Cursed With Ambition

Redeye Predictions

Since I did so well with my college football nat'l championship prediction I thought I'd test out my prognostication skills on some other things:

1. Texas will land Darrell Scott.  The basic pros/cons of the decision are out there - CU has a close relative of Scott's on the team who he wants to be near and UT has everything else.  Scott doesn't like the cold weather, so that's bad for CU as well.  Throw in the opening at running back because Charles left and Scott's stated desire to play his freshman year and BOOM!  It's an easy pick.  I think he's being coy at this point and trying to upstage the process by announcing on signing day, but I think he's already made his decision.  I'll bet that Mack/Rucker/Applewhite told him something very similar to, "We can't guarantee you a starting position - nobody can - but what we can guarantee you is an opportunity in a situation that is very favorable for you to come in and play immediately."
2. McCain wins the Republican nomination; Clinton wins the Democratic, barely.  McCain wins the Big One.
3. Robb and Chris will be woefully unprepared for the Texas Water Safari, but they will finish within the 100 hour time limit.  Barely.  If there's medium to high water.

Cursed Winter Ambition

1. Winter should be all about hot soup or chili, fires in the fireplace, hot chocolate, sex and cuddling under thick blankets, reading books by the fire and sleeping in.  I bet that's what it was like for the Indians.  Instead, winter is about the guilt of not exercising because you feel entitled to hibernate and it's too cold outside to run anyway, driving 2-1/2 fucking hours in traffic to get to a court on the other side of town in the rain and cold and being cold in my office.
2. Applewhite is back at UT as running backs coach.  This is good.  See, Applewhite is a winning force.  Applewhite's only problems as a player were proximity in time and space to the negative forces of "Goat" Simms or The Anti-Victory.  Goat is nursing his ruptured spleen in Florida somewhere and Joe Walker is hopefully in a gutter in some dirty and cold northern city with a needle sticking out of his arm.  So now that Applewhite isn't constrained by these negative forces, who knows what he'll be capable of.  (One question though - why did they move Rucker into a different position?  I mean, I know we needed a "keep the G's off the streets coach" and all, but Rucker?  He was a good running backs coach.  Maybe the cancer thing has something to do with it.)
3. Memorable Funny Things I've Read on Blogs

• "Snake munches box."
• "Freshly zippered nuts."
• "My outline is your biological father."
• "I opened the box and inside was an aborted fetus.  Nobody laughed."  (Para.)

Nat'l Championship Prediction

LSU 38, OSU 17

You heard it hear first, folks.  I think LSU is the far superior team.  They've got more speed, more depth, more weapons, more animals on their team that OSU.  This one isn't even going to be as close as the score I've posted.

Yup

Bowl Season

The things I'm most happy about this bowl season (besides Texas' win over ASU) are Hawaii losing badly to Georgia in the Sugar and Illinois losing badly to USC in the Rose.  Hawaii was exposed as exactly what they are - the most talented team in an inferior conference with a system quarterback.  Illinois was shown to be a poor first choice by tradition curmudgeons at the Rose Bowl.  They should've picked Mizzou.  Of course, these games not only showed how bad Hawaii and Illinois are, they also showed how good USC and Georgia are.  We'll never know if they are better than Ohio State or LSU (or OU, or WV, or Texas for that matter).  But that's fine.  All of these things show how college football's postseason is broken.  Let's hope the accountants can come up with a way to fix it.

Update:  Kansas wins the Orange Bowl!  I'm not sure what's more surprising - that Kansas beat VT or that Mangino held back from eating that crystal bowl full of oranges that was the trophy.  Maybe the oranges wre fake.  Anyway, good on Kansas.  They rep'd the Big XII well (more than I can say for Colorado, OU and A&M).  I thought they were paper tigers all season, but when they hung with Mizzou I knew they were for real.  This proves it.  Best season in school history.  Good for them.  And good for RF (Real Fat) coaches everywhere.

Holiday Bowl

Even though this was our highest quality win of the season, it still had the 2007 Horns' negative stamp on it.  First and foremost was that sideline touching deal.  It was wild as hell and nearly swung the momentum completely around.  Other typical plays for this season's team were the Erick Jackson burned-and-chasing pass deflection for an interception and the Colt fumble into the end zone.  Fortunately the ball bounced the right way.  But you can't rely on plays like that if you want to win them all.  The best part of the victory was that the team came out really, really fired up.  All of Mack's talk during the break paid off.  Changes were made and I think for the first time all season we started our best football players, all other considerations were off the table.  That was most visible in the linebacking corps.  This team was motivated to win this game and it showed.  Definitely the most aggressively we played all season.

Things look good going into next season.  We'll probably have a new defensive coordinator (again) who can hopefully fix the problems with the pass rush and pass coverage; our two biggest deficiencies.  Looking at the personnel, though, I just don't know if we have the horses, especially in the secondary.  Our biggest offensive deficiency was turnovers.  If Colt and Jamaal can be coached into taking care of the ball even a little bit better we're a different team.  Colt needs to be more careful flinging the ball on the run and Charles just needs to hold onto the ball better in general.  We're going to have some huge holes to fill at defensive tackle, receiver and in the secondary.  Our team will probably be a slight grade lower talent-wise, but hopefully experience and maturity will be a full grade higher; most notably on the offensive line.  The schedule is more oppressive next season with both Kansas and Mizzou, but who knows if this season was a fluke for both teams.  As usual, the OU game will dictate the success of our season.

Update:  Jamaal Charles declared for the NFL draft.  The good news is that we won't have to worry about him fumbling next year.  The bad news is he was twice as good as our next best back.  Time for someone new to step up.  Will it be Vondrell?  A true freshman?

Update:  Will Muschamp hired as defensive coordinator!!   Hell yes!! Muschamp is awesome.  I've watched this guy on the sidelines and he's awesome.  He's pretty young and very energetic.  And he's talking about bringing former Ole Miss head coach Ed Orgeron in to coach the D-line.  With Muschamp, Akina and Orgeron look for Texas' defense to improve mightily next year.