SLAG-91

Like a pack of dogs on a 3-legged cat...

NFL-ization of college football is a bug to some, not a feature. That's the direction it's going headlong in, so let's go all out with it, shall we? 17-game regular season. You can play ALL of your rivals, plus some. Bring in the hashmarks closer to the center of the field. One 10-minute period for OT. Regular season games can end in a tie. (Full disclosure, I loathe current college football OT). Two-minute warning. No more stopping the clock after a first down (have always thought this was dumb). Tongue planted only somewhat in cheek on all of this...

Academics are obviously important...ironically enough, one of the ways Texas' leadership threw shade at A&M's move to the SEC a decade ago was because of the SEC's perceived collective academic reputation. Academics is in no meaningful way driving this expansion. It's one of those pleasant little by-products and gives a fig leaf to the SEC if they choose to use it, but that's about it.

Our 2004 team paid for the underachievement of the 2003 team, period, full stop. 1000 percent accurate.

From Slate Noble lies of Covid-19 From the article: "Experts on infectious diseases are not necessarily experts on social behavior." That's being very kind, imo. I'd lean more toward "pretty much ignorant" on it. Also from the article: "Noble lies are a trap. We cannot predict the public’s behavior, and loss of trust is devastating. The general population is far too skeptical to blindly follow the advice of experts, and far too intelligent to be easily duped." I wish I were as confident as the authors regarding part 1 (skepticism), but damn, the author gets it. Also, (not from the article), people will tend to be more trusting of leaders who demonstrate that they respect your personal liberty. There has been damned little of that from many of the policy makers.

Indeed...your scathing article about the lack of sportsmanship shown in Georgia Tech's 222-0 beatdown of Cumberland College in 1916 was excellent. 👍

Thanks for sharing those pictures...I've only been to NW Arkansas once, and didn't have much time to spend there, but thought it was very scenic. Getting in a camper for a couple of months and just tooling around the country with no schedule has been a long-time bucket list adventure that I want to do. That long of a trip will have to wait until retirement. Until then, will live vicariously. 👍

Qualified is typically interpreted through the lens of one's politics, so one person's "qualified" could be another person's "dilettante". Like you, I don't want a "conservative" justice or a "liberal" justice. The more a judge resembles a politician, the more nervous I get. My $0.02 is that a SC justice (or any judge at any level, honestly) needs to be able to check their politics at the door and thoughtfully craft decisions/opinions that they may personally disagree with, but are just from a legal standpoint. If someone is able to do that, be it a black woman, white man or yellow-bellied woodpecker, then I'm good.

There is some Venn diagram overlap of outlook that I share with Bill, and this is one of those areas. Distinguishing more clearly between liberal and leftist is something that absolutely needs to happen more.

The personal connection part of it does matter more to some of us, and that is where the expansion dilutes some of that, and where you live absolutely is a factor. Also, when you don't play schools very often, there's no sense of real rivalry or connection, especially for the newer additions. A&M will be playing its 10th football season in the SEC this year, and will have played Georgia and Kentucky exactly once. Missouri has yet to play a game in Jordan-Hare...but, when you don't play over 1/3 of your conference in a given year, that'll happen. It's like we've been this big-assed house for a decade and don't really know some of the residents very well. Even if the SEC goes to a 9-game schedule, you're still not playing 3/8 of the conference in a given season. How that scheduling is done will matter, because it's been kind of ridiculous since the 12 to 14 expansion. The 9-game conference slate should have happened then. I've lived in Texas for nearly 30 years now, and the outcome of the games against Georgia aren't nearly as personal for me because I do not work with or otherwise interact with any UGA grads. It's still annoying to me from an overall program success standpoint that they have owned our asses since 2006, and as an alum, I'm aware of the historical significance of the game. It would be a shame to see it sacrificed at the altar of expansion. Even playing a school twice in four years isn't enough to build any sense of rivalry. Auburn's games against OU and Texas will still essentially feel like non-conference matchups, even if factually they won't be. Does A&M feel like a rival to any other folks here? I'm as personally connected to that one as someone can be, but there's not a whole lot of juice there. 2013 and 2014 games were entertaining, but other than that, it's likely felt like just another game on the schedule. If it went away, it wouldn't bother me. Some of you are convinced that it's solely NIL-related, and you'd be wrong...you think you know, but you don't know.

Age has tempered my emotional involvement in college sports, with scattered exceptions here and there. I used to be the "Gameday, watch games all day" whether we were playing or not. Prior to cable, those ABC doubleheader days were all this kid could ask for. I don't arrange my Saturday schedule around football any longer. If I'm free to watch our game, I'll watch. If something else takes precedence, I'll track on my phone. Things change, and as Billy Joel said "The good ol' days weren't always good; tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems." My issue, full disclosure, is that the change has been a bit dizzying. I am absolutely fine with the athletes making what they can via NIL...it's long overdue, and for some their window will be very small. Organizationally, I'm just kind of over all of it...it's NFL Lite. Meh. The thing that I wonder about with college football, and football in general, is the impact of CTE. I know helmet technology, proper tackling techniques, etc. have been emphasized, but F = MA is still a bitch when players get both bigger and faster.

That's not the correct answer, comrade. Revise and resubmit. /sarc

I'm trying to tune as much of the ancillary stuff out as I can...the mute button helps. The viewing outlets that are more event-focused help, too. The Australian swim coach going bonkers and dry humping the air after their swimmer won the 400m freestyle was hilariously awesome...felt a little bad for the worker in the booth. I like Michael Phelps on swimming commentary a lot...maybe a bit too "meat and potatoes" and not enough pizzazz for some, but he's informative without being obnoxious. The cyclist that broke away from the pack without the other country's group noticing, and winning the event as a result, was fantastic. Caeleb Dressel seems like a young man with a great perspective on things, based on the story I saw. Loved seeing Katie Ledecky be more excited for her teammate than her own win. Suni Lee, welp, War Eagle and congrats, young lady! Gold looks very nice on you. 👍

RIP Dusty Hill. Gonna go put on my cheap sunglasses...here's where there were a lotta nice girls:

I went to see it with my mom when it came out, and enjoyed it. Might be interesting to re-watch with 2021 eyes.

Sounds like we're about the same age, johnny...Pong was the first one I remember. A local convenience store had a sit-down version of Space Invaders. Tempest was one that I really liked as a tween/teen...the Gas-N-Go across the street from our high school had Pac-Man, Centipede, Tempest and Zaxxon, and I remember some pretty hotly contested after-school Tempest battles with a HS senior (I was in the 8th grade). I used to leave the house early on occasion to get a game in before catching the bus to middle school. The lone arcade in town used to give two free tokens for every "A" on your report card and one for a "B". Thanks for the topic, OP...haven't thought about this in a long while.

The sensitivity of the PCR tests is absolutely something that needs to be taken into account. Jon Rahm, world's #1 golfer, was forced to withdraw from the Olympics today due to a positive test, never mind that he was vaccinated in May, was forced to withdraw from the final round of the Memorial in early June due to a positive test (he felt so awful that he had a 6-shot lead going into the final round...), was cleared to play in the U.S. Open in June, which he won, but then tested positive again today. How likely is it that the test picked up remnants of what caused the initial positive in June? I'd say it's a percentage significantly above 0. The approach needs to be different. If you're antibody-positive for Covid, be it from natural infection or vaccination, you're good. No more tests for you. Those should be treated as equivalent. The fact that they aren't is complete bull****.

Kind of tangential, but a perspective on the SEC's initial expansion 30+ years ago: Welcome Arkansas and South Carolina

There's a whole lot of horse***t out there right now and it's very difficult to find the pony in and amongst it...it would not be at all surprising to me if the issue is internal (someone(s) amongst the president, chancellor and BoR working without the knowledge of the other(s), for instance.) There's just no damn telling. Here's the agenda for the meeting. https://www.tamus.edu/regents/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2021/07/AGENDA-July-26-2021-Special-BOR-Meeting-Telephonic-2.pdf Now, assuming this is a fait accompli with Texas and OU: Possible 9-game conference schedule using proposed pods Alabama, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, LSU, Ole Miss, Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma I'd guess there would be an attempt to avoid scheduling what are considered traditional powers from other pods simultaneously if it is purely rotating...also, would there be a permanent opponent from each of the other pods? That would give 6 permanent games, leaving three to rotate.

It would be incredibly short-sighted for A&M to leave the SEC, period, full stop. There is no telling what will come out of their BoR meeting on Monday, though. Another way this could be looked at is that Texas and OU coming in would completely validate A&M's decision to leave the moribund Big XII a decade ago for greener pastures both financial and for inter-school cooperation. If there's any truth to A&M being left out of the conversation re: expansion, then that would feel like a betrayal of the spirit of why A&M sought to come to the SEC (a conference of equal partners). It's not for no reason at all that multiple schools got the hell out of the Big XII when the opportunity presented itself. If nothing else, this is filling up the dog days of summer with lots of conversation and idle speculation. It's like 2010/2011 all over again.

Excerpts from an interview with A&M's president in 2011, Dr. Loftin

Ah, I hadn't seen it, scout's honor. Still not convinced this would work very well for determining a football champion, though.

Semi-related, but here is an article that looks back on the breakup of the old SWC in 1995. A look back at the end of the SWC, 25 years later

More unsolicited spit-balling from here... Pod 1: Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri Pod 2: LSU, A&M, Mississippi, Mississippi State Pod 3: Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee, Vanderbilt Pod 4: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky