Let's start with a post from one of my favorite sites of any kind to visit: BearMeat. Our boffo Baylor blogging brethren (try saying that four times fast - seriously, it's hard as hell) were inspired by yesterday's countdown post, enough so that they decided to inaugurate an Aggie DoucheBag series.
Big Red Network has a nice introductory piece on the "wide open" Big 12 this year. I put "wide open" in quotes, but do agree with that assessment. At least as of today, you can make a case for as many as six teams winning the conference title: Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Nebraska, and Missouri. Some are more likely than others, of course, but as I've been saying for some time now, this is a much improved conference from a year ago.
It's no secret that I'm a big Mike Leach fan, so I especially enjoyed this post from Double T Nation on Leach and Texas Tech's stirring comeback bowl victory. As Seth rightly notes, a message as simple and direct as "Do your job" can be as inspiring as anything else. I'll file that one in my Favorite Leach Quotes folder, right behind: "Once in a while, a pirate can beat a soldier."
Corn Nation has launched a delightful new series comparing Big 12 teams to various kinds of corn. Baylor (Creamed Corn), Colorado (Rootworm), and Iowa State (Not Corn) are out of the way. Any guesses what variety Texas will be? Is there such a thing as Imperial Corn? If so, that strikes me as a choice JJ would embrace.
Perusing Fox Sports' ultimate Big 12 schedule was rather fun, but it also helped me notice something: Texas gets Kansas State at home this year right before the Red River Shootout. The Longhorns will be strong favorites in the game, of course, but it at least represents a solid (if not great) tuneup for the big show in Dallas a week later. As potentially easy as our non-conference slate looks this year, I'm actually happy to see that the schedule worked out this way.
Not that this is necessarily anything decisive. Texas' schedule before the RRS over the last nine years:
See a pattern in there? Neither do I. It might just be possible that we've overanalyzed all this schedule talk, no?
--PB--