Green to the Bone

You wouldn't be saying that if you had seen the UNT Dancers' "Santa Baby" routine during halftime last night.

Yeah, I'd call that the "keeping up appearances" approach. Precious few of those special-deal group seats will be sold at any price, and in the end, many are basically given away. There may also be some NCAA rule on how deep the discount can be and have it still be called "paid attendance." Part of the problem is having the NOB in a large venue. It takes 69,000 to 72,000 to fill the Superdome, depending on the configuration for a particular game. If they had it in a smaller place, say 40,000, the best crowds we drew there (25-27,000) would look pretty good. I only got to attend the first NOB, and gee, did it look empty. Of course, if you're trying to make your 700 people seem like a crowd, you might want to have the game in the back banquet room at the Golden Corral. Lots of fried stuff and a nice salad bar to boot.

I was with you until this last sentence. I'm not sure what you mean by "gender-equity sports" or by the whole sentence. If you're suggesting that women's sports exist just because federal law requires it, and that a lower level of performance is accepted because of that, you might want to go see the UNT soccer team: Sun Belt champions 2001, 2004 & 2005, and runner-up 2006 and 2007. The softball team is also very good. The volleyball team has struggled, but they currently have one of the best players in NCAA history in Brooke Engel. This WBB problem is a team-specific problem, not a gender-equity problem. It's fixable the same way any chronic performance problem is fixable: by a change in either coaching performance or coaching personnel. No need to inject the team's lack of a Y chromosome into the issue.

Just got back. Final: 77-55.

At the half, OSU 36, UNT 26. I'm shutting down the laptop cuz the battery's running out. Which may also describe what's happening on the floor.

You are astute. Many second- and third-tier bowl games hand out zillions of tickets to youth teams, corporate sponsors, glad-handers, hangers-on, the chamber of commerce, car dealers -- you get the picture. Anything to make the stands look somewhat less naked. It's hard to blame them. If you're the local organizer and you've worked your butt off to make the game a success, you don't want the thing to look like the economic flop that it might actually be. It's disheartening.

Take a picture of this post for your archives or memoirs: We're ahead, 17-15, at 9:05. So far I'm sorta underwhelmed by #20 OSU.

For what it's worth, I'm in the Pit right now. We're outnumbered, fanwise, about two or three to one. First half, 17:17, tied 2-2. Make that behind, 4-2. No, wait, tied 4-4, 16:52. No, wait, behind 6-4. Keeping it moderately close so far, but I'm going to stop typing now. Except for this: According to the program, TS is career 232-275. Kurt Budke is only 34-34 in three years at OSU, but his career record -- can this possibly be right? -- is listed as 387-81. Astonishing. OK, one more update, then I'm out: We're behind 8-7 at 15:17.

1. We should start planning the sale of chunks of Fouts. People might pay $25 for a chunk of concrete or a square foot of playing field turf, mounted on an engraved plaque; maybe $100 for one of the reserved seats, again with an engraved plaque attached. We could auction off some of the signature items like signs, etc. The sale process could start when a new stadium is actually announced. For that matter, certain people might bid for the right to push the demolition button on Fouts. I'm only half kidding about that. 2. The web site of Central Austin State University's athletic program has a way to buy pictures, etc. autographed by Mack Brown and the players. They say they channel all requests through a central portal to reduce the workload and avoid NCAA problems re: demands on players. I'm not sure what kind of workload and time demand our requests would generate at this point, but do we have any type of autographed item sale system? 3. Not all of us can afford to fund a team meeting room or weight room or whatever. But some of us might get a thrill out of sponsoring, say, the opening kickoff game ball. I'm actually not kidding about this. Your donation of $100 (undiscounted retail MSRP of a Wilson NCAA game ball) isn't actually buying that particular ball, of course, but your sponsorship is listed in the program, and you get a certificate and a color photograph of "your" ball being kicked off or caught by our guy. 4. I thought about charging $1200 a year for a secret insider newsletter, but then I found out that's been done already. Despite the joke, the first three actually are serious suggestions.

Heck, after sitting through that entire game, I deserved a ship. Anybody who's a good player and sat through that game deserves a look.

"If that deal goes through"? What deal? Do we start having to wear aluminum foil on our heads to keep out the cosmic rays sent out by SMU and its CIA puppets?

Confidential to Dennis Franchione.

No, no, I'm sure it was supposed to be real! She seemed so -- so willing! But then it went all wrong! All I got was some guy from Nigeria telling me to send my info so he could process my winnings in the Sumatran lottery, so I did, but instead he stole all my money! And then the hot girl still didn't show up! I just wanted love -- it that so wrong?

Snap. Nobody's talking about TD to SMU except people who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Let's move on to other topics we're more expert on, such as alien autopsies or secret Masonic conspiracies.

The official word was that he'd miss one game, but I thought it looked pretty painful and/or swollen from the way he was walking yesterday. Still a week until the Southern game, but it didn't look like he'd be running and jumping too soon. Anybody have any better perspective than I do, perhaps from having had such surgery?

Did TD tell you this?

First, go back and read the original post in this thread to which I responded, which said a. the stadium RFQ is just a diversionary repackaging of the Goldfields' donation and b. it is not possible to have a good academic reputation without having a good athletic reputation. Point a is factually incorrect. End of that discussion. Point b is just silly. Are athletics great for recruiting? Sure. No one could argue otherwise. But as noted, OU has lots of merit scholars because they hand out free school for them, not because of Bob Stoops. Have Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Duke, Emory, Davidson, Northwestern, etc., failed to build good academic reputations because they have little or no athletic reputation? Do their graduates not get hired because they're not BCS contenders (or in some cases don't even play football)? Has SMU's miserable athletic reputation kept many Dallas-based law firms from hiring SMU law grads? Please. Athletics are terrific advertising, but let's keep things in perspective.

The Goldfields' money was for a feasibility study, which is not the subject of the recent RFQ. So I think your starting premise is wrong. Your point about academics and athletics is debatable as well. UT-D is widely regarded as a highly competitive university but has virtually no athletics. Among privates, Rice is a nationally respected university while having an athletic program that is essentially an afterthought. OU may be attractive to new freshmen and donors because of its athletics, but it enjoys no academic distinction. I'm for a new stadium. But I'm a bigger fan of facts and logic.

That was something he did to himself. I just think there's a line to be drawn.

I'll play the role of downer. It has nothing to do with the game. Just strikes me the wrong way.

Stats and speed and such are nice in a player, but the name's gotta do something, too. We've got a good one here. Just imagine Tim saying this during the pregame intro: "At Cornerback -- from Athens, Texas -- Cordariouuuuus MINNNNGO!"

That video was kind of a what-if. I believe they are now asking for a design firm to come forward and, if selected, work out the ten zillion details that would let the university actually build it. Also, the real-life architecture could wind up looking different from the video.

"Finals" sounds so, um, final. I remind the students that they'll get to take these so-called "finals" again in May. So they'll be there Saturday.

I can't believe I'm having to remind people that the big local donor needs to be The Tomato. Mean Green Tomato Field. We'll even go retro and resurrect the name The Flying Tomato, which will become the nickname for a Vizza pass. I'm still working on how we can tap into that big chicken finger money by calling the visiting team Chicken Express. Will advise.

Time to give Coach Archie the definitive last word on this and close this topic.