Times are strange these days in Texas.
The Governor is running for President, the Lt. Governor and Chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission are running for U.S. Senator, the ex-Railroad Commissioner keeps moving around to find a congressional district friendly enough to elect him to congress, the Land Commissioner, Ag Commissioner and Comptroller are all running for Lt. Governor (but only in case there's actually an opening there), the Attorney General is running for Governor (but see the condition on the Lt. Governor's race above), ERCOT's power grid keeps bordering on rolling blackouts, and the state remains mired in the most severe drought it has seen in half a century. To top everything off, Governor Perry - himself a former yell leader at Texas A&M - wore a burnt orange tie to announce his presidential candidacy on Saturday.
Dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria!
No wonder the Aggies are planning to move to the SEC – it’s chaos here in Texas.
The entire off-season has been a bit of a cluster-you-know-what, so it sure is nice to know it’s almost over and we can soon see what this team has.
What follows is a rapid-fire GBU-style summary of this past off-season, renamed the Good, the Bad and the Aggie in honor of the prominent and often hilarious role our Collie Station cousins have played over the last 10 months:
Bad: For the first time in the Mack Brown era, the Longhorns are not invited to play in a post-season bowl game. Then again, given the complete meltdown the entire football program experienced in 2010, maybe this should be classified in the Good category.
Bad: Coach Boom! runs off to take the head coaching job at Florida.
Aggie: Aggies all over Texas cheer the departure of Coach Boom! for Florida, assuming Mack Brown could never possibly replace him.
Good: As a part of his near-total restructuring of his assistant coaching staff, Mack Brown brings in highly-regarded Manny Diaz as his new defensive coordinator.
Aggie: Aggies all over Texas wonder how it is that Mack keeps hiring away the very best defensive coordinator in the best defensive conference in the country every few years?
Good: Mack Brown signs yet another highly-ranked class of recruits. Longhorn fans get extremely excited, forgetting that the classes responsible for last season’s 5-7 meltdown were also highly-ranked classes of recruits.
Bad: I go into Methodist Hospital the night of May 15 with chest pains. The next day, doctors there insert a stent into a 95% closed artery that feeds oxygen to the right side of my heart.
Good: The stent works. I’m back at work 3 days later.
Bad: Performances by the Texas offensive line and QB Garrett Gilbert in the Spring football game.
Bad: OU is ranked #1 or near that level in every pre-season football magazine.
Good: The writers who put these pre-season rankings together seldom have a freaking clue what they’re talking about.
Good: Texas and ESPN announce a $100 million deal to create the Longhorn TV Network.
Aggie: Aggies all over the country call a flash mob to stage a group nervous breakdown over the announcement of the Longhorn TV Network.
Good: Longhorn uber-recruit Jonathan Gray graces the cover of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football Magazine.
Aggie: Aggie RB Cyrus Gray also graces the cover of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football Magazine.
Bad: Texas predicted by DCTF to finish 7th – yes, 7th – in the revamped Big 12-2 Conference. I mean, dang, there’s only 10 teams left in this slow-motion train wreck of a conference.
Good: DCTF has a horrible track record in its pre-season predictions.
Good: Glowing early practice reports coming from all the various Longhorn-related BBS locations.
Bad: We get the same glowing early practice reports from all the same sources early every August. Damn, I wish the season would get here.
Aggie: Aggie BBS pundits take the consensus pre-season magazine Top 10 ranking of the Ags as a sign that they are back to their “traditional” days of national dominance.
Hilarious: Aggie BBS pundits still have no clue that rank mediocrity has always been the traditional state of Texas Aggie football, or that the only national dominance their program ever experienced came before Hitler invaded Poland.
Good: Have I mentioned the Longhorn TV Network? Yes? Well, have I also mentioned that it will be carried on AT&T Uverse in Houston? This is very good, since it means that I will not be forced to change service providers.
Aggie: Aggies so distraught over the Longhorn TV Network and so enamored of their resurgent football fortunes that they are now convinced they can move the SEC and actually be competitive! Bwah, hahahahahahahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
Good: Greg Davis will haunt my dreams no more.
Bad: It took a complete implosion of the entire Longhorn football program to make that happy outcome happen.
As much as anything else, I’m looking forward to the prospect of singing “Texas Fight” on opening day, and hoping that the line “And it’s goodbye to A&M” might mean forever. If the powers that be in College Station really believe making a move to the SEC is the right thing for their school, there is no reason for Texas to give them a huge annual pay day by continuing to have them on our schedule.
As I’ve written many times before, the Texas-Texas A&M series is a “rivalry” only in the inferiority complex-addled minds of Aggiedom. True rivalries involve an ongoing competition between a pair of evenly-matched programs. Thus, Texas/OU qualifies as a real rivalry, and it would be a tragedy if that annual matchup was ever ended.
But the Texas-Texas A&M series has been lopsided in Burnt Orange favor from the word go. In modern times, there has been a single 11 year period during which the Aggies dominated. Other than that single decade, there is not a person alive who remembers anything other than a consistent, Longhorn-favored domination.
No wonder the Ags are anxious to move to the SEC. Let ‘em go.
Hook ‘em!!!
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