Oh golly, Texas A&M.
When we moved to Austin, I was curious about the in-state rivalries here beneath the Lone Star. My obsession with in-state rivalries everywhere was growing, spurred on by a 2017 visit to Manhattan for Farmageddon and the generosity Kansas State fans showed me, in an Iowa State sweatshirt, while making it explicitly clear they would not show the same kindness to fans from KU, Oklahoma, or—God forbid they ever scheduled them—Iowa. My impressions of Texas fans were mixed. On the one hand, some of my best friends were Longhorn alumni. On the other, I’d gone to one Texas game—the Notre Dame one, in 2016—and sat alongside Texas fan strangers who were buffoons. Meanwhile, I knew Texas A&M had a tough reputation in the not-being-losers department, but they’re the ag school. If my friends with the Busch Lights outside Bill Snyder Family Stadium taught me anything, it was loyalty to agriculturally affiliated football teams.
It is so hard to like Texas A&M.
There are teams it’s hard to like for competitive reasons: Alabama, the 90s Yankees, UConn women’s basketball. There are teams it’s hard to like for moral reasons: Baylor, the Astros, the Duke Blue Devils under Mike Krzyzewski. Then there are teams it’s hard to like because there is just nothing to like about them. Texas A&M’s men’s basketball is staying above this. There is an abundance to like about Buzz Williams. But Texas A&M’s football program is the laughingstock of the nation, and they’re bringing it upon themselves. Let’s watch the tape:
What we’re watching here is Yell Practice, and if you were alarmed when you saw how many old people show up to this, you weren’t alone. I also had always just pictured students there, and I’m also having the realization that of course this is something alums from the 70s love. Students at A&M hate the yell leaders, right? And not in a jealous way? Oh man. To be jealous of the yell leaders. Pity on anyone in that seat.
By the time you read this, it’s possible the clip will be taken down. Many other tweets with the video embedded have been removed by Twitter in response to copyright complaints, leading most to suspect that Texas A&M is, in a backfiring effort to save themselves embarrassment, exercising what is evidently their legal ownership of the dumb shit their kiddos say into microphones on Friday nights. So, if that’s what’s happened, or if you’re reading this on the toilet at work and you can’t turn the sound on (watch out for memeleg, Derek), the gist of the video is that the guy talking is saying mean things about Appalachian State, specifically that, oh boy, Appalachia isn’t a state (great originality, sir), that the A&M defense is going to maul these guys (they didn’t), and that this team might not make it to College Station because they are a “hillbilly college” whose students probably can’t read a map.
Setting aside the offensiveness question (go ahead, imagine a yell leader saying parallel things about an HBCU)…buddy. Come on.
First of all, there’s a rule that you don’t mess with Appalachian State, because they will kill you. I think it was Spencer Hall this week who compared them to a snake big programs find on the side of the road and try to domesticate. Don’t do that. They are venomous, and they will bite. Secondly, you go to Texas A&M! You’re in the boonies yourself! There aren’t even interstates in College Station! And then for your big punchline to be about reading a map, as though App State’s players were driving over here with your grandma’s road atlas? Golly. (I mean, the interstate thing would make a drive tough if you didn’t have a smartphone. Maybe there isn’t good reception around College Station?)
I want to know how Texas Tech and Texas A&M ended up so different. At Texas Tech, they make bonfires out of scooters and blockade Chris Beard’s bus. At Texas A&M, they give the biggest dorks on campus microphones and tell them to speak for the whole school. Someone explain this all to me. How has the state not stepped in yet to intervene?
So Who’s Hurt for Texas?
I’m trying to keep the injuries straight for the Horns, and I think what I’m seeing is that Quinn Ewers is definitely out this week, but might be back in the next month; that Hudson Card’s questionable for Saturday with the ankle injury; that Bijan Robinson is going to play but his shoulder does hurt; and that D’Shawn Jamison is questionable with an ankle injury of his own. It’s a weird buy game, playing feisty UTSA. The Roadrunners haven’t looked good enough for this to get too much trap game hype, which does lay the trap a bit. Seems like Texas is going to want to jump on them early and get the starters out of there, but the risk is high that they won’t be able to do that.
It Was the Governor’s Fault
There’s more news out about Brett Favre defrauding the state of Mississippi out of five million dollars in welfare funds to build a new volleyball arena at Southern Miss, and it looks great for Favre. The big headline? Governor Phil Bryant was involved. At that point, Favre is just serving his state. Relieving.
NASCAR News
Kyle Busch is moving over to Richard Childress Racing next year, having evidently secured sponsorship to drive the #8 car, with Tyler Reddick moving to an unnumbered, soon-to-be-added third car, implying Austin Dillon, Childress’s grandson, stays put in the #3. Childress, who infamously handed his watch to Dillon in 2011 before going Nolan Ryan on Busch’s ass (head, actually), also brings Busch over to the Chevrolet side, meaning Busch’s truck series team is a Chevy bunch now (and has always been at war with Eastasia).
Reddick moving to a third car amplifies the awkwardness of an already awkward final year for him at RCR, one that’ll be even funnier every time he wins in 2023 (and it’s likely he’ll win at least a time or two in 2023, even if the new team stinks). It’s also expensive for Childress, which leads some to think he’s trying to leverage Reddick and 23XI—Reddick’s employer for 2024 and beyond—to pay up and take Reddick earlier than previously planned.
The messiness of this could lead some to argue that NASCAR needs a more formalized free agent window. This line of thinking ignores how fun it is to have a driver sign a contract seventeen months before his current one expires. In larger sports, sure, it would be too much chaos, but there’s such a limited number of NASCAR drivers that this is mostly fun.
In other news, NASCAR’s either released its schedule or we’re still looking at the Jordan Bianchi acquisition of it, but we’ve got NASCAR’s schedule. The Daytona 500 is a week after the Super Bowl, as we knew, and from there the series heads out west, much like this year. Austin’s race is still in March, which is a bummer for those of us who live in Austin and blog about the NIT during March. The Bristol Dirt Race is on Easter Sunday again, chasing it across the lunar calendar. The All-Star Race, as we knew, is at North Wilkesboro, and the Chicago Street Race takes over the Fourth of July weekend (though the Fourth is on a Tuesday next year, as we enter two straight years of non-three day weekends for America’s Birthday [the Leap Year in 2024 saves us from it going three years this way]). I’m seeing the Indy Road Course listed rather than the big oval, which is a shame, and we do have back-to-back road courses right before Daytona to end the regular season, which makes me wonder whether NASCAR, realizing it’s hard to pass at road courses in this new car, is trying to manufacture a little lull in the madness before the playoff field gets set in the fires of northeast Florida.
Overall, nothing too great or bad about the schedule. The Xfinity Series still is going to race at Road America. The trucks are going to the Milwaukee Mile, but they won’t race on the dirt at Knoxville. We win some, we lose some, Midwesterners.
Did the Sens Say Something?
The Senators made a little move today, signing Tyler Motte, 27 years old and evidently known as a grinder. Motte is a forward, and with Ottawa a little overloaded there, the assumption is that this has something to do with Alex Formenton, and possibly with Drake Batherson as well. As we’ll say every time we talk about those two right now, we don’t know what their involvement or lack of involvement is with the ongoing Hockey Canada investigation, and things like justice and well-being of the survivor at the center of that investigation are a bigger deal than what the investigation means for the Sens, but—this does seem to say something about Formenton and Batherson.
Formenton, a restricted free agent, remains unsigned. He also remains present in trade discussions surrounding an addition to the defense corps, somewhere the Sens are not overloaded. So, this could imply a belief that Formenton and Batherson are on their way to suspensions, it could imply that Formenton’s getting traded for a blue-liner, it could imply that the Senators don’t want to give a contract to a guy in the middle of an investigation so they aren’t going to do anything beyond leave the qualifying offer to Formenton on the table and move ahead as though he isn’t going to sign it. I’m a little over my head here, but that’s what I’m gathering.
Another Disappointing Derby
Burnley tied down at Preston North End (no, Preston doesn’t have a second team but they may have had a second cricket club way back in the 1870s when these guys started playing soccer, and to do the things we always do with these Championship opponents: Preston’s nickname’s the Lilywhites, they were a founding member of the league but haven’t been in the top division in sixty years, the city’s population’s a little over one hundred thousand and it’s right between Blackburn and Blackpool where the River Ribble starts to widen so I’m going to call it a bigger version of Appleton), and that’s fine but a win would have, again, been nice. Unlike other games where the chances have been there and the lads haven’t finished, the chances weren’t there so much even with Burnley possessing the ball pretty much all night. So, hopefully that’s a PNE thing and not a Burnley thing (I’ve seen “PNE” more than “Preston” so we’re going to use “PNE” outside of times we forget from now on). Fifth in the table with some of the matchday left to go, still third among the big five. Bristol City at home on Saturday.
In other news, Darko Churlinov is going to miss two months with an unspecified injury, and the Norwich game’s been rescheduled for October 25th.
**
Viewing schedule:
2:10 PM EDT: Rockies @ White Sox (MLB TV)
Will Joe Kelly save the White Sox season yet again?
7:10 PM EDT: Cubs @ Mets (MLB TV)
Ho hum, Cubs go for the sweep of the NL East-leading New York Mets. As one would expect from these Cubs.
