Was It Worth It, Ags?

Indulge me for a moment and watch that entire video from November 9, 2002.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.
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Now that you’ve watched that, let’s discuss some of the finer points of that game:

-Playing the #1 ranked, legendary team from the annals (anals?) of college football

-Freshman phenom QB

-Oustanding defensive effort

-Complete game on both sides of the ball

-Kevin Sumlin (!)

-#1 driving to win with a TD, only to be intercepted by A&M

-Legendary coach, playing for a punctuation to his Hall Of Fame career

Up until that last point, we could be discussing the Aggies’ 29-24 win in Tuscaloosa over #1 ranked (and seemingly impervious SEC king Alabama) with freshman phenom Johnny Manziel, with A&M’s Wrecking Crew making its presence felt in the defense-dominated SEC in a very complete game with Kevin Sumlin on the sidelines.  However, the comparisons stop right there.  It’s a description of A&M’s last win over a #1 team in 2002.

Tip of the hat to RC Slocum.  Now, take a seat, coach.

Now that we’ve established that the 2012 29-24 win over Alabama is eerily similar to that 2002 30-26 win over OU in exactly 10 years and ONE damn day to the calendar date, I’m going to postulate for the sake of my argument:

10 years exactly passed of A&M epic suckitude between program defining wins.  I’m going to give you a second on that point, as well.
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To cap the comparisons and get to the story, at the time of the 2002 game, the decision to fire RC was already in place, and the decision to hire Dennis Franchione, the hottest coach in college football, from Alabama was all but done.  That 2002 win barely gave any pause to the decision makers of RC’s and A&M Football’s fate for the next decade.  And then what happened?

-Fran starts his tenure at A&M by not even meeting with his Alabama squad, which causes riots in the streets of Tuscaloosa as they burn his image in effigy.  Probably would have used the real thing if they could have gotten him, but his bobbleheads had to suffice.  Ominous.

-Fran brings over his entire staff, and the media is quick to jump on the coattails of the resurgent Aggie program

-Bill Byrne is hired as AD of Texas A&M.  He has the reputation as “Dollar Bill”, an AD who focuses on non-football sports and who raises the ticket prices for events beyond what fans are comfortable with.

-However, the talent at A&M was pretty thin, and despite the huge win over #1 OU, people inside the program started grimacing at first glance of the roster

-Fran then creates a cult of personality, headed by a biographer he brought over from Alabama named Mike McKenzie, who quickly begins a PR campaign centered around Fran and Fran wholly instead of A&M or the team.  Need proof?  Go find the program for the 2003 spring game at A&M.  It’s all about Fran.  He sets up his own website, sets up a blog before blogs were cool for his WIFE to share recipes and water-retention tips, and

-A&M struggles mightily in year one under fran, going 4-8 and getting beat by #1 OU 77-0 in a game where OU’s quarterback was KNEELING THE BALL IN THE THIRD QUARTER.

Holy shit.  What have we done?

Did we sell our souls for that 2002 victory?  For hiring Dennis Dingdong Franchione away from Momma as a payback for Bear Bryant?

I’m not going to recount the entire decade for A&M, but it’s been rough, Ags.  Very rough.  We were blown out AT KYLE by Iowa State.  Then lost to Baylor in OT(Baylor!) as Fran turned the former freshman phenom QB into a veer-running option quarterback.  Abject and total failure.  2005 started with an embarrassing loss in the Cotton Bowl to Tennessee.  Then another losing season in 2005.  We climbed back to 9-4, which was good enough for 3rd in the Big 12 South, then another shit year as Fran not only breaks NCAA rules by selling his own insider newsletter to select donors and the president of the 12th Man Foundation and Bill Byrne (both of which knew about the newsletter, so don’t let them try to say they didn’t), but it’s used as an excuse by Byrne to get  Fran fired.  A&M had the chance to baptize the program and get it out of the pit of shit in the Big 12 if they go out and hire an outstanding college football coach.

Bill Byrne then made a deal with a group of donors to reclaim control of the program if Byrne would go along with hiring one of their buddies as the new coach.  In exchange, they would erase the reported $16-30m deficit Byrne had racked up by building new track facilities and falling way short of his capital campaigns.  He arrogantly dismissed Fran in his final press conference by literally swiping the microphone away before Fran was finished talking and announced that he was conducting a “nationwide search” for the next football coach.  We now know that it was a total fabrication, as the deal was already in place to get Mike Sherman (Mike Sherman!), a wayward coach who managed to have a losing season at Green Bay WITH Brett Favre and no other head coaching experience.  He had been out of college football since the mid-90’s.  Instead of going with a program changer at head coach, they went with the coaching equivalency of a dead fish.

Want proof?  He lost his first game EVER to Arkansas State AT KYLE FIELD.  Then won 4 games total in his first year as coach and had a losing subsequent year.  He hired a defensive coordinator that lasted all of a month in College Station before quitting, then hired a coach out of retirement.  Without a string of victories in 2010 spurred by 1st round pick Von Miller, Mike Sherman was on his way to A&M’s first back-to-back-to-back losing seasons since forever ago.

We were the butt of jokes across the country.  Every two-bit hack beat writer from Houston to New York took shots at A&M anytime they could, and it was well deserved.  All the while:

-Texas Tech wins 2 more bowl games from 2002 than A&M even plays in, including an 11-2 season where they finished tied for first in the conference.  At one point, Tech won 7 of 8 games against A&M and almost tied the all-time series

-Baylor, after almost a decade of winning a single conference game per year in the Big 12 and almost 15 years of losing seasons, somehow manages to get a Heisman winner.

-Texas wins a national championship and plays for another.

-Oklahoma, who was 3-8 in the last season before Stoops arrived, lost a single game to A&M.  They won 8 of 9 and played for multiple national championships

-Oklahoma State gets a record-setting donation from a former basketball player at Texas A&M who transferred to the school.

That’s all in our division.  Not to mention that we didn’t win a single bowl game during the Lost Decade, lost multiple games by double digits, some of which were epic whippings that spurred on even more jokes, and finished the season ranked only once (ONCE!) in Mike Sherman’s lucky Von Miller year.

Enter:  R. Bowen Loftin.

Our Bowen Loftin.

R Badass Loftin.

The little man with the bowtie and brass balls the size of Hearne pushed us to the SEC, a move which is fought vehemently by Bill Byrne who promised our sisters in Austin that he’d “deliver” A&M to the newly forming Pac-16 conference that Texas was orchestrating.  If not for Loftin, Ags, we’d be playing in Palo Alto and not Tuscaloosa.  Think about that for a second.

Even the move to the SEC was met with derision and jokes, where writers such as Ivan Maisel, Pete Thamel, Pat Forde, and tv personalities like Mark May went out of their way during our last Big 12 to make fun of us for making the move and saying that we’d never compete against the big bad SEC.  Baylor and Texas fired off a PR campaign to run negative press against us, and Mike Sherman somehow managed to lose the last conference game ever against Texas to FCS-worthy quarterback Case McCoy.  That loss might end up as our saving grace, but man it stings.

If not for a complete whipping of Tech and a thrashing of Baylor, the entire last season in the Big 12 would have been a disaster.  Fortunately, after Sherman was rightfully jettisoned, A&M did something they hadn’t done since 2001…they won a bowl game.

So, when Sherman is rightfully fired (never should have been hired in the first place), Bill Byrne does his best to make the university look bad by calling his buddy, Kirk Bohls, who leaks the firing before Sherman is informed.  Of course, anyone with half a brain knew Sherman was going to be fired, but still…there’s ways to do things, and typical Byrne he did his best to make the university look bad.  Bowen did the right thing by letting Byrne save face and exit slowly before the official move to the SEC. During that time Byrne rallied members of his staff to bad-mouth the president of the university (!) on message boards in an attempt to discredit Loftin and get him fired.

Enter:  Kevin Sumlin

Enter:  Mike Slive

Re-Enter:  R. Badass Loftin’s gigantic brass balls that were turning to gold thru alchemy-in-academia form

We were told that A&M was weak, thin, and had a piss-poor defense with no players good enough to play in the SEC.  We were told that the offensive line was bad, and couldn’t stand up to the speed and size of the SEC.  We were told that A&M could never compete with the LSU’s and Alabama’s of the world.

Well, guess what…there aren’t “LSU’s” and “Alabama’s” of the world.  There’s LSU and Alabama.  We played one to the last minute, driving to win before an interception ended the game, and just marched into the other’s house and marched out in Scooby Doo costumes and with their women on both arms.  We’ll discard those girls before we get to the state line though.  Use, abuse, then refuse.  Just like we did to their football team.

Sumlin was the spark that the program needed back in 2002 that Fran couldn’t deliver b/c he was tied up in the smell of his own asshole and in 2007 while Sherman was too busy picking out Tommy Bahama shirts to wear on gameday to focus on recruiting.  Sumlin wasn’t the only coach that could have succeeded at A&M, but he is one who did.  Wins cure all, and Kevin Sumlin is a winner.  He’s fierce but fun.  He can recruit, he can motivate, but most of all he can relate, something RC, Fran, or Mike Sherman couldn’t do.

What a perfect fit.  Funny what hiring a pedigree college football coach can do instead of an NFL reject.  See:  Weis, Charlie at Kansas.

After all that, we are still left with the simple fact that an entire decade passed between epic asswhippings of #1 teams.  In that time, A&M has experienced the lowest of the low, the most cruel of cruel jokes, and a seemingly endless line of our foes who got to take unmitigated nutshots at us over and over again.  It’s been rough, but look what happened since September:

-Barely lost to Florida, a top 10 team

-Win

-Win

-Epic win over hapless Arkansas who started the pre-season top 10

-Come from behind win in Oxford

-Grudge win over LaTech after the school postponed the game intentionally to get more experience before playing us

-Barely lost to LSU, again driving to win on the last series before throwing an interception

-Record-setting asswhipping over hapless Auburn in their house

-Record-setting asswhipping over #15 Mississippi State in their house; this was never even a game in which many of the genius sportswriters predicted it as the game when A&M would be “coming back down to Earth” and State would be showing the world that Johnny Football couldn’t stand up to the real defenses in the SEC.

-Marching into to Tuscaloosa against the best team in all of college football and winning wire to wire. And let’s be clear about something:  it was a resounding defeat, not only by Johnny F*cking Football, but by the Wrecking Crew defense that popped loose a fumble, three interceptions, and sent their bruiser running back to the bench with a head-rattling hit.  Referees didn’t win that game…sound coaching, precise execution, and Sumlin’s swagger won that game against the best team in all of college football.  Alabama is still the best team, regardless of where they are ranked today.

As an aside, a $5m dollar coach should NEVER lose to a $2m coach, and if it does somehow happen, then your $2m coach should no longer be a $2m coach.  Sumlin’s about to get paid handsomely and rightfully.  Wouldn’t surprise me if he gets to $3.5m, and it’s well deserved.  Same goes for his light-out assistants, who might be as good as any in the conference or even the nation.  We are building a $500m new stadium…I think we can find a couple extra bucks for this staff.

Two weeks ago, worthless sports talk radio hosts were debating whether or not Alabama could beat an NFL team (which is as worthless as any topic ever covered on sports talk radio).  Two weeks ago, AJ McCarron only had to finish out the year to get the Heisman trophy.  Two weeks ago, A&M was still the punchline to jokes by idiot sports writers who had still not admitted that they know nothing and only have a job covering college football because they use correct grammar.  Two weeks ago, Johnny Manziel was a “fun player” but couldn’t stand up to the LSU’s and Alabama’s of the world.

And now?

Two weeks later, he’s the best player in football.  Despite those aforementioned writers coming crawling back with pencil and paper in hand to write a feature story on us, Johnny Manziel should win the Heisman.  He’s the best player in college football, and there should be no debate.  Johnny Manziel should win the Heisman, and anyone who disagrees is an idiot.  A blithering, shit-ball rolling idiot.

Here we sit, with a top 10 ranked team and a 19-year old phenom at quarterback that should win the Heisman trophy in his first year as a college football player.  A year ago, they told us we couldn’t compete in the SEC.  Now, we are part of the elite.  A year ago, we had a single bowl win in a decade.  Now we are in the mix for an AT-LARGE BCS bid, which would be our first since winning the conference in 1998.  The sky is the limit, and it appears that everything we went thru in the last decade is slowly becoming a waving memory in our rear-view mirrors.  We aren’t the best team in college football, but Texas A&M can beat any other team in college football.  We will finish the year with as many as 11 wins in our first SEC season.

It’s been a long, hard road, Ags, One that few teams if any have had to ever endure.  We crawled thru a Brazos River-sized tunnel of shit and came out on the other side smelling of maroon and white Roses.  The sky is the limit for this team that still has players on it that sat thru Mike Sherman’s second losing season in a row.  We are a top 10 program in recruiting, budget, and now performance.  And that’s the way it should be

Now that the crawl is over, and the program gets back to the dominance of two decades ago, the only question I have for all of you is:

Was it worth it?

Great Memories of the Big 12

The Big 12 limped on without Colorado and Nebraska, but the announcements from Texas A&M and Missouri to leave the unstable conglomerate of mismatched institutions has ended the conference. The Big 12 will live on in name only as Purple Baylor and West Virginia join the party, but the conference it was has ultimately come to an end.

The Big 12 did give us some great memories over the years. At HSJ, we took a look back at the greatest moments in Big 12 history.

1.  Nebraska’s 1997 National Championship Run

Behind quarterback Scott Frost, the Cornhuskers steamrolled Peyton Manning and Tennessee in the Orange Bowl to capture a share of the national title with Michigan.  This would be the last great Nebraska team, as DeLoss Dodds had instituted conference rules against partial qualifiers and had ended Nebraska’s storied rivalry with Oklahoma.  Nebraska never really wanted to be in the Big 12 and bolted for the B1G the first chance they got. This 1997 team was not as great as the 1995 team, but it was the greatest in Big 12 History.

2.  Mack Brown’s Stepson

During a Holiday Bowl contest between Arizona State and Texas in December of 2007, Mack Brown’s stepson, Chris Jessie, wandered onto the playing field and tried to pick up a live ball. You might expect that kind of behavior from a two year old, but Mr. Jessie was at the time a paid member of the Texas football operations staff.

3.  Big Red Sports and Imports

In August of 2006, Rhett Bomar was dismissed from the Oklahoma Sooners football team. He had been the number one prep quarterback according to recruiting sites Scout and Rivals. Big Red Sports and Imports paid Bomar for work he did not complete, a major NCAA rule violation. Bomar finished his college career at Sam Houston State University.

4.  Ron McKelvey/Weaver

After being cut by the Houston Oilers and the British Columbia Lions, Ron Weaver enrolled in junior college under the name Ron McKelvey. Two years later, he was playing for the Texas Longhorns for year seven of his college football career. Weaver left the Longhorns before their loss to Virginia Tech in the 1996 Sugar Bowl. Weaver came from a solid family.  Weaver’s nephew, Cash Money, was involved in a fake kidnapping, and Weaver’s sister, Bonita Money, punched Shannen Doherty in the face outside a Los Angeles nightclub.

5.  Larry Eustachy – Party Animal

Larry Eustachy’s preferred method of dealing with conference losses seemed to be to go to frat parties, get hammered, and start kissing sororioty girls half his age. During the 2002-2003 season, he did just that in losses to Kansas State and Missouri. Of course, pictures started circulating from the Missouri party and the Larry Eustachy legend was born.

6.  Mark Mangino the Bully

Mark Mangino’s appearance was nothing short of shocking on the Kansas sideline.  But when this four hundred pound out of shape man was fired in November of 2009 for being too mean, the jokes kept rolling in.  He did give Kansas their best football teams in decades, but he was just too mean.

7.  Texas Turned Down by Three Conferences

In the summer of 2011, Texas tried to join the PAC 12, B1G, and ACC and was promptly turned down by all three conferences.  The irony of this is that in 2010, Texas power brokers were negotiating with the PAC 10 to bring a slew of schools into that league, but they forgot to ask the other if they wanted to go out west.  This power blunder is what caused the subsequent Colorado, Nebraska, Texas A&M, and Missouri exits from the Big 12, forever ruining the conference.

8.  Craig James Fired Mike Leach

Craig James, a man that just ran for office and received less than 5% of the vote, used his muscle to effectively get Mike Leach fired by Texas Tech.  Mike Leach was the greatest coach in Texas Tech history, but a single call from Craig James and a youtube video of an equipment closet ruined the program.  Tommy Tubberville was on the job less than a year before he was throwing his name in the hat for the Miami job among others.    Tech fans are still wondering why Mike Leach was fired.

9.  Bill Snyder’s Tenures at Kansas State

Bill Snyder amassed his teams by scouring junior colleges and getting players into Kansas State that other schools thought had no chance to qualify academically.  No one knows how he does it.  His run at Kansas State was truly remarkably, but after a couple of below par seasons, Snyder retired after the 2005 season.  He was rehired for the same position three years later, and has shown remarkable progress.  Last year, his team won ten games before getting blown out by an SEC team in the Cotton Bowl. Snyder is a competitive coach, but it was still shocking to hear him say that losing the 1998 Big 12 Championship game was similar to a loved one dying.

10.  Eddie Sutton Court

The playing surface at Oklahoma State’s Gallagher-Iba Arena is named Eddie Sutton Court.  Sutton took a leave of absence and then retired from his position as head coach of the Cowboys after an incident involving a bottle of alcohol, some prescription drungs, and a Dodge Durango.  Sutton’s son, Sean, took over as head coach.  After Sean was forced to retire by Oklahoma State, the senior Sutton ranted to newspaper reporters that he did not want his name on the court.

Top 5 People With a Lack of a Top Lip

There are few things in this world that piss me off worse than some jerkoff with a lack of a top lip. Scientifically, the term to describe this horrible condition is “Honky Lip”. Recent studies have shown that people with no top lip are universally evil and have no soul. They have little disregard for normal rules of society and are apt to have severe personality disorders. However, in some extreme cases, the condition will culminate to “Clown Stage” where the evilness is replaced by hilarity and downright clownish behavior (as noted in the #4 individual with a lack of a top lip).

Regardless of the stages or severity of this terrible affliction, we here at HSJ Central would like to present to you:

The top 5 worst humans born without a proper top lip

5. Mitt Romney – Possible President

Considered the presidential front runner for the Republican Party in 2012 by most political pundits, Romney has a top lip that curls like a deflated balloonknot. By general consensus, his lack of a top lip is considered the biggest reason why he has flipflopped on most of his campaign platform issues and also why, despite otherwise considered the strongest presidential candidate on paper, that even hardcore southern Republicans would rather vote for “that black pizza guy who likes to hit on chicks all the time”.

4. Jeff Daniels – Rumored Actor

The infamous serious actor-turned-movie-clown-turned-back-into-serious-actor-and-rumored-to-be-back-to-being-a-clown has a really serious case of a lack of a top lip. However, Daniels is one of the rare cases where the evil turns to benevolence. In addition to have a lack of a top lip, he also has a really weird gummy smile which is totally creepy.

3. Phil Dawson – Sip kicker

One of the worst offenders of all time of a lack of a top lip, Dawson has a stellar career in one of the worst positions in all of football for one of the worst football cities in America. Dawson spent his collegiate career in Austin, no doubtedly putting his lack of a top lip to good use. His lack of a top lip is compounded by the fact he has a five-head and looks like someone burned off his eyebrows with a lighter. Possible candidate for the next Fire Marshall Bill.

2. Imperial Admiral Conan Antonio Motti – Star Wars choked-out bitch

You have to assume that anyone in the Star Wars army is a bad dude with some severe issues, but this dude is one of the worst. Look at his Leisure Suit Larry hair and his Beavis nostrils. Then you get to his lack of a top lip. Yuck. You’ll remember from your childhood or your pathetic adulthood that this is the cat who was talking shit to Darth Vader and got his ass choked with an invisible Forcefist. I find his lack of a top lip disturbing.

1. Bob Stoops – “Coach”

The worst offender of all time of this terrible condition is the evil Bob Stoops. In addition to not having a top lip or a soul, he also has no conscience. While not a total lush like his brother, the members of the Stoops family are really quite adept at football college. However, he’s even better at cheating in college football and getting it swept under the rug somehow than he is anything else in life other than his amazing ability to not have a top lip. His lack of a top lip totally pisses me off.

Is the NCAA Guilty of “Lack of Institutional Control”?

In determining whether there has been a lack of institutional control when a violation of NCAA

rules has been found it is necessary to ascertain what formal institutional policies and procedures

were in place at the time the violation of NCAA rules occurred and whether those policies and

procedures, if adequate, were being monitored and enforced. It is important that policies and

procedures be established so as to deter violations and not merely to discover their existence

after they have taken place. In a case where proper procedures exist and are appropriately

enforced, especially when they result in the prompt detection, investigation and reporting of the

violations in question, there may be no lack of institutional control although the individual or

individuals directly involved may be held responsible.

Source

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time the past couple months following the saga of conference realignment. From message boards to Twitter to websites, you can knock off hours at a time following this stuff and end the day with nothing more than a laugh over the spaghetti thrown against the wall by certain “insiders”. College sports (and specifically, collegiate student athletes) are supposed to be the last bastion of pure athletic competition, unsullied by the cruel beast of capitalism and me-ism. At a time when we recoil in disgust at the antics of professional athletes such as Floyd Mayweather, Jr, and his entire entourage of thugs or Plaxico Burress (who was such a gangsta that he shot himself when he dropped his piece thru his warm-ups), some of us take refuge in the calming cradle of our last hope for some sort of regulated control over the wave of money, fame, and sex rained down upon our golden calves in sports.

The idea that college sports is anything but corrupt is only held by the wide doe eyed idiots of our fandom and the sidemouth-talking powers that control college sports. That’s quite an accussastion, I realize. But let’s not for one second try to convince ourselves that college sports is anything but a money maker. It would not exist without the backroom deals and the Vegas gambling and the under-the-brim-of-the-cap cash “donations” made to our student athletes.

So, as I peruse Twitterverse for hours on end, the odd thing that keeps coming up is how everything in college football is about to change. For the past 100 years, college football is the place where we can go and actually have a stake in the outcome of the game. Dallas Cowboys fans are rabid, but mainly when they are winning. Houston Texan fans are committed, but have only been so for a few years since they didn’t even exist the last time the Cowboys won a Super Bowl. Either way, if a fan of another team criticizes the Cowboys, it won’t be taken anywhere as personally as a slam to one’s college team.

Of course, the caveat here is that fandom resides mainly from the folks who actually attended there, or have family that attended there. Even still, the “fans” of a team are missing out completely on the experience of having a personal stake in the fandom. Being a fan of a pro team, except for the employees, is missing the personal connection to the team like you have in college sports. Obviously, that’s where college sports breeds such feelings of “win at all costs”. This is your education and reputation at stake, by gawd.  We go to class with those same student athletes that we watch on the field on Saturday.  They are just like us.

Right?

Whatever the reason for fandom, heart or head, the fact remains that committed college sports fans are rabid beyond logic. The NCAA is there to temper the actions of those who go off the reservation and try to get an advantage however they see possible. This group oversees the competition committees, rules on eligibility of its participants, and governs the actions and activities of its member institutions.

Right?

For all the power that it wields, the NCAA has no control over how each sovereign entity (ie – “its members”, “the schools”) chooses to do business outside of the scope it lays down. If Texas Tech wants to only sell tickets to students and play in a 20,000 seat stadium, it’s total up to them as long as they use participants that follow the NCAA guidelines and conduct business as per NCAA rules on competition. Likewise, if Texas Tech decides to form a union of other like-minded schools (such as Texas A&M or Oklahoma) in order to package the rights of its broadcasts, there’s nothing the NCAA can do to stop that, as long as the games follow the competition rules set forth by the NCAA. If school decides to strike out on its own and shun joining a union of other schools and sign its soul away for, oh let’s just say, $300 million or so, the NCAA cannot stop that sovereign entity from doing so, as foolish as it may be or as restrictive as the contract verbiage might be.

In short, the NCAA serves as a powerful overlord who decides who can participate and which teams are allowed to use certain players based on the conduct of those institutions. They cannot perform nor restrict things such as broadcast rights, media coverage, or even the referees of the matches (those are decided by each conference, FYI.) except in the case of penalties (such as A&M’s television restrictions in it’s Should-Have-Been National Championship year of 1994). As long as each institution uses cleared participants and contracts with those participants in a fair, amateur style (ie – “can’t be paid for performing”), any other activity is up to the individual institutions to govern. As it pertains to championships (we are talking football here, since that’s the heart of college sports), the NCAA doesn’t even crown one or take part in the selection of one. You want to win a bar bet? Ask some drunk how many football championships have been named in history by the NCAA. Answer – ZERO. They do not presently or in the past take part in the selection of a national champion in football.

Rant aside, the interesting thing that I’ve noticed this last summer is the lack of control over any aspect of these conversations the NCAA has. In the middle of August when the first major chasms in the Big 12 occurred and Texas A&M was shining its shoes for a trip to Birmingham, the NCAA dropped the hammer on Miami (FL) football after the story of a CONVICTED FELON talking about his influence over football players in Coral Gables was released. And we all stood in shock to find out that of all places, Miami might have people allowed on the sidelines who may have slipped a cool hunny to the players after the games. Miami is expected to be smacked with the worst punishment the NCAA can levy…one for a “lack of institutional control”. SMU was “convicted” of this in the 80’s, and the NCAA shut them down completely with the Death Penalty, the harshest penalty possible. Rumor in the NCAA, though, is that they would never do that ever again because it destroyed a program that’s just now trying to get its feet under itself again. If the Death Penalty really were an option, we would have seen it in the late 90’s/early 00’s with Alabama, or with Miami forthcoming. College football programs all cheat, and if you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t tryin’. You definitely ain’t winnin’.

Ooooo. My innocence is crushed now.

All of this comes on the heels of the folks at the Ohio State University taking quick aim at the nearest sweatervest they could find and ushering it and its contents the hell out of town along with their starting quarterback who was apparently complicit in taking money. The quarterback, by the way, showed up at the school driving a pimped out ride, which is typical for amateur athletes to be able to afford, right? I remember the first luxury SUV I bought in college with tv’s in the back showing porno as I drove down the road. It was a simpler time then, though.

[fart sound]

We all know that college athletes get money to play college football, and the teams who get busted are the ones who blatantly flaunt their disregard for the rules. Hell, OU had their started QB and a starting OL busted being paid by a car dealership RED HANDED and all over the internet, and somehow were able to get out with a slap on the wrist. Then they had the audacity to appeal the slap on the wrist and WON THE APPEAL. Does that sound like the dealings of an NCAA who has its hands wrapped around its member institutions?

Since all the conference realignment avalanche started, the thing that’s most apparent is that there’s no control over any of this by any ruling body. People are starting to question these dealings, to the point where the entire NCAA should be reformed. Right now, the NCAA has zero power over the conference realignment conundrum b/c they can’t dictate to sovereign entities how to do certain business. They can only apply rules of eligibility towards the athletes themselves.

The rampant cheating is getting out of hand, though. Check this video out, though…the Fiesta Bowl was busted this year for its employees making political contributions and then being reimbursed, and it looks like the Sugar Bowl may have done the exact same thing. Compliance becomes a factor when the issues regarding payola to political figures for special treatment come up, which means that vicariously the NCAA can in fact execute some sort of authority over the games that the schools play.  This all comes under the watchful nose of the NCAA.  The NCAA knows this is going on, or they are too stupid to figure it out.  Either way, there should be changes to keep this sort of thing out.  I’m sure Ken Starr could use a job when all the dust is settled.

The NCAA will be looked upon to step up and do something as the age of endless news cycles explodes and everyone with an iPhone and a WordPress account can wait outside the AD’s office and report back all the nefarious dealings he is having. If you are dealing with amateur athletes who get paid NOTHING (officially) for performing and the use of their likeness, then at some point the NCAA will have to play a bigger part in the day-to-day operations of college football and become the governing body most of us expect them to be in the first place. UNLESS, of course, a group of those sovereign entities decide that the NCAA has overstepped its bounds in being heavy-handed and decides that the NCAA as a governing body is either unfair in its practices or that it can’t control the legal business practices of that individual institution. Let’s say that an institution that has just signed its entire broadcast rights away to a massive corporation who can and will exert whatever power it needs to turn a profit decides (collectively with its business partner) that the rules set forth by the NCAA are not dealt with evenly, fairly, or even with any sort of true authority. Then that entity can make a business case to extricate itself and play the game the way it wants to w/o fear of Death Penalties or broadcast restrictions.  To do business the way IT sees fit, and the rules it wants to play

Because, isn’t that what business of college football is all about?

Cameron’s Single Cruise

Back when I was a younger man, I went on a singles cruise in the Caribbean. The brochure I got from my travel agent made it look incredible, well, at least the boat looked incredible. Some of the stops we were going to make were pretty boring, but I was more interested in what was going to happen on the boat behind closed doors anyway. Pretty much the point of taking a singles cruise.

The first night aboard, we had a social on the main deck where everyone got to meet one another. It took about 10 seconds to look around the room and identify the talent. Some real lookers on board, and a few that would pass the eyeball test at 2 a.m. There were several girls there that were clearly along for the endless buffet, but that’s always the case. One girl in particular, I think her name was, “Lorna” or something, was unreal. Gorgeous hair with long legs and a set of tits that made you want to beg for buttermilk. Every guy in the room was staring at Lorna. I figured I’d set my sights on an easier target for the time being.

I got to talking to this young lady from Oklahoma that was beyond fantastic herself. She might have been better looking than Lorna, but she was really, really dumb and had no personality. I didn’t care. We had a few drinks, made some small talk, and one thing lead to another…

She beat the shit out of me.

We fooled around a bit at first, but as soon as her bra came off, she went ballistic. I kind of liked it at the start – who wouldn’t want their face smacked around with a set of double-ds. But after she made me put on a condom, she threw me down on the bed and climbed on top and started slapping and punching my face. I think she might have rammed a toilet plunger up my ass at one point, but I can’t be sure because she wouldn’t let me turn around to check. There were a few moments when I thought she had calmed down and was going to let me have my way, but every time I’d to get going she would knee me in the crotch or bite my shaft and pull my hair. I finally finished, but was scared out of my mind and trembling. To make matters worse, when she decided that she had had enough, she sat down on the bed naked and did meth. Just an all-out crazy bitch. I would find out many months later that the boat had a “crazy fuck champion” awarded every trip, and this girl was a repeat winner.

The next night I decided to play it safe and got to talking to this cute little redhead. She was from Texas, like me, so I figured we’d have a lot in common. Very nice girl, pretty enough, and was definitely open to my advances. Also a little fiery and definitely had low self-esteem. She kept telling everyone that she was friends with Lorna, but every time Lorna would walk by, she just ignored her. This chick also loved to drink – by the time we got back to my room she was tanked. We had a decent night together – she was a screamer, and the next morning, she left without protest. Seemed like the perfect evening. Until I started itching. Bad. Crazy bad.

She gave me crabs. I had to shave my pubes. That little red-headed whore said she’d tell everyone I raped her if I told anyone about it. Damn my luck.

I was kind of embarrassed after that and decided to lay low for a while. No one else onboard was really worth the effort anyhow. There was this ugly little fat chick in a green dress that was always trying to flirt with anyone that would listen, but honestly, she shouldn’t have even been on the boat. She had no chance. I don’t think she had a single successful night the entire trip. Just a really annoying fatty that didn’t seem to realize that she brought nothing to the table. People even laughed when she walked by, but she never noticed.

On the fifth night, I was sitting at the bar and having a drink with a couple of girls from Kansas I had become friends with. Out of nowhere, Lorna walked up and asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. I mean, she was the best looking girl on the boat, but a couple of other guys that I’d seen her with had already thrown themselves overboard. Her good looks got the better of me and I followed her to the pool deck.

What a pushy bitch.

I bought her a drink. She said it wasn’t what she wanted.

I got her a new one. She said she didn’t feel like drinking.

I asked her if she wanted to swim. She told me to shut up.

I tried to kiss her. She turned her head and slapped me.

I put my hand on her leg. She said she was on the rag.

I tried to kiss her again. She told me she didn’t hook up with guys like me.

I told her I was leaving. She said that her dad was a rich lawyer and he would sue me and drag my name through the mud with his connections in the media.

I had had enough. I got up and went back to my room, pissed off that I had ever wasted my time chasing a high-maintenance bitch like Lorna. I decided that I wasn’t going to let her ruin the last few days of my trip and went back out to one of the bars to talk to some of the other girls. But guess who beat me to the punch?

Apparently Lorna hadn’t appreciated my rejection and had spread word on the ship that I was gay. Furthermore, she had convinced all of the other girls that if they just stuck by her side, she would find them the best possible man and even get them on a reality television show (wtf?). None of the girls would talk to me at all. They all seemed to feel bad, but they were too scared of Lorna to go against her wishes. Most of them were too ugly to get a man without her help anyway, so I didn’t blame them. My trip was over though. Or so I thought.

I walked out on one of the empty decks to have a beer by myself and noticed that another cruise ship had anchored right next to us. It was a huge boat, much bigger than the one we were on, and there were a ton of girls in bikinis waving at us. Actually, they were just waving at me.

“We don’t have any Texans on this boat! Want to come over?”

I had no idea how they knew I was a Texan, but would later find out that they had been watching me from afar for quite a while. They looked really good. I didn’t even think twice and ran to my room to get my bags. Oddly enough, as I was running back towards the deck to jump off, the little fat chick in the green dress grabbed onto my ankle. I couldn’t shake her. She was begging me not to leave her and yelling something about Lorna blowing up the boat. She smelled terrible. It actually looked like she had shit her pants. I felt bad, but there was no way I was missing the other boat. I kicked her in her pooch and she let go, still blubbering like an idiot. I could hear her crying and yelling at me as I swam off, but I didn’t care.

I spent the rest of my vacation surrounded by beautiful women that put out and served barbeque and beer all day, every day. I wasn’t big on pulled pork, and they served a lot of it, but that was a small price to pay. And they didn’t even care that I had shaved my pubes. They actually laughed when I told them I had mailed them to Lorna on my way out.

For all the shit that happened, it was a great trip.