of Eisenhower and relative sanity (except the Texas Lege, of course, see Billy Lee Brammer's book), television was sweeping the land as was mass marketing of cars and hoola hoops, the middle class was becoming robust and the beer flowed freely at Scholtz Garten...the future seemed great, except for optimism about Texas football and Head Coach Ed Price...that was a damn scarce commodity in old Austin in 1956.

Over across the Brazos, ‘Bear' Bryant had the Aggies all charged up and lathered in lanolin to take a real shot at a national championship, with running back John David Crow. Up above the Red River, Oklahoma and Bud Wilkinson had been laying waste to every team in their path as they won national championships and ran off 30-game and 47-game winning streaks in the post-WWII era. Texas had success with the Bobby Layne era (getting up to #3), but after Dana X. Bible retired, Texas did have a few good teams with Blair Cherry and Price, but not anything to dent the national scene for long. The last time the Longhorns had been #1 was November, 1941.

The Longhorns started off the 1956 season against #15 USC and were stomped, 44-20. Then they managed a door scraping 7-6 win over Tulane as the Green Wave missed their PAT attempt.

The next week West Virginia came to town and some 30,000 saw a scoreless first half as neither team could generate much offense. Late in the third quarter the Mountaineers sustained a 64-yard drive capped by a 15-yard TD run. With the kick, they led, 7-0. Texas came back with a 13-play, 65-yard thrust and finally scored at the 13:00 mark in the fourth on a five-yard pass from Joe Clements to Walt Fondren. However, the kick failed and Texas was down, 7-6. The Horns would get into position for a final field goal attempt with five seconds remaining but Johnny Elam's 45-yard attempt missed and Texas lost. (This is sorta spooky, considering the present situation.)

The West Virginia game was the start of an eight-game losing streak and eventually a 1-9 record, the worst in Texas history. DX Bible had gone 1-8 in his inaugural season in 1938...the one win came with a 7-6 defeat of a sturdy A&M team that would win their lone national championship the next year. (Secured from actual anti-revisionist records.)

The '56 Horns would score only 101 points all season and would be shutout by #1 OU, 45-0, and at TCU, 46-0. Texas showed a lot of heart and scored their highest season total in the finale, a 34-21 home loss to #5 A&M. Your team always has to have heart but having players and sustained plans of action and operation for offense, defense and special teams are necessary in this age of highly specialized collegiate football. In the single platoon era of the West Virginia game of 1956, Texas played only 14 players. Saturday night will see nearly three times as many hit the field.

The Mountaineers return to Austin at a time when the Longhorns are actively implementing their dreams of climbing the mountain of national prominence in what promises to be a toe-to-toe slugfest from the onset. Will defense make a difference? Will the Longhorns need 50 points to win this game? Will the contest come down to extra points and field goals? Certainly the 2012 edition of the Horns are better equipped to deal with West Virginia than the '56 squad. I would like to think that 0-1 goose egg in the overall standings will be evened up and, in the future, will assume the proper proportions. But the future is long and the Horns chances of pulling ahead are strong in the long run.

While talented and motivated, with heart and outstanding coaching, this Longhorn squad is in the process of maturing, but still feels the sting of inexperience and confusion at times on critical plays. In a big game like this, the ability to cover their mistakes, to avoid big scores and momentum swings, will be sorely tested. On the other hand, big-time games usually bring out the best in a team and make them much better in the long run whether they win or lose. So, we, the fans, need to take a little heart in this situation as well.

Hook ‘em

Texas HS All Time Passing Record Eclipsed

2012-09-21T04:51:18Z

Thursday night football in Texas? Usually we only learn of legendary games on Saturday morning. But one occurred last night in Texas hill country.

Mike Richardson of Marble Falls passed for 715 yards tonight to apparently eclipse the all-time Texas passing record of 686 yards.

Richardson completed 38-47 passes for 7 TDs and no interceptions to lead the Mustangs to a 62-55 victory over Boerne Champion at Boerne. Champion's QB Kyle Paeske had a spectacular night as well, completing 35-57 for 610 yards. That's a total of 1,325 passing yards alone in four quarters - 48 minutes - of play...for you stat geeks that's 27.6 yards per minute or 12.7 yards per pass attempt (104 total). The teams scored on 16 of 30 possessions.

Both teams are 4-A clubs. Champion is now 2-1 while Marble Falls is 3-1 going into Dist. 25-4A play in two weeks.

Three Marble Falls receivers tallied over 150 yards, led by Garrett Grey with 293 yards and 5 TDs. Carson Bowen netted 177 and Isiah Carson pulled down 159. Grey now has 513 yards and 10 TDs for the season.

Richardson now has 20 passing touchdowns in four games, plus two he ran in. For four games he is 107-155-1-20-1,475 yards, 69% passing, just outrageous numbers. Paeske exceeded his 577 yards in the first game of the season for Champion, so this game featured some accurate guns and great receiving.

Former All Time Longhorn quarterback Todd Dodge was hired by Marble Falls in February. Recall Dodge was legendary as a high school coach leading Southlake Carrol to 4 state 5A championships in seven years before moving up into the college coaching ranks.

Thursday night football in Texas? Usually we only learn of legendary games on Saturday morning. But one occurred last night in Texas hill country.

Mike Richardson of Marble Falls passed for 715 yards tonight to apparently eclipse the all-time Texas passing record of 686 yards.

Both teams are 4-A clubs. Champion is now 2-1 while Marble Falls is 3-1 going into Dist. 25-4A play in two weeks.

A Cool Night in Mississippi

2012-09-15T03:18:04Z

Texas last played Mississippi 46 years ago, and they have never played them in Oxford. The last three times the Horns faced the Rebels were in bowl games, the Bluebonnet Bowl, the Cotton Bowl and the Sugar Bowl, all during the early years of Darrell Royal. Prior to that, the teams met in two pre-Southwest Conference games, 1912 and 1914, and once in 1925, all of which Texas won at home.

For many of us this is the real beginning of the season, not to demean New Mexico and Wyoming. The coaches seemed to have treated those contests as preseason games, with the emphasis on what the Horns needed to work on and getting as many players as possible onto the field. We can expect a much more detailed and serious game plan for both sides of the ball against Mississippi. Exactly how that unwinds will be interesting.

Texas is constructing a complex, long-term, modifiable machine, one with many moving parts on the both sides of the ball, although I think the offense is more complex in the overall. What will be of interest to me will be how they serve to modify to each other over time. This offense will be around for a while no matter whether Brian Harsin stays or goes at some point in the future.

Bless their hearts, Mississippi should see the first serious model. The following off week will be used to fine tune it for the seven-game stretch that really determines what the Horns are this year. I doubt if we've seen over 30% of this offense revealed much less run to perfection. Last year and this we've merely had glimpses as the team reeled from the quarterbacking, running back and offensive line situations last year. Once these are stabilized, even if not at anywhere near peak experience and efficiency, the Horns should begin to progress at a higher rate over the last nine games.

I do think there is a strong vision of the future at work here by Mack Brown, Harsin, Major Applewhite and Manny Diaz, but such transitions are not for the faint of heart or the impatient of mind. Building the foundation is a multi-stage process that precedes the finish work to complete and polish the project.

I attended the Bluebonnet Bowl in 1966, which was the last time Texas faced the Rebels. That was down in Houston on a cool humid December day. Texas won 19-0 with a strong defensive performance that held Mississippi to 208 total yards, but the Longhorn offense was a mess. The Horns committed seven turnovers, four interceptions and three fumbles...but Mississippi also had four INTs, three snared by Les Derrick, and a fumble. Twelve total turnovers made it a forgettable game and, frankly, my date looked great so I may have been a little distracted.

Texas had played well in their '66 opener, a 10-6 loss at home to #9 Southern Cal. In the third game of that 7-4 season versus Indiana, a flagrant late hit seriously injured quarterback Bill Bradley's knee. From that point inexperienced Andy White took over and Texas lost to OU (9-18), Arkansas (7-12) and SMU (12-13) but won the last three to earn the bowl bid. The Longhorn s didn't lose by much but they didn't win by much either...everyone gritted their teeth and groaned a lot. Bradley came back during the season but was limited by his knee. The 1966 season was the middle one of the three-year doldrums under DKR that preceded the Wishbone years and, indeed, were the cause of the historic change (2010-11 will be remembered in similar terms).

Royal faced Mississippi three times...the first was in his first season at Texas, 1957. The team was 6-4-1 but finished the season strong by defeating the fourth ranked Aggies under Bear Bryant with Heisman winner-to-be John David Crow at Kyle Field, 9-7. The Horns SWC mark of 4-1-1 earned a #11 ranking and a berth in the Sugar Bowl. Mississippi was ranked #7 and just beat the hell out of Texas, 39-7. Royal would get even in 1961 in a match-up of top five teams in the Cotton Bowl. Texas was ranked #3 (and had been knocked out of #1 by TCU's 6-0 win) while Mississippi was #5. In a tough, mean game in the cold of January 1, Texas triumphed 12-7.

Texas had whacked Mississippi in the earlier three meetings: 1912 (53-14), 1914 (66-7) and 1925 (25-0).

The overall record is 5-1 Texas. If the machine runs pretty well and the defense plays smart, the Horns should extend that record and let the Rebs drink in peace.

Get Out Your Shades

2012-09-01T17:30:08Z

October 23, 2010, was the date when the Texas Longhorns blinked off the radar of the top 25 teams in the nation, only to re-emerge in early 2011, getting up to #11 in the AP poll before the OU game. With big time running against Kansas and Texas Tech jumped back to #17 after back-to-back losses before fading.

On September 25, 2010, #7 Texas was ambushed yet again by UCLA, 34-12, in DKR-Memorial Stadium, and a week later succumbed to the hands of the #8 Sooners, 28-20. Being resilient and daunting fans, when the Horns sent #5 Nebraska into the mid-western oblivion they so richly deserved the next week, many thought that maybe those two losses were an aberration and that the team could recover and get back on their rightful track and improve on the lowly #22 ranking bestowed in the wake of the Huskers' demise. That never happened. Despite the general national optimism for the Horns in 2011 with ranking much higher than the team could sustain, this year sees more modest expectations.

Despite this forbidding trail in the sand that carries the team into this weekend, those in Longhorn nation much closer to the action let the hope and optimism flow openly...and well they should. The source of this optimism is Mack Brown.

In the history of head football coaches at Texas, sooner or later, virtually every one has complained about the intense, and all too often pernicious, pressure to win, to win or else. Some fine Texas football coaches, say, like Clyde Littlefield, have felt the sting of ‘or else.' And once you win big, the pressure becomes unrelenting to stay at the elite level. No team ever stays on top for that long, of course, but in the short term it can sure seem like it. And the reverse, of being down, like Texas has been, can seem just as eternal. Texas never lost a home game from 1968 through 1976, altogether 42 straight games. In the first Mack Era ('98-'09) we came close to that feeling of security and satisfaction at home.

I cannot imagine the pressure that was on Mack Brown as his program lay in shambles at his feet after the 2010 season. Not to make light of natural disasters, but it was surely an emotional disaster for him just as it was for all of Longhorn Nation and for the great enterprise for which he is the leader.

Up until October 23, 2010, Texas had owned that aura of football power for nearly a decade, the ability to win most every game, to defeat most every adversary, and then it dissolved like ice cream on a hot summer day when a fateful cyclone blew the illusion out of our collective minds.

Mack stayed when he could have walked away, when many were openly hoping he would go, and that seems, from this vantage point now, like the fateful decision for the Texas Longhorns. We know that it took a while for him to plumb the depths of his team and himself to discover the implicit causes of the 2010 debacle. But just fixing the causes was not enough...what was needed was a new vision of the Longhorn future, of the kind of team he really wanted but never quite achieved despite a MNC. Mack wanted a running based team with the modern option passing game, one that could average 40 points a game. Mack had the implicit institutional knowledge which no outsider could supply and that made for a different rebuilding mode. He tore away the rot in his coaching staff and ultimately with his team. In a direct sense, he did start over and build from scratch.

Texas gave the triple option offense to college football. There were other option offenses in 1968, with Bill Yeoman and Houston one of the most effective, but what Emory Bellard and Darrell Royal wrought changed the way the game was played and won many national champions, starting with Texas and continuing with Oklahoma and Alabama...certainly Texas shared more details of the offense than they should have.

The modern spread passing game is the same multi-option mode...what was left was to mold the running game to the spread offenses, which Boise State seemed to have done with a modicum of talent compared to the big programs. Thus, the hiring of Brian Harsin to match with Major Applewhite could conceivably lead to such a prosperous union. We haven't really seen that on the field yet, and, certainly, if this is the goal, there was be a period when this new iteration must be modified and polished. Paired with Manny Diaz' new defensive strategies, the Horns are set to beget something quite different upon the football world. At any rate, the feeling has been like 1968 when the fans and sports writers knew something was up but really didn't grasp the scope of it until Texas came back against Oklahoma, 26-20, to prove that the wishbone could win in the clutch.

Maybe we won't see all these marvels this evening but I think we will over the course of the early schedule. Mack has poured his soul into this job, and I think the work has been satisfying and a great psychological relief. He appears so at ease now and ready to jump into the second phase, the operational one, the part that coaches really love.

Old coaches will tell you that the hardest and best coaching they ever do is when a team is losing and sometimes losing big. Winning teams merely need tuning and guidance...losing teams need part of your soul to sustain them in the rough times. That sustenance is really the commitment that Mack made after 2010. If it works, we, the fans of Longhorn nation, will be some of the prime beneficiaries.

It's possible we still have hard lessons to learn - this life has no guarantees no matter how bright the future looks - but I know virtually all of us are ready to cheer and cheer lustily for the Longhorns. We, too, have had to take stock of ourselves, to ground our expectations and outlook, to have endurance and patience.

Tonight we will find out if the future is ours.

Hook 'em

GTFO Aggies Series: T-2 Days - Aggie Pathos

2012-06-29T16:15:13Z

During the month of June, BON authors will memorialize the final days of the UT-A&M rivalry through a series of perspectives, as seen through The Eyes of Texas, to include essays, personal reflections and commemorations of significant note.

How in the hell did Aggies get to be Aggies? Were they always like this? Does Texas A&M attract delusional types or have the stresses and strains of historical events over time twisted their psyches so much that they babble grandiose projections as a matter community agreement?

Certain Texas A&M football websites may not represent the general population of students or Aggies at large, but, you know, they aren't that far off either. I'm sure each of you knows a sane Aggie or two. But there is this strange affliction that seems to keep Aggies from seeing their football teams as they really are...and, I will suggest, blinds them to their particular situation over their history as well. I will also contend that this is a top-down phenomenon.

Join me over the jump to discover why "every turkey has his Thanksgiving."

From the time I was 10 years old until I was 27, the Texas Longhorns lost only once to the Texas Aggies. What a wonderful 17-1 stretch that was from 1957 through the fall of 1974, with the lone black mark a 10-7 loss in 1967 at Kyle Field. This was a time when it wasn't "if" but "how much" the Horns were going to win by on Turkey Day. In 1969 I gave a sawed-off little Aggie 35 points just because he was so damn bull headed and stubborn. Texas won by 37, 49-12, and I didn't see him for two years. He still won't talk about it and never gave me the 10 bucks. That's OK because I really got my money's worth out of that situation anyway.

It was in this period that the Aggies truly lost their bearings. I can understand that to some degree...it's no fun getting the pee water beat out of you every single year for so long. This was the time of ATSD - the lesser known Aggie Traumatic Stress Disorder - and all you had to do was wait until next year to get re-traumatized. For those poor souls totally emotionally invested in Texas A&M, it was a time without pity. It was the heyday of Aggie jokes.

For those of you much younger, the closest thing you have seen to this was the period when OU beat Texas five times in a row...y'all were starting to go nuts in your own right if this blog was any indication. What would have happened if it had been 17-1? Ten years in a row, you eek out a narrow victory, and then seven more years of butt kicking. That's bad, real bad. Makes you have some appreciation for Rice and Baylor and a few other teams that carry a similar burden...but those people weather their defeats much better than A&M and with only minor soul twisting. Obviously, Rice is a lot smarter than A&M. Rice has won once against Texas since 1965, in 1994 by 19-17 to John Mackovic, of course, but Rice knows what they have, the challenge they face and they usually are up for it and don't blubber in their cocktails afterwards. It's simply the price they pay for a great degree. They are realistic.

The Lure of the Dark Side

Texas A&M dipped into the dark side three different times in their history, employing coaches that may have won them a lot of victories but the Aggies always paid a high price for their shenanigans. Those coaches were Charley Moran, Bear Bryant and Jackie Sherrill. Of those, Bear Bryant probably had the cleanest motives...to get A&M to the big time as quickly as humanly possible, because he obviously had places to go, places far away from Bryan-College Station. There is a story that when Mrs. Bryant first saw College Station she burst into tears. Obviously, she was quite normal.

Texas A&M didn't start out as a football powerhouse whatsoever. The first seven games against Texas they went 0-7 and didn't score a point - 157-0 ledger. However, from 1894 to 1908 they went 55-27-6, a 62.5% winning percentage. Not bad, really, with two undefeated seasons marred by ties (1896, 2-0-1, and 1902, 7-0-2). However, they wanted better, so they went out and hired C.B. (Charley) Moran.

A colorful character, Moran also was quite loose in his choice of players in a time when the rules were rather lax. He would bring in ringers and semi-pros, opponents said they played dirty, and this was not so uncommon in that era. Texas lost to Moran a couple of times and then defeated him in a 1911 upset, 6-0, in Houston. Allegations of a Texas player having his leg broken on the field on purpose tainted the scene, and a strange night of Aggies with sabers chasing around Houston sealed the situation. The Texas administration felt that Moran was way over the line and decided not to engage the Aggies in any sports until Moran left A&M.

When Theo Bellmont led the creation of the Southwest Conference in 1915 and A&M joined, there was an understanding that Moran would be gone although nothing officially was stated. Texas and A&M resumed their series on a home-and-home basis. From 1915 up until 1939 the teams broke even, with A&M under Homer Norton winning a MNC by vote of the Associated Press in 1939, going 11-0 with a Sugar Bowl victory over Tulane, 14-13. However, Texas under new coach Dana X. Bible was just getting ready to roll, and the Horns immediately thwarted A&M undefeated seasons in 1940 and 1941.

At this point, A&M didn't seem to have the depth of psychological afflictions - they had good teams as long as their coaching was good, like Norton and Dana X. Bible earlier. But over the next period until Bear Bryant, they were losing their way. Sure, the war years were tough for them, but after that they just couldn't keep up with the smart scheme Oklahoma produced following WWII to get a great coach and bring in talented players under the GI Bill. At some point Texas couldn't keep up either, and it is instructive how they each solved their problems.

In 1954 A&M hired Bear Bryant away from Kentucky, which he had turned into a winner (60-23-6). Bryant wasn't exactly the dark side in the manner of either Moran or Sherrill. He was tough as nails, and he wanted his players to be exactly the same way. What he found in College Station wasn't' exactly what he wanted, so he engaged in some serious pre-season work at Junction. After a 1-9 season, A&M showed some power, going 24-5-2 the next three seasons and beating Texas, 34-21, in 1956 to win the SWC championship...but they didn't go anywhere because they were on probation.

Coach Ed Price had been hanging on by his fingernails and the 1-9 season in '56 was the worst in Texas history. This led directly to Texas' solution, for Bryant and for Bud Wilkinson and OU: they hired young Darrell K Royal.

Ah, 1957...I was 10 years old, lived next door to the local football coach who was coming off a 26-game winning streak and life was good...with a lot of football going on all around me. And we finally had a TV to watch some of it. This is when my era really started.

In '57 Texas went into College Station against the #4 Aggies and soon-to-be Heisman winner John David Crow. After winning the first eight games, Bryant's Aggies had stumbled against Rice, losing 7-6, and there were rumors the coach was soon to leave. DKR's first season was rough. Early victories over Georgia and Tulane were tempered by losses to South Carolina and #1 OU (21-7). Rebounding with wins over #10 Arkansas there and Rice helped pushed them up to #13 in the AP poll, but a loss to SMU (12-19) and tie with Baylor blew that away. With a final win over TCU, 14-2, Texas was 5-3-1 coming into the game.

Royal's team would show something in this game that became the backbone of Texas teams: defense. The wisest thing the University of Texas has ever done has been to understand the platinum standard of great defense. It is a lesson A&M should have learned but didn't. Texas beat A&M that day, 9-7, and Royal would never lose to Bear Bryant.

Texas would whip the ever lovin' crap out of A&M for the next 10 years. In Royal's three-year malaise from '65 to ''67 the sourest moment came in the final loss to A&M in '67 by 10-7. His team had fine defenses in that period - the Aggies gained only 233 yards in the loss, but an 80-yard pass in the fourth doomed the effort - but they didn't have sustainable offenses. Royal and Emory Bellard would change that in 1968 with an option offense that would reinvigorate football unto this very day. The key word is option, not running...whether passing or running, it's the options available on every play that counts.

After Bryant, the Aggies would go into a shell. An administrative shell, if you ask me. Until 1972 when they hired Emory Bellard, A&M had forgotten that football is about winning championships. They put up with coaches they should never have sustained...good Aggies, yes...elite winning football coaches, not a chance. Again, this goes to the top, these should have been administrative decisions.

When A&M hired Bellard, they found someone that could lead them out of their morass, maybe heal the accumulating psychological wounding they had endured. And lead he did, with a curve of victories that predicted a great future: 3-8, 5-6, 8-3, 10-2, 10-2, 8-4, 4-2. With the wishbone offense working well and a much better defense, staffed with a strong crew of assistant coaches that included R.C. Slocum, A&M seemed on the way back. They beat DKR twice and tied for the conference in 1975. Then after the sixth game of the season in 1978, Bellard suddenly resigned. Wikipedia will tell you after starting four games, the Aggies had just lost to Houston, 33-0, and Baylor, 24-6. Texas lost to both of teams that year as well. That wasn't why Bellard left.

I asked Bellard why he left. This was in a period after he had retired. He stated he had left "because someone up high lied to me." He was a man of ethics and never spoke an ill-considered word that I ever heard or saw in print. I later confirmed that the person who lied was the president of Texas A&M. It came from the top and in this case obliterated a great future. I don't know what the lie was, but it had to be considerable.

A&M went to Tom Wilson for four years of mixed returns, then turned completely to the dark side with Jackie Sherrill in 1982. It was a time when the SWC was about to be dealt some tough shots, and this was just one of those mortal blows.

If you came of age to be a Longhorn fan in 1984, Lord help you because the next 15 years of your life were basically no damn fun when it came to Aggies. Over the next 16 years, the Aggies went 12-4. Sherrill left under a cloud of recruiting violations in '88. R.C. Slocum would take over and keep the roll going, but he peaked in 1998 but they kept him around until 2002. Then you have Dennis Franchione and Mike Sherman to now.

One thing Sherrill and Slocum did was to reveal the platinum standard of defense. When the Wrecking Crew were at their best, they were something to behold. But the Aggies soon lost sight of what was important and began sinking.

The Future

These psychological elements I've mentioned deal with overwhelming self importance which is, in fact, a deep-seated insecurity. Self importance is like wearing a pair of blinders - the perception of the world is filtered through the self, making it virtually impossible to see things for what they are. Thus, a sense of unreality and delusional projections ungrounded in everyday reality sets up even more unfortunate events and disappointments in the future. My little parable at the start of this GTFO series about my fictional daughter and self-torturing Aggies has this grain of truth at its core. And I cannot state strongly enough this permeates from their backwoods hick followers clear to the to the very top of their food chain and has been there for some time.

College football is about winning championships. Period. While there may be considerations about the athletes, the college life, the status of college football and the incredible money, on the field it is about winning championships. None of any team's traditions win a championship...those traditions come from winning championships and the struggle to get there, from the integrity of the program on the field, within the university and throughout the alumni.

I want Texas A&M to go away and mature. Maturity in this sense is not a juvenile male idea, it is the cooperative model of focusing outward, engaging the world, seeing it for what it is and making good decisions. The female maturity model is cooperative, and both male and female maturity models converge into the cooperative model for those who become fully mature.

Texas Aggies are their own worst enemies.

We've all known this for a long time.

Hook 'em.

The Merkel Hoopty

2012-06-24T22:49:02Z

The Longhorn spirit can be found in the most unusual places. In this case, this spirit came to reside in an odd-shaped contraption named the Merkel Hoopty.

The first time I saw it I said, "That sonofabitch is gonna crash! It won't make it halfway down the hill."

Not that I'm a great predictor of the future or above spraying wd-40 on Wallenda shoes or anything: this was an visceral response to a vehicle made out of plywood and 2x4s that was taller than it was long, a three-wheeler with bicycle wheels, the front wheel with a sort of standard aggie misalignment directed by what looked to be a paint pole. This, I decided, wasn't created by people with a vision but those with a public death wish.

Quicker than you could shout SEC with a mouthful of grits, I was about to be proven utterly mistaken. There may have been madness behind the method, but, damn, the method was good and so was the vehicle.

Race on downhill with me on the jump...

The Longhorn spirit can be found in the most unusual places. In this case, this spirit came to reside in an odd-shaped contraption named the Merkel Hoopty.

The first time I saw it I said, "That sonofabitch is gonna crash! It won't make it halfway down the hill."

Race on downhill with me on the jump...

Not only would the damn thing not crash, it would win some races...and quickly became a crowd favorite, if only for the 18" rooster up on top. The brain trust behind this vehicle was five brothers - the Merkel brothers: Paul, Larry, Tony, David and Kenneth - originally from Houston and now spread around Central Texas. Kenneth and Paul went to Texas State while Larry, Tony and David were Texas grads. Clad in burnt orange to match their vehicle, they brought the whole clan for Fathers Day.

They had a better vehicle planned, Paul related, but they ran out of time and had to build the Merkel Hoopty in three days. They tried it out on a comparably sized hill and didn't die right away. Then they drank a few more beers and didn't even crash. So far, so good.They painted the vehicle burnt orange, mounted a giant rooster up on top, added the name and various other statements, including a circle with a line through it over the words: Rule 10.

Hoopty is a modern colloquialism for a piece of shit car. Easy enough to understand. The brothers wanted a rooster on top with fire shooting out his ass but couldn't manage the fire detail...they said they'd return next year with fire shooting out on every run.

Rule 10 was another matter, something they had a problem with. When I asked Paul about that, he rolled his eyes and said, "Doesn't anyone read the rules?" What he was referring to were these rules. Rule 10 specifically says no drinking in the pit area and drivers should remain sober. The brothers were not so enthused about Rule 10. I explained about insurance and the Hotel-Motel tax money was being used, the local aggie control ordinance (no sheep allowed downtown after dark) and the peaceable nature of the event - but I had to admit to them I wrote the damn rule. Hell, I wrote most of the rules when this event was being formed over the last two years. Sure, they had been modified, with heated arguments here and there, a lot more spit than blood flying, but Rule 10 never changed.

To back track, this occurred Father's Day weekend at the Third Annual Adult Soapbox Derby held in downtown Marble Falls. Some 50 home-made vehicles and around 70 drivers raced down the Third Street Hill which has a drop of some 50 feet. Speeds get up to around 32 mph, so what may seem stable at slower speeds - particularly steering, suspension and tires as well as the balance of height to wheelbase ratios - can get very exciting in the last 100 feet of the race. Inertia is not always kind.

While many of the cars may look goofy at times -from canoes to tweety birds to rolling jailhouses, outhouses and lawn furniture - there is a core of serious competitors with well designed, highly competitive vehicles. There are two divisions: the Downhill, starting from an inclined ramp (for an fair start), and the Jamaican with a driver and pusher, who will jump into or on the back the vehicle; there are then three immediate pylons for the vehicle to slalom through before hitting the steepest part of the hill for the downhill finish, all definite Cool Runnings adaptations. Most enter the downhill - the Jamaican puts more pressure on the vehicle systems due to the weight of the extra person. There were just seven Jamaican entries this year.

The National Adult Soapbox Derby Association (NASDA), which is local with big ambitions, created this event. Shannon Heep, the creative, driving force of NASDA, was looking for a multi-day event to galvanize downtown, was fun for everyone and good for business. Last Friday night there was nearly 1,000 people downtown whooping it up for the racing, music, and libations (for non drivers, heh). Shannon and her loyal crew were happy but tired puppies with two more days of racing left - all day Saturday and the finals on Sunday afternoon. I was part of that crew the first two years but due to other obligations, I was merely a spectator this year.

With Paul and Kenneth driving, the Merkel Hoopty won several races before being vanquished to the losers bracket (both division races are double elimination). Paul won another race and Kenneth three more before falling to more experienced racers and better designed vehicles. They ran more than a few exhibitions to the crowd's delight. On Sunday the Merkels would win a NASDA Spirit Award for their efforts. Colleen Nelson, videographer and erstwhile reporter for the Longhorn Network, even interviewed them for Good Morning, Texas during Saturday's races.

Now if they can get that fire shooting out of the rooster's ass and straighten that goofy front wheel, next year should be even more fun when the Merkels return on Father's Day weekend.

You Can't Always Get What You Want...

2011-03-31T16:35:33Z

This is one group of people that I can easily tell exactly what they want.

Some are more demanding than others, but that is an issue of style and aggression, not the deeply felt need we all eventually express. I see those title-room eyes. There is really no substitute for our desire.

Right now this time is more sensitive than most years because we got punched in the face, kicked in the ass and wound up bleeding in the bar ditch with all sorts of tire tracks mangling our ego and what little was left of our confidence. For a considerable period we rehabilitated ourselves, reconsidered our future and goals, blaming many bitterly, often parsing that with a more 'reasonable' approach and tried - dammit, we did try - to keep our eyes on the future, sometimes even the long, long view where there might be just a little more assurance of success. But you know, August is only four hot damn months away and as soon as she starts shimmying and sashaying in our presence, all those well-considered promises will fly out the damn door. Yeah, we're demented but we like it like that.

What do we want? There's only one thing - and then there's everything else, which soon disappears.

You know, we're a monster to deal with. On January 11, 2011, we were ready to declare a new era the day after the college football season had finally lurched to a somehow fantasy ending...that is, Oregon and Auburn ended the season (but I didn't feel that things had ended for them).

Be that as it may, we had to face our stark future that day. Was it a new era beginning 01.11.11, one where we hold all the aces, or was 2010 a collapse from which Mack would not recover despite his powerful efforts, one that would live in infamy for our particularly brooding herd? Yesterday GHG90 asked that question and no one even touched it. Yes, it scares the living hell out of us because we don't know.

Sunday won't give us the answers for that either. We've seen a lot of things in the Orange-White game and we were made a lot of promises...most of those were never fulfilled or flew bye-the-bye within a couple of games. Some here need a lot of reassurance that what we see will actually be the implementation of an overall plan because of the past teasers. We may have a soft heart for the Horns, but we're a hard sell in many ways.

Mack said this after Wednesday's practice concerning what Harsinwhite have done:

I do think there have been some tweaks from what they did at Boise [State] that fits our personnel and fits us, but at the same time, I'm really excited about what Bryan's brought to us and what I'm seeing with our offense. I think the fans will love it.

The first sentence tells us there is some integration of the two offenses, which I expected. Y'all can speculate on what we'll keep and why and what we will discard. Second, he projects our consideration but frankly, we love what we love and that doesn't mean we'll love it at all. I think he needed a better descriptor, but we'll see...we don't need any hype to be interested.

This will be new after Saturday's light practice in shorts. I like the idea of re-integrating this years team with the tradition of the past.

We'll have 150 or so lettermen coming back. They'll watch practice with their positions. What we will do is at the end of practice let them break down with our team and when we break up into individual groups each one of them will meet the players that play their position. It's the first time we've done this in our 13 years, and I think it will be really special.

However, there was also this caveat when he first starting talking about where the Horns are right now:

We'll definitely be a work in progress on both sides of the ball and even in the kicking game because we've changed a lot of things in the kicking game. That's why we've got to have a good game on Sunday. We've got to come back and have a tremendous summer in the weight room and running to get stronger because we're not strong enough as a team. Then we still need to work on our mental toughness.

Mack and his staff is pushing this team as hard as they can, so it seems. The summer has become an important foundation for the fall.

So, this game on Sunday will provide a serious glimpse into where we are. I am so curious to know the format and the structure. Mack has said he would like to have 80K in the stands...I doubt that will happen this year. You have to have a lot more than curiosity going for your team to do that. They haven't even put the finish paint job on this model yet nor is it the sleek, powerful finely-tuned machine that will make everyone droll at first sight.

Maybe next year but not Sunday. Hopefully it will better than a dozen Rube Goldberg's tinkering in the garage. I can take the primer paint and unfinished look if the structure and engine are running just fine. But don't sell me next year and show me this year. But, if you try and you try, sometimes you do get what you need. And I hope we do.

Why do we have conference tournaments?

2011-03-13T20:15:12Z

I have yet to see any good sense in conference tournaments as they now operate. I think it is profoundly stupid.

Now, you may ask, "What in the hell did you do last night, whills?" I saw something ridiculous...worse than proving a negative.

Now those who are tolerably sane and stable, with good sense rooted deeply in how things are are the moment, may well ignore this. The rest of you are fish in my barrell.

My rigorous and unrelenting analysis - well primed I might add, with special secret ingredients - shows that conference tourneys usually either reiterate what we already know or they merely inject some inane, irrational consequence into the Big Dance. But whichever outcome occurs, a couple of prime teams almost always enter the NCAA playoffs with tired bodies and legs if they don't have the good sense to lose early (h/t 54b).

This is what is stupid and utterly without merit for either the teams involved, the Big 12-2 or the NCAA tournament. We all appreciate redemption but do you think the Big 12-2 conference tournament and conference tournaments in general are the proper stage for this? The hell, you say. Gird your loins and jump over to the dark side...bring your own special ingredients, if need be.

Here is the Big 12-2 attempting to send the best teams that it can offer to slay the forces at the gate that have the temerity to think they're better than us. Do we need to give the sonofabitches any help? Well, we do, and I think it undercuts the whole process leading up to the NCAA tournament.

Well, surely, it's Selection Sunday afternoon, and you're suddenly suggesting the Big 12-2 Conference Tournament should be kicked to the bar ditch like so many empties from an all night binge? Not exactly, Kemo Sabe. Just part of it.

It seems to me that the wiser and smarter course would be to give the top two teams and maybe the top three or four, depending on the year, the competition and the relative humidity, a bye through the whole tournament. Ole those bad boys all the way through. Let the pissants that need a berth fight it out mano-a-mano, jaw-to-mandible, shaky leg-to-shaky leg to find some redemption in a season gone awry.

Let the best teams in the tournament rest their legs and bodies the whole time. Then they might be able to accomplish much more in the NCAA tournament, represent the Big 12-2 and themselves in a much better fashion.

Well, you say, with the best of rational intentions, that the Selection Committee and the related die-hard fans want to know to the nth degree and pick the glass out of their feet before the selections are made. Didn't anyone ever tell you that when you pursue anything over the 95+ percentile that everything gets more and more expensive in a tangential fashion and still will never hit 100% - perfection is unattainable. And even if it was, it wouldn't make that much difference. Strange, this life, you know.

You take the physical edge off your best teams trying to discover something the whole season has already provided pristine, definitive answers to - and then the tournament does some minor rearrangement of the pack. Anyone in the pack ain't gonna win the NCAA 95% of the time. It ain't gonna happen. But most of them with a decent season will get their shot, so their whiney asses are covered.

This year Kansas and Texas should have had a bye all the way through and should have never played a game in KC.

Now Gary Johnson's legs have been worn out like those of Hamilton and the freshmen earlier - he was older and more seasoned but even he was losing his spring by the end of the regular season. The question is will he get them back in a week? What if he didn't have to endure three more games? Think about that when the Horns get to the Sweet 16. The best example will be UConn - five games and then two more, if they're lucky, in under two weeks - forget it...they won but it will probably cost them big time.

Being the wise and astute BONers with a season full of experience and the wonder of clarity and good judgment, you can say I'm full of it - undoubtedly true, we know - but doesn't my proposal make better sense than our present situation? You will still tune in at 5 today to see who goes where, tired legs and all.

Hook 'Em