And it's Goodbye to All the Rest

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Art Briles, Jimbo Fisher, and You Know Damn Well What

Yesterday, it came to light that Art Briles accepted a transfer from Boise State in 2013 who was dismissed for reasons pertaining to domestic violence against his then-girlfriend. This was not at the time made clear to the public, but later on he sexually assaulted a female student athlete, and Baylor led a phenomenally lame investigation and kept the allegation from the public for an embarrassingly long time, but the police investigation ultimately led to a conviction. When asked about the situation, Briles claimed that he had not been informed of his violence at Boise State, challenged the reporters to find who supposedly told him about it, and promptly changed the subject. Unfortunately for Briles, they did find the person who told him, and that person was then-BSU head coach Chris Petersen, who confirmed that he did indeed tell Briles. It seems very unlikely that Petersen would lie just to soil Briles’ reputation (Baylor and Washington are unlikely to ever play each other, as they aren’t in the same conference and Briles would never schedule a nonconference game against a Power 5 team, and usually UW and BU aren’t recruiting the same people), so I have no reason to seriously doubt his statement. So we’re looking at a guy who allowed a known domestic offender into his program, tried to cover up the fact that a rape occurred, and then blatantly lied about the situation. Here we have a guy who is considered to be one of the best football coaches in the country, a guy who turned the worst team in Texas into a playoff contender in just a few short years, a man who could have retired after last season and immediately become Baylor’s answer to Darrell K Royal, but instead it’s looking like he’ll be Baylor’s answer to Joe Paterno. As an outsider, it’s easy to just criticize Briles for doing this and say that he should be fired, and to be clear, he should, but I’m also of the belief that many, if not most, coaches in America would have done the same. In fact, other than Charlie Strong (as evidenced by his treatment of Montrel Meander and Kendall Sanders), Bill Snyder, and maybe Bret Bielema, I don’t know of any other coach who I could be sure wouldn’t do that. I’m sure there are others, but I fear it’s a depressingly small number.

I still haven’t forgiven Jimbo Fisher for his handling of the Jameis Winston situation. To be clear, Winston was never indicted. Due to the nature of the American criminal justice system, is there isn’t enough hard evidence, there is a legal presumption of innocence. That is a good thing, but people tend to confuse legal innocence with actual innocence. Just because Winston was never indicted doesn’t mean that he didn’t do it. He may not have done it, but due to the nature of rape and particularly date rape, a huge number of guilty people are set free because it’s so hard to prove whether or not somebody gave or revoked consent if there were no witnesses. Fisher’s statement on the issue was not one of concern or care, but rather one criticizing the media for reporting on it because, as evidenced by the fact that he wasn’t indicted, he didn’t do it. I saw that as a horrifically irresponsible position, but what was he going to do? Who else was going to win the Heisman on that team? I should note in all fairness that after a string of more FSU players committing violent acts against women, Fisher has finally improved his stance on such issues, but the initial problem still stands.

But it’s not just Briles and Fisher. Whether it’s Jonathan Taylor with Nick Saban or Dorial Green-Beckham with Bob Stoops or what have you, you have all these football coaches who are good at their jobs as football coaches, but it’s such a cutthroat business that getting ahead at what they do often takes precedence over other things that are clearly more important. If you need a defensive end, for example, most transfer candidates are guys who ended up on the bottom of the depth chart at their last school or who were rapidly being passed by other players, and there’s usually a reason for that, so those transfer candidates tend not to be particularly good at any other Power 5 school they may transfer to, so for that reason you see them go to Group of 5 or FCS teams more often than not since nobody from a Power 5 team wants them. Rather, Power 5 coaches tend to go for the guys who were dismissed from their last program. And that’s fine. Second chances are a good thing, and I think it’s good to keep at-risk youth in school rather than leaving them to their own devices. However, you have to do a risk analysis. You want to make sure you’re not bringing someone to your school who will present a danger to other students, and that’s exactly what Briles and others have done. 

I know I’m kind of tooting my own horn, but realistically I know more about UT’s program than any other and I know more about Charlie Strong than any other coach, and it’s also true that Charlie Strong is well known in the football community as a values guy who isn’t afraid to lay down the law with his players, so as such I feel justified talking about him here. With Kendall Sanders and Montrel Meander, when they were accused of sexual assault, they were removed from the team immediately, without waiting for a verdict or even an indictment. Obviously it’s possible for such a strategy to go horribly wrong, but at the same time, I think it’s reasonable to expect your players to avoid situations of ambiguity, and in this case it was pretty clear that there was something bad going on. Charlie Strong is well known for holding his players accountable to his five “core values” of honesty, no drugs, guns, or stealing, and treating women with respect. In his view, if you can’t follow those simple values, then you’re not fit to play football. In my view, that’s not very difficult to live up to, and so the fact that Charlie Strong is famous for holding his players to those values I think tells us more about other coaches than it does about him. And it’s worth noting that he’s not this super strict, hard-nosed disciplinarian that a lot of people think he is. He has high expectations, but he also is reasonable. Look at Dajé Johnson, for example. He was one of the players who was disciplined early on by Charlie Strong, but I guess he actually vowed to make a change, and he did. He’s much more mature now and at this point, it seems like he’s someone who has gained a lot by being given a second chance. So Charlie Strong isn’t anti-second chance. It’s just that he only gives them to people who reach out and take them, and that’s what Dajé did, and that’s why he’s still on the team. If every coach was like that, then maybe there would be no more Sam Ukuwatchus or Johnathan Taylors or Dorial Green-Beckhams or Jameis Winstons, and that would be a huge victory for all.

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Big 12 Media Days and other news

First of all, you may note I never came back and discussed the Spring Game defense. First off, fuck you for pointing that out, but by now I don’t remember well enough to discuss it in any detail. The big takeaways are that our D-line is still awesome and Malik Jefferson is the real deal. I also really liked John Bonney and I’’m excited to see what he can do. As a player, he could be the new Quandre Diggs, although I don’t see him having the personality that Quandre did. Duke Thomas didn’t play, and being that he’s supposed to be one of our best defensive players, that changes a lot when it comes to actually playing.

A few days ago was the Big 12 media days. As usual, pretty much every coach gave his usual coach-speak spiel about how they’re working to be more together as a team to fix the problems of last season, and all of their players are improving, and all that stuff. Charlie Strong particularly tends to be rather tight-lipped about what his plans are for the season, and although he is an honest man, he does have a propensity to say stuff without really saying anything, as most coaches do. As a result, most of what the coaches said during media days can be ignored, but there are still definitely some things to talk about.

Bowlsby’s speech and its implications

The conference opened with Bob Bowlsby talking about the future of the conference, and I have to say that I really, really liked what he had to say. I’ve said since day 1 that one year does not make a trend and the reason that the Big 12 got left out of the playoff is that Florida State never lost and Ohio State had a good third string QB. If Florida State had lost a single game that season, which they were close to doing several times, the Big 12 would have made it in easily. And most teams don’t have a good second string QB, so if Ohio State’s third string QB had not been so good, the Big 12 would have made it in. What if FSU had lost and Ohio State didn’t have a third string QB? Then the Big 12 would have gotten two teams in and everyone would be scrambling to kill off the extra teams in their conference. Sure, that may not have happened if the other conferences didn’t have a championship game, but remember, the favored team won all four of the conference championship games this year. Usually that is not the case. If they had all lost, then the Power 5 conference champions would have been Baylor/TCU, Arizona, Missouri, Georgia Tech, and Wisconsin. I mean, K-State would have had a better chance of getting in than some of those teams. So I think there’s no reason for the Big 12 to make any changes until we see what happens when the top team in a conference loses its championship game. Furthermore, I echo the sentiment expressed by Bowlsby and Charlie Strong both, which is that the defining element of our conference is that we play everybody, so our season can’t be defined by who we don’t play. I don’t remember who it was that said it (it may have been Gundy), but what he said is really true: when you play everybody, every week of conference play is effectively a rivalry game. When you have divisions, you play all your division rivals, but then you get a certain number of those other teams, and since you don’t have a yearly game with them, those games tend not to be fought as hard, and as a result, we get better games in the Big 12. I mean, just look at Iowa State. We’re the furthest south Big 12 team and they’re the furthest north. If we had divisions, we almost certainly wouldn’t play them every year. But what happened is that two years ago, they nearly upset us, and they came in so angry about it last year that they almost beat us again. So ya, those games were difficult to watch, but they were also fun, interesting games, and they’ve made it so that we’ll walk into Ames without a huge mismatch this year, which makes that game interesting. And imagine what that means for Baylor and TCU after last year? What that means for the playoff, I don’t really know, but I’d rather watch truly exciting and interesting football each and every week than get into the playoff. But that’s just me.

Conclusions from Charlie Strong

Charlie Strong is a tough guy to read. He interviews well, but he doesn’t like to give anything away and he uses talking points to answer most questions. He could be a pretty decent politician if he wasn’t so damn honest. And actually, that honesty makes him even more difficult to read. Case in point, he said that 6-7 is unacceptable. Currently I’m looking at this year’s team as an 8-win team with a 4-win schedule, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see anything between 4 and 8 wins. With that comment, he set a baseline that all that is acceptable is a winning season. Coaches usually don’t say stuff like that unless they truly believe they can do it. Just look at Mack Brown. His last year, he came in saying he could win the Big 12, and then he got close, but then he lost to Baylor, and it was all over for him, and he wasn’t invited back. So what this would mean for most coaches is that they have to believe that a winning season is what we’re going to do this year, otherwise they’re in hot water. But Charlie Strong, being such an honest person, may not quite mean that. He’s a guy who doesn’t make excuses, and in fact he said that most of this past year’s problems came from poor coaching. So if we don’t get 7 wins, then he’s basically said that he’s failed at coaching and can’t meet his goals. That’s scary to me, because it means we need six wins in the regular season and a seventh in a bowl game, or seven in the regular season. As I said, I see us as an 8-win team all else being equal, but if you consider that there’s effectively no chance of beating TCU or Notre Dame, then that brings us to 10 games, of which we can lose 4. If Oklahoma State lives up to the media expectations, then that’s an uphill climb. We will be heavy underdogs against Baylor. We’re playing West Virginia in Morgantown, which is an incredibly difficult place to play. So throw out those three as probable losses. So that leaves 7. We either have to win all of them or lose one and hope we get an easy bowl opponent. So that’s Rice, Cal, OU, K-State, ISU (in Ames), KU, and Tech. With all due respect, Charlie, it’s bold of you to put all your eggs in one basket like that. We should beat Rice no problem. Cal brings back memories of BYU, in that they will have a high-powered offense, and if our defense isn’t ready, we’re going to have problems. That said, their pass defense is terrible, so if Swoopes (easily the better passer) is our QB and our receivers are on top of their game, then we could exploit that and put up a lot of points against them, so it’s a game we should be able to win, but we have to actually go out and take it, because Cal is underrated as an offense. OU is OU. I never like to predict OU because it’s such a deep rivalry that statistics go out the door, but keep in mind that we’re likely to go in having lost two or three straight with no bye week, so there’s that. K-State has no talent this year and we’re playing in Austin, so we should have a huge advantage, but there’s a reason we’re 6-9 against a team with a huge recruiting disadvantage, and that reason is Bill Snyder. That man can coach, and his teams don’t make mistakes, so underestimating them is a mistake. Then we play ISU. They’re a terrible team that should never beat us, and that generally holds true, being that they’ve only beaten us once, but keep in mind that this happened two years ago:

Last year, we had a shootout in Austin that we won on a kick. If you don’t think we’ll be spending Halloween in Ames with targets on our backs, well, I admire your optimism. Then there’s Kansas. A recent player’s poll ranked Kansas as the #3 team to beat last year. Maybe that was some joke or something, but maybe David Beaty has some tricks up his sleeve. Still, though, they have no depth, no team, and a new coach. I still see that as an easy win in Austin. Then there’s Tech. I think how we fare against Cal will be a good bellwether for Tech. Obviously we’ll be a more experienced team by then, but Kingsbury is basically a glorified offensive coordinator, so we can count on them having a great offense, particularly if Mahomes remains healthy, and so we’re going to have to rely on our secondary and their lack of a defense to beat them. It’s Thanksgiving, so the student section is typically much smaller than usual, so that does mean that our defense will have to be on top of their game, since they won’t be getting nearly as much help from the crowd. So I’m not saying that Charlie Strong can’t be right and we can have seven or more wins this season, but to do it, we’ll need to pull off an upset or two. 

Despite what the media thinks, I don’t think there’s a hell of a lot to be said about quarterbacks. As discussed in a previous post, we have two perfectly decent quarterbacks, and both will get playing time. It sounded like neither had blown Strong out of the water, but both were entirely decent in their own right. And he’s also right that you need good play out of the O-line and the receivers in order to get good QB play. 

As far as reason for hope, I think one of the more notable things is what I never once head Charlie Strong say at Media Days that he said a lot last season: “We’re going to go out there and compete.” That’s coach-speak for “We’re not good enough to beat these teams.” That, combined with the “6-7 is unacceptable” remark, tells me that Charlie Strong must have some tricks up his sleeve. He knows the schedule way better than I do, and he knows his team way better than I do. So if he truly believes that we can get 7 wins so deeply that he’s willing to say it on national TV, then I’m excited to see what he’s got!

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Spring Game Part 1: Offense

This past Saturday was our spring game, which is the culmination of spring practice and the 60 minutes that the media will mercilessly pick apart and draw amazingly specific but wrong conclusions from for the next six months. In recognition of that fact, I will try to refrain from making predictions and only discuss observations.

The other thing I won’t do much of in this is discuss statistics. In fact, this game is a case study of how bad statistics are at telling you what you have as a football team, particularly as it relates to quarterbacks. Case in point, Swoopes was 17/31 for 159 passing, 23 long, whereas Heard was 20/29 for 177 passing, 25 long. So as far as the numbers are concerned, both quarterbacks were pretty much equal, with Heard having a slight edge on accuracy. But it’s easy to forget that there are two players involved in a pass. For a reason that I don’t understand (but probably has to do with not having to break through the defensive line), if a ball is thrown 5 yards, subsequently caught, and then run for an additional ten yards, that counts as a 15-yd pass. On the other hand, it is obviously true if a ball is thrown perfectly but is not caught due to a mistake made by the receiver, that’s an incomplete pass. So through absolutely no fault of the quarterback, the first situation results in an additional ten yards on his statistics whereas the second results as an incomplete pass on his record. In fact, that was never more apparent than in this spring game. both quarterbacks were fine and I would feel comfortable with either of them starting, but from what I saw, I am much more comfortable with Swoopes making long, downfield passes than I am with Heard. The numbers don’t reflect that, but Swoopes made a couple downfield passes and then he had a few more that were dropped (mostly by Dorian Leonard), including one that, if it were an actual game, probably would have been reviewed and ruled a touchdown. On the other hand, Heard was quite good at making short passes, but he didn’t attempt a lot of long passes, and most of those which he did attempt were pretty inaccurate, and in several cases not particularly good decisions. However, Ty Templin and Lorenzo Joe had fairly good days, whereas Swoopes directed a bunch of passes to Jacorey Warrick and Dorian Leonard, and it just wasn’t their day that day, and so no matter how accurate the passing was, that shows up as a knock on Swoopes’ record. So despite what the numbers might say, I thought Swoopes was a much better passer in that game.

As far as the run game goes, J-Gray only played a few downs, I guess because we didn’t want to risk him getting injured and he has a good enough work ethic that we don’t need to force him to play in this sort of situation. Besides that, though, what we lack in depth at the RB position we make up for in talent. J-Gray should be really good, but I was particularly impressed with D’Onta Foreman. He had a net of 81 yards, which isn’t so bad for a spring game, and he looked pretty good on his feet. Additionally, both quarterbacks looked well above average at running. They have very different styles, in that Heard is fast and agile, whereas Swoopes is a tank, but both should be effective. In fact, both completed their opening drives with really nice running touchdowns. That will be a strength this year. Well, as long as we have a decent offensive line, which brings me to my next point. 

No matter how much ESPN and other sports media tabloids may try to convince you that our biggest problem last season was at quarterback, by lightyears, our worst unit was the O-line. I mean, you see all the guys down at the bullshit department at ESPN insisting that our 59 total yards of offense against Arkansas were entirely due to an inadequate quarterback, but anyone who watched the game saw a quarterback who did make some panicky decisions because he was being stormed by a bunch of 350 lb linemen who weren’t being held off by anyone, and he had nowhere to run, nor did any of our running backs. As I said earlier, statistics are a great way to obscure facts. If we want to have an effective offense, the first thing we need is an effective offensive line. Now, the “pro-style” offense, if you can call it that, that we ran last year is not a formation that is particularly friendly to the offensive line. Specifically, in order to create holes, you have to actually overpower the guy you’re blocking and move him out of the way most of the time. The new spread offense that we’re running is a little easier on the O-line in that sense because instead of having to push 350 lb men out of the way to open up holes, they simply have to keep them from moving forward. The flip side of this is that the quarterback actually has less protection from linebackers, and so the result is that run plays are easier while pass plays are harder for the quarterback but easier for the receivers. Because we’ve undergone this scheme change on offense, it’s hard to say with any degree of accuracy if the increased number of holes opened up were a result of the improvement of the O-line or a direct result of the scheme change. It’s probably some combination of the two, but in any case, it’s a godsend to highlight our talented running backs and our mobile quarterbacks. 

As for the passing situation, given the amount of hype that the coaches have placed on our receivers, I’m content to assume that it was just not a great day for them and they’re better than they looked. That being said, they looked pretty bad, and if they did that during a game, then it wouldn’t really matter how good they were at practice. So they need to be more consistent, but I don’t believe that they’re actually as bad as they were during the spring game.

As far as other observations go, I did notice that we used tight ends a lot. that was interesting. Andrew Beck looked pretty good. Also, holy special teams! I would not have believed that that was the same Nick Rose who kicked for us last year. Punting was unremarkable but not bad. 

Defense will have to wait for the next post.

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#NotOnOurCampusUT

This is so cool. I was procrastinating on my quantum homework and looking through Instagram and I noticed that several of our players posted pictures with the hashtag #NotOnOurCampusUT in opposition to campus sexual assault. In the above picture is Swoopes, Heard, Quincy Vasser, Dorian Leonard, and Lorenzo Joe, and Daje’ Johnson and Malik Jefferson also posted similar pictures with the hashtag. If you don’t understand why this is a big deal, you haven’t been paying attention to the football world recently. Sexual assault and violence against women are huge problems in football right now, and it makes me happy to see that, at least on the surface, my team is proud to be above that. I don’t know if this is something that Charlie Strong promoted to the team or if it’s something they did on their own accord. I know that it’s a cause that Charlie Strong believes strongly in, as evidenced by his core value and his zero-tolerance policy with Montrel Meander and Kendall Sanders, but it would make me even happier if it started at the bottom because it shows true leadership and character among our team to support a cause that may not be so popular among some football players. So today is truly a day we can be proud to be Longhorns.

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Swoopes update and other loose ends

According to OrangeBloods, Swoopes is slated to begin Spring Practice as the frontrunner, as I projected. And, of course, ESPN is starting to act like they never gave up on him. Funny how that works. In any case, you know how I'd like to see a Trevone Boykin-like turnaround in Swoopes. Not that I don't like Heard, but I've always been on the mindset that you shouldn't build a new house if you can improve the one you've got. And, I should stress again, if we can't improve the one we've got and it turns out that Swoopes really isn't the answer, to hell with him. This isn't just my feelings about the kid. I really think he's a lot better than what people remember about him. I could be wrong, and if I am, I suspect we'll have someone else under center next season, and that's alright. But I'm still projecting that Swoopes starts in South Bend, and here's what else I know:

-I walk by him generally once or twice a week on the way from my geoscience class. Maybe it's just me, but I think he looks angry all the time. Knowing Charlie Strong and Shawn Watson, I can rule out immediately that he's lost the job, because Bob Stoops will wear a real hat before Charlie Strong and Shawn Watson will pick a QB before the start of spring practice if they can have a competition. But here are all the possibilities that I can't rule out.

          -He's been working his ass off to prove that he's the man and I'm seeing some leftover fire from that.

          -Heard is outperforming him in winter workouts, and Swoopes knows that. From what I've seen on Orangebloods, that does not seem to be the case, but I always take OB with a grain of salt.

          -He's annoyed at the media portrayal of him (see item 1)

          -He doesn't like being a celebrity walking around campus. This seems likely from the personality he conveys on TV, but first of all I've never seen anyone stop him or anything, and also he's huge and imposing, so I imagine he's used to it, and he chose to play QB at UT, and he obviously knew that that comes with the job. So I find this to be very unlikely.

         -He merely suffers from permanent resting bitch face.

In other words, that tells me absolutely nothing whatsoever. But here's to hoping that it's fire. I welcome any comparisons to Trevone Boykin, starting with the haircut (which, by the way, the mohawk thing on Swoopes has become decidedly more pronounced in recent weeks).

There are other things that are worth mentioning. One is the racism deal at OU. I loved the way their president handled the situation, and I loved even more the way that Bob Stoops and the team protested. And yes, I just said that. And now I don't have to say anything nice about OU or fucking Bob fucking Stoops for the next 50 years. What does concern me, though, is the 247 college football feed I get. 80% of the articles are about this. Like, great, they responded perfectly. Being that every football team in the country besides Stanford is like 90% black, every team probably would have responded in more or less the same way, so while I appreciate and commend the gesture, let's move on already. I don't think it's right that a team gets a huge publicity advantage just because they are from a shitty enough campus that frat guys think it's okay to sing a song that I will not lower myself to reference. By all means, write an article and congratulate them for a job well done, but I'd like to see something else in my news feed if that's alright.

In terms of other things, I was looking at the seating chart for this season, and what I noticed is that while the south end zone and the northeast corner are still the student sections, they've given section 18 (formerly student) and 17 to the away fans and they put another student section where the old away section was, as well as a student section on the southeast corner of the upper deck. I'm sorry, but a student section on the upper deck? Are you high, Steve Patterson? That is a terrible idea. The upper deck is for people who want to see the game. The lower deck is for people who want to be part of the crowd. I was in the upper deck at OU my Freshman year, and maybe it was the fact that we got blown out I-don't-know to I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it, but it was easily the least fun game I've ever been to. I was also in the upper deck for UCLA this year, and that was better for unrelated reasons, but it's just not the same as being right by the field. The student section is where the energy is, so by putting a section of students in the upper deck, you're taking a whole bunch of energy and putting it as far away from the action as possible. Anyone who says that crowd doesn't factor into performance has clearly never watched a game at Death Valley or in Morgantown. I'm say it right now: DKR is no Death Valley. That's something that's always made me sad. We have a decently good student section, but the rest of our fans are honestly kind of lame. The students are good, but they show up late. I actually made friends with some of the event staff last year because I got to the south end zone literally 45 minutes before a single other student. If you don't understand why that's pitiful, then you've never sat through a kickoff where the student section is 2/3 empty. It's really embarrassing. The way I see it, if you're not in the gate an hour before kickoff, you're not much of a fan. Which is not to say that we couldn't be doing more to entice people to show up early, but, I mean, the stadium needs to be appropriately amped well before kickoff. That's why the LHB comes out and does a show before kickoff. The first 10 minutes of the game should be spent tearing things up, not trying to get the crowd into it. Anyway, I digress. But I'm not a fan of the student section rearrangement, and all I can hope for is that I get to be seated in the south end zone by the band again. And I actually do kind of like moving the away section because what it does is move a chunk of students close to the band and old smokey, and it surrounds the away fans by a sea of burnt orange, which is nice and intimidating. 

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The case for Swoopes

The guys at ESPN called it. Swoopes wasn't good enough this year, and so he'll be replaced next year by Redshirt Freshman Jerrod Heard. And the guys at ESPN totally know what they're talking about, so they must be right! But I'm not convinced.

Now, a few disclaimers: to be clear, it is currently an open competition, as it always should be. Whoever our QB is in 2015 will have to earn it, contingent on practices that I don't have access to and can't speak to. Therefore, I am speaking only based on what I've seen, and, admittedly, that means I only have Swoopes's body of work to look at (I believe firmly that high school record is of little to no value when discussing how someone will fare as a college QB). There are also rumors that we expect to transfer a QB in. If that QB is Braxton Miller, he will be starting. If that QB is Everett Golson, he will probably be starting. This column is given the current situation with the quarterbacks we have, namely Tyrone Swoopes, Jerrod Heard, and Kai Locksley.

First of all, let's just remove Locksley from consideration right now. Heard is a redshirt freshman this year, so if we burn Locksley's redshirt, then we will have two QBs of the same classification, and all that does is complicate things. Additionally, he is really skinny. If I know Charlie Strong, he's going to want a physical offense with a QB who can overpower the other team on his feet. Swoopes and Heard are built to do that. Locksley can be, but he'll need another year or two to bulk up. He doesn't need to be as big as Swoopes, but at this point he's physically the least impressive of our quarterbacks. That can change, but not in time for the season. There was talk on ESPN (the Fox News of sports) that they didn't play Heard because he's not good enough. That's what's called creating a story for views. They didn't play Heard because he was redshirting, and Swoopes himself was never bad enough to warrant burning Heard's redshirt. 

So we've established that this year's competition is between Swoopes and Heard. Swoopes had kind of a tough year. He was great in the first half of UCLA, the second half of OU, all of Iowa State, most of West Virginia, most of Tech, and all of Oklahoma State. Even in BYU's massacre, he was one of the few players on our team who looked marginally competent. Unfortunately, his season ended in a whimper rather than a bang, throwing four interceptions against TCU and throwing for only 57 yards against Arkansas. So, because of that, ESPN decided that he's not good enough and will be replaced. But let's hold on a second. Yes, Swoopes had on days and off days, but there are a lot of players on the offense. And some of them have the job of allowing the QB and the RBs to make plays. And frankly, the O-line just didn't cut it this year. As soon as Dom Espinoza had his career ended short, we had the least experienced O-line in the country. Our running backs couldn't go anywhere, and so that forced Swoopes to throw when running would have otherwise been a better option. Additionally, the offense was designed for David Ash. David Ash is built differently than Swoopes and he processes differently than Swoopes. So after his career was ended early in the UNT game, after that, most of the summer practices were for a game plan designed for a retired football player. Obviously things were tweaked for Swoopes, but you can't compare tweaks to a full offseason of practice. So Swoopes had it stacked against him to start with, and he still looked really good in several games. As for his last two games, all else being equal, they maybe weren't his day, but, I mean, he threw four interceptions playing without his most reliable receiver, Jaxon Shipley, against the best secondary in the Big 12, and was completely stopped by arguably the best D-line in the NCAA, standing behind an O-line that was still clearly inadequate. So I think to give up on Swoopes already is premature.

As for Heard, he's really an unknown at this point, but he does lack one thing that Swoopes has: experience. If we give up on Swoopes, I'm sure he'd make a fine tight end, but what happens is that we spend another year playing with a Freshman QB, and we just can't have the mindset of "one year, move on," because what you get then is a string of untapped potential. To demonstrate this, just drive four hours up I-35 to Fort Worth and take a look at Trevone Boykin. The season before last, he was an absolute joke. TCU was a terrible team, with no answer at all at QB. Then, over the summer, their quarterback, Boykin, decided that he wasn't happy with where he was, so he got better. Way better, in fact. They ended up being one of the best teams in the country, with talk of him being an early Heisman contender for this upcoming season. And ultimately, I think we're going to see the same here. Barring a transfer, we have two guys competing for a starting position, and they both want the job. But what needs to happen, and what I fully expect to happen, is that one of them will want it so bad that they blow Charlie Strong and Shawn Watson out of the water, and the reason I say that with such confidence is that I know Charlie Strong would settle for nothing less. Who will it be? That's for them to decide, but the way I see it, it's Swoopes's job to lose, by and large. 

[anditsgoodbyetoalltherest]

A Strong beginning for Charlie

6-7.

Still questions at QB.

59 yards against Arkansas (including 2 rushing).

Shut out by K-State.

6 turnovers against TCU.

Did not beat OU.

The facts are clear: as far as football seasons go, this one sucked majorly. It was a failure of a season. And yet I will be spending the remainder of this column talking about how great of a job Charlie Strong has done in his first season on the job. I'm sure the first person to disagree with me would be Charlie Strong himself. The man does not make excuses. Even when they're justified. The fact is, the program was left a disaster. The fact that we managed 8 wins the previous year is amazing and likely due to a weak Big 12: we did not beat a single team that was ranked at the time. And I wasn't the only one who recognized our poor performance that year: for the first time in the history of the NFL draft, none of our payers were drafted. If you consider all the crappy schools that did have players drafted, you can see how impressive that is. Bloomsburg had a player drafted. Bloomsburg is a Div 2 team. If you're a school in any major conference, and particularly one as powerful as the Texas Longhorns, and you get fewer players drafted than Bloomsburg, your program is in terrible shape, any way you slice it. 

Yet, Mack Brown inherited the program from John Mackovic. Who's John Mackovic? Good question. Charlie Strong inherited a program from a much better coach. So how come Mack Brown went 9-3 in his first season, yet Charlie Strong went 6-7? There are really two major reasons. First of all, the Big 12 is very strong this year. Baylor, TCU, and K-State were incredible, and really Kansas and Iowa State are the only teams that would be tough to lose to. It just wasn't as strong of a conference in 1998. But the biggest reason is that Mack Brown's biggest failure as a coach was not in the coaching aspect. He was excellent at coaching the game of football, and for a while, he was an excellent recruiter too, but he let that get to his head. He knew that he was a great recruiter, so he got lazy. He figured the recruits would just show up. He never fought for recruits because he figured his guys didn't need convincing. Except when they did. So when our program started slipping, and particularly when A&M left to join the SEC, Mack Brown's recruiting hold on the state of Texas suddenly was no more, and the first step to have a good football team is to have good players. So Charlie Strong was left with a group of players, many of whom were quite talented, but it was not a talent level that is in any way acceptable at the University of Texas. John Mackovic was a different animal. Unlike Mack Brown, he was not a very good football coach, but he was a pretty good recruiter. In fact, he joins Darrell K Royal as the only coach in Texas history to ever recruit a future Heisman winner, in Ricky Williams. Who, conveniently, was still around when Mack Brown showed up. If Ricky is on your team your first season, it will probably be successful. 

So Charlie Strong was dealt a much tougher hand than Mack Brown in his first season. Then we played UNT. It was a seemingly unimportant game. We won, it was kind of nice, but two things happened that defined the rest of the season. Early in the game, senior center Dom Espinoza's season ended with an injury. That left us with an offensive line in the BYU game that had a combined 5 career starts, and there wasn't a hell of a lot of backup either. And anyone who watched our football team since the great debacle of 2010 knew that we had issues on QB, but David Ash looked okay in the UNT game and, though he may not have had a high ceiling, he was at least good enough to carry the team, and the offense was built around him, and he was good enough to go. The next day, Charlie Strong announced that he got a concussion and would not be starting the next game, and shortly thereafter, he announced that he was retiring from football. I will write more about the QB situation in a later post, but what that left us with is a QB who is essentially a Freshman (actually a sophomore, but effectively a Freshman), standing behind an O-line that was clearly not good enough, and because of the O-line, running the ball was not usually an option, and so you're stuck with a Freshman QB whose forté should be running the ball due to his size, but was forced to throw, and with a very short window of time to do even that, and if you add a defensively-minded head coach to the mix who is playing entirely with players who someone else recruited (poorly), we were lucky to get to six wins. 

Although progress on the field has yet to be visible in the form of wins, what has been visible in the form of wins, or even near wins, is the progress on the recruiting trail. Charlie Strong has a chip on his shoulder. He's tough, but he takes nothing for granted. Just as he expects his players to work for what they have, he works with the same ethic. Unlike Mack Brown, he takes no recruits for granted until their name is signed. Some people were worried that his toughness and discipline would deter recruits, but in fact it seems to have done the exact opposite, and for the first time since A&M joined the SEC, we signed a higher-ranked recruiting class than they did. To be clear, they still beat us in the recruiting battle this year because they secured Texas recruits and got two of the top three recruits in Texas, but Charlie Strong isn't afraid to go outside of state lines to get what he needs, which is very important: TCU and Baylor are good now, and OU, Oklahoma State, and Kansas take most of their recruits from Texas. Add those to Tech and A&M, and that's a lot of schools to compete with, so if we can't get what we need from Texas, importing is better than settling for less. In any case, imagine how our class will look next year after Charlie Strong has had time to establish himself. 

The next post will outline my take on the upcoming quarterback battle.

[anditsgoodbyetoalltherest]

Yet another football blog!

As a chemistry major, even at the University of Texas at Austin, home of the four-time national champion Longhorns, I so often find that, among my peers, there are very few people who share my love for college football. Sure, lots of people go to the games, but let's get real. When I was born, the doctors noticed that my coloration wasn't quite right, so they took a blood sample. What they found was very interesting. My blood was not red, like most people, but rather a beautiful shade of burnt orange. This is known in medical circles as blood type B-vo. I was born to love Texas football. To be clear, love is not a strong enough word. I love my family, but Texas football is my soulmate. 

Now, that is clear now, but I didn't always realize it. The first complicating factor is my utter lack of any athletic ability whatsoever. I have insanely slow reflexes, I'm an impressive 5'10", average build. I was not cut out to play. And when you don't play sports a a kid and you don't have the life experience to understand how to watch them properly, it is awfully difficult to realize the love that was always there. Luckily, I inherited it from my dad, and he wasn't just going to stand idly by while I didn't truly appreciate the Texas Longhorns. It was around fifth grade when it truly hit me. The Texas Longhorns went 10-1 in the regular season. Unfortunately, it was doomed to be an unsuccessful season, as that one loss was to OU, but other than that debacle, our season was going pretty well (can you imagine my dad trying to teach me to love football with this year's 6-7 team?), and we were invited to play the Michigan Wolverines in the Rose Bowl. Then ensued a football game for the ages. It was a high scoring, back and forth affair, and ultimately it was won by a late field goal by the football player with the most Texan name ever until Colt McCoy, Dusty Magnum. I didn't quite understand everything that was going on, but I did know that that was an exciting-ass game. I had no idea that football could be that exciting, and that took me into the offseason with high expectations for the following year. The following year did not disappoint.

The year I really, truly got hooked to football was perhaps the greatest season in the long and storied history of the Texas Longhorns. We rectified the disaster of the previous year in that we beat OU, and as a result we went 11-0 in the regular season before we went on to give a good old-fashioned whooping to Colorado in the Big 12 championship. We were the team to beat that year. Except we weren't, because as incredible as our team was, there was an even better team out in Los Angeles, who were the two-time (at the time) defending national champions, which also featured two (at the time) Heisman winners in quarterback Matt Leinart and running back (now forfeited) Reggie Bush. For comparison, in all of UT's history, we have only had two Heisman winners (Earl Campbell and Ricky Williams), and neither of them were on our team that year. Our quarterback, Vince Young, came in second to Reggie Bush that year in Heisman voting. And we were invited to the Rose Bowl to challenge them, which also served as that year's national championship. It seemed that USC was clearly the best team in America and we were doomed to be a team that, any other year, would have been easy national champions, but had the terrible misfortune of existing at the same time as that USC team and would have to settle for second. The game itself, I have to admit, is a bit of a blur to me. I have the DVD and I have watched it, but at the time, I don't really remember that much of the game. I do know, however, that we were able to hold on for most of the game against USC, but about two thirds of the way through the fourth quarter, it became apparent that we were going to get overpowered by USC. They were just too good for us. We were down by two touchdowns with six minutes left. The game seemed to be over. Then VY ran the ball into the end zone. And then he did it again, with 17 seconds left on the clock. We had just done the impossible. VY thumbed his nose at two years of the Heisman committee, and the Texas Longhorns outplayed who we all thought was the greatest college football team ever. My memory of the game itself is hazy, but my memory of running outside with my dad and screaming our heads off is clear as a bell. I was hooked.

Since January 4th, 2006, my enthusiasm for Texas football has not faded. If anything, it has intensified. I am currently in my third year at UT, and, I must admit, in terms of football, I showed up at just the wrong time, but maybe I didn't. All three seasons that I've seen up close and personal have been phenomenally disappointing. We have not won the Big 12. We have not had more than 9 wins in a season. We settled for two Alamo bowl appearances and a Texas bowl appearance. Mack Brown, though a Longhorn Legend and one of the best coaches we've ever had, became complacent and lost his way after the great debacle of 2010. So we got a new coach. And it turned out that the mess that Mack Brown left was much bigger than anyone realized, so we went 6-7 in Charlie Strong's first season, and realistically speaking, next year is also unlikely to be our year. Yet, few people get to say that they went to UT while a Longhorn legend was coaching there. My parents went to UT during the legendary tenure of Fred Akers (who's Fred Akers again?). I had the high privilege of being able to see two Mack Brown-coached teams, so as bad as they were, I was still here with Mack Brown. And the way Charlie Strong has the program headed, it sure seems like I'm going to be one of the very few people in the world who can say that my time at UT coincided with two of our greatest coaches ever.

So, enough with that sappy garbage! I assure you, such filth will be relegated (mostly) to this introductory column. My next post will be a reflection of Charlie Strong's first full cycle as coach, and subsequent columns until the beginning of the season will mostly be reactions to news stories about the Longhorns as well as college football in general, and perhaps some other things that I haven't thought of yet. I look forward to having all of you as imaginary friends that I can talk about football with!