50-48 #60: EMERGENCY UPDATE: ARKANSAS GIVES VARIOUS INDIAN NATIONS THE FINGER, WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY THROWING LITTER OUT OF ITS CAR. THEN THE INDIANS SLOWLY TURN THEIR HEADS, THE CAMERA ZOOMS IN, AND THEY CRY A SINGLE LONELY TEAR.
Did you know that the Choctaw word for “red” is “okla” and the Choctaw word for “people” is “humma”? Put them together, and you get Oklahoma, Red People, Indian Territory. You also get a basketball team that can’t hold the Razorbacks’ jock.
Hogs 96, Sooners 88. Suck it, Red People!
Here’s some stats:
CLICK.
To wit, CLICK. What a glorious way to close out this shitty year! What a way to usher in 2009, flush as it is with the hope and promise of all stories that have yet to be told. Sleep well, you princes of Arkansas, you kings of the South. The future is bright.
The 50-48 hiatus will be continuing for a brief while, but we’ll return in the new year stronger than ever, providing the sort of penetrating analysis that you’ve come to expect from us. We’ll break down the basketball season, update the status of the hallucinatory possum outside our apartment, engage in hypothetical digressions on aliens, zombies, and unicorns, and swoon hopelessly over the possibilities for this year’s Diamond Hogs.
Have a great New Year. Don’t die. Don’t contract a venereal disease. And remember: if you find yourself in a dark and musty pit, and you look up and see a shirtless man staring down at you, petting a small white dog, put the lotion in the basket. Don’t be a hero.
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
50-48 #59: A BRIEF BASKETBALL PREVIEW, IN LIEU OF SOMETHING LONGER AND MORE PERVERSE, WHICH IS SURE TO COME SOMETIME SOON
50-48 #59: A BRIEF BASKETBALL PREVIEW, IN LIEU OF SOMETHING LONGER AND MORE PERVERSE, WHICH IS SURE TO COME SOMETIME SOON
Okee doke. Football over. Basketball beginning. Let’s unpack these facts and see what semiotic residue when can scrape from the corners of this white-tiled reality. Shall we?
We’re 6-1 going into the Jim Thorpe on Wednesday, our only loss coming to Missouri State in Springfield. Also, Southeastern Louisiana took us into overtime. These things being what they are, it might behoove all of us to brace ourselves for an up-and-down season. Such is the nature of playing with a heavy freshman population.
BUT: Though we suffered myriad defensive lapses early and played inferior teams far too closely, our last three games have been handy victories, with an average 20-point ass-kicking margin. In that last one, a 98-70 win over North Carolina Central, freshman Courtney Fortsen managed to avoid whiplash from his massive dreadlocks and gave the Hogs their second triple-double in history.
We have four—FOUR!—Hogs averaging double figures in points: Courtney is leading the way with 15.4, followed by finally-playing-to-his-potential Michael Washington with 14.9, superstar shooting guard and soon-to-be-freshman-sensation Rotnei Clark with 14.3, and stalwart Stefan Welsh (lonely as he may be without backcourt mate Pat Beverly this season) with 10.4. Michael Sanchez is managing 8.7 points and 7.9 rebounds. He’s all feet and elbows and this point, but what he lacks in aesthetic grace is compensated for by (hopefully) genuine potential.
Remember: Stefan and Michael are juniors, but everyone else is an underclassman. Thus the positive vibes that come from seeing us spread our point-margin in the last three games, lowly as they might be to FAMU, Texas Southern, and the aforementioned NCC.
The point to all of this is that even though the team hasn’t performed like a contender so far, there is reason to believe that the boys will be stout by the end of the season. Before we get to conference, however, we have two hellacious tests: Okiehoma on December 30, and Texas on January 6. If you are reading this in Fayetteville, and you are not at those games, I’m not going to be your friend anymore. The youngsters need all the help they can get. Besides, everybody likes screaming obscenities at Okiehoma and Texas. To quote Teach from David Mamet’s American Buffalo: Guys like that, I like to fuck their wives.
At the same time, however, we need to brace ourselves for possible losses. God help me I would sell my soul to beat Texas, and I would sell all of your souls, as well. But we might not be ready quite yet. Regardless, it’s a decent nonconference schedule that should get us ready for the SEC on January 10.
Either way, there will be highs and lows. There will be, to wit, giant bulls running at us, but at the same time we will often manage feats of unimaginable grace in the face of such bulls. (click.)
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
PS: NOTE TO REFEREES IN THE TEXAS GAME: If you start giving Texas your typical bullshit sycophantic calls, BEWARE.
PPS: We here at 50-48 love Texas Tech, BUT STOP FUCKING COPYING US, BRUTHA!
Okee doke. Football over. Basketball beginning. Let’s unpack these facts and see what semiotic residue when can scrape from the corners of this white-tiled reality. Shall we?
We’re 6-1 going into the Jim Thorpe on Wednesday, our only loss coming to Missouri State in Springfield. Also, Southeastern Louisiana took us into overtime. These things being what they are, it might behoove all of us to brace ourselves for an up-and-down season. Such is the nature of playing with a heavy freshman population.
BUT: Though we suffered myriad defensive lapses early and played inferior teams far too closely, our last three games have been handy victories, with an average 20-point ass-kicking margin. In that last one, a 98-70 win over North Carolina Central, freshman Courtney Fortsen managed to avoid whiplash from his massive dreadlocks and gave the Hogs their second triple-double in history.
We have four—FOUR!—Hogs averaging double figures in points: Courtney is leading the way with 15.4, followed by finally-playing-to-his-potential Michael Washington with 14.9, superstar shooting guard and soon-to-be-freshman-sensation Rotnei Clark with 14.3, and stalwart Stefan Welsh (lonely as he may be without backcourt mate Pat Beverly this season) with 10.4. Michael Sanchez is managing 8.7 points and 7.9 rebounds. He’s all feet and elbows and this point, but what he lacks in aesthetic grace is compensated for by (hopefully) genuine potential.
Remember: Stefan and Michael are juniors, but everyone else is an underclassman. Thus the positive vibes that come from seeing us spread our point-margin in the last three games, lowly as they might be to FAMU, Texas Southern, and the aforementioned NCC.
The point to all of this is that even though the team hasn’t performed like a contender so far, there is reason to believe that the boys will be stout by the end of the season. Before we get to conference, however, we have two hellacious tests: Okiehoma on December 30, and Texas on January 6. If you are reading this in Fayetteville, and you are not at those games, I’m not going to be your friend anymore. The youngsters need all the help they can get. Besides, everybody likes screaming obscenities at Okiehoma and Texas. To quote Teach from David Mamet’s American Buffalo: Guys like that, I like to fuck their wives.
At the same time, however, we need to brace ourselves for possible losses. God help me I would sell my soul to beat Texas, and I would sell all of your souls, as well. But we might not be ready quite yet. Regardless, it’s a decent nonconference schedule that should get us ready for the SEC on January 10.
Either way, there will be highs and lows. There will be, to wit, giant bulls running at us, but at the same time we will often manage feats of unimaginable grace in the face of such bulls. (click.)
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
PS: NOTE TO REFEREES IN THE TEXAS GAME: If you start giving Texas your typical bullshit sycophantic calls, BEWARE.
PPS: We here at 50-48 love Texas Tech, BUT STOP FUCKING COPYING US, BRUTHA!
Thursday, December 4, 2008
50-48 #58: MACK BROWN IS THE DEVIL
50-48 #58: MACK BROWN IS THE DEVIL
In 2006, Texas A&M defeated Texas in Austin during the last regular season game of the season. In the final coach’s poll of the season—the one in which coaches are required to attach their names to their choices—Mack Brown ranked his team ahead of Texas A&M.
In 2007, Texas A&M defeated Texas in College Station during the last regular season game of the season. In the final coach’s poll of the season—the one in which coaches are required to attach their names to their choices—Mack Brown ranked his team ahead of Texas A&M.
In 2008, Texas Tech defeated Texas in Lubbock during the heart of the regular season. In the final coach’s poll of the season—the one that will come out next week—Mack Brown will rank his team ahead of Texas Tech.
But somewhere in between that second and third paragraph, Mack Brown began pissing and moaning about head-to-head matchups as being the ultimate arbiter of championship status. How is it that Mack Brown can think his team is better than Texas Tech (to whom he lost) and Oklahoma (whom he defeated), and still emphasize the viability of head-to-head matchups? How is it that he can think that his team was better than Texas A&M two years in a row, even after losing to them both times? Hypocrisy, thy name is Bevo.
This seeming paradox cannot be reconciled because it isn’t actually a paradox. It is rather a mangled form of reductio ad absurdum by Mack Brown—a shell game designed to magnify his plight to ridiculous ends in the hopes that people will forget the core reality of his situation. And judging by the chatter on sports television and radio, it’s working. Sports fans, as much as I love them, have never been the brightest bulbs on the tree.
What’s missing from the sanctimonious calls for head-to-head matchups is the fact that college football has NEVER been dependent upon such realities. This is the same inherent flaw in similar sanctimonious calls for a college football playoff system. Such has never been a part of the college football pantheon.
A playoff works in the NFL, for example, because all teams are given the same resources. There is a level playing field, making all teams essentially equal at the start of the season. When a playoff arrives, it is a modification of a regular season where all teams play each other, with an equal pay scale, an equivalent schedule, etc.
But such is not the case in college football. 1A teams are not working with equal resources, with equal recruits. There is no draft to ensure that talent is spread evenly throughout. There is no uniform scheduling mandate. The BCS, for example, arbitrarily includes basketball conferences such as the Big East, ACC, and Pac-10, even though these conferences are patently undeserving of their status. Cincinnati, for example, will be representing the Big East in the BCS this season, after being included in the conference a couple of years ago. Is Cincinnati as talented as TCU, Boise State, BYU, Utah, et. al.? Of course not. The one difference between Cincinnati and those schools is that they were invited in mid-decade to join the Big East. Their program didn’t change. Their facilities and their resources didn’t change. They just put a new conference logo on their jerseys. Their schedule didn’t get appreciably harder, because the Big East is not a football conference. Its best teams left years ago to join the ACC. Everyone in the Big East would happily acknowledge that Utah had a stronger football program, but Utah was far, far away out west. Cincinnati was close enough to the East Coast to make them a viable candidate. Plus, they had a strong basketball team.
You see? The arbitrariness of the system leaves no room for the precision of a playoff. USC, for example, has probably more talent than anyone in the country. They do their best to play a relatively strong non-conference schedule. Unlike all of the teams in my beloved SEC, USC does not schedule 1AA cupcakes. But USC cannot be a viable candidate for the national championship game because they play in a horrible conference. It isn’t their fault. They’ve always been in the Pac-10. (On this subject, were I the athletic director at USC, I would be demanding that the Pac-10 make overtures to BYU and Utah to create a twelve-team conference, complete with a championship game. And yes, believe me, I like saying nice things about USC just about as much as you like reading them, but—to use my favorite sports cliché—it is what it is.)
The third best conference in the country this season is, far and away, the Mountain West, just behind the SEC and Big 12. But the conference’s inconsistency in securing big-time recruits and its distance from major media markets ensures that it will never be considered a BCS conference. In a playoff system, would the Mountain West be given an automatic bid into the tournament? Who knows? And, if they were, would they deserve it every year? Probably not.
But, wait, 50-48, you might be saying. What about the NCAA basketball tournament? That works. Yes it does. But that’s because a 64-team tournament allows for enough teams into the system to ensure that the best teams are included. While some deserving teams on the outside of the 64-team circle might be left out, all legitimate title contenders can be included into the system because of its girth. In addition, with the more limited skill set, relative lack of positional specialization, and far-reaching AAU playing and evaluating system, the competitive distance between the various teams and conferences is far smaller. Also, the lack of physical demand that basketball puts on a player’s body (compared to football; we here at 50-48 are not presuming that basketball is easy by any means) makes a large-scale tournament with multiple games per weekend a real possibility. It is not a possibility in football.
What all of these basketball checks make up for, of course, is the fact that half of the tournament invitations are chosen by a selection committee—not by conference championships. Football doesn’t have such checks, but it does have the same core problem. The college football rankings are not based on wins and losses, not based on similar competitive schedules, but rather on the opinions of sportswriters, all of whom are judging how a 50-point victory against Louisiana-Monroe, for example, compares to a 5-point win over Purdue. Again, it is all arbitrary. In such a system, a playoff becomes just as silly as the BCS.
The two core elements of this argument are objectivity and history.
There is no objective standard for judging who are the “best” teams. Records don’t work, because the schedules are so varied. Recruits don’t work, because teams like Notre Dame who get great recruiting classes stink on hot ice. Conference championships don’t work, because all conferences—including all conferences in the BCS—are not created equal.
And history tells us that objectivity doesn’t matter anyway. National championships in college football have always been mythical—have always been the choice of sportswriters. It wasn’t until the 1970s that bowl games even counted towards championships. Bowl games were designed as showcases for certain cities, who invited teams who received significant publicity throughout the season to play an exhibition at their local venue. Let me say that again—exhibitions. When the Hogs won their national championship in 1964, for example, they were chosen prior to their bowl game win. They shared the championship with Alabama.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind the bowl games counting as part of the press’s championship voting. If that system had been in place in 1964, Arkansas wouldn’t have had to share the title with Alabama. (Joe Willie Namath got his ass waxed in the Orange Bowl that season.)
But regardless, the championship has always been arbitrary. Now, the BCS doesn’t even use the AP poll to determine champions. It uses the coach’s poll—a poll created by coaches who don’t watch college football because they’re busy with their own teams on Saturday. Liars and con men like Mack Brown vote in that poll. And Mack Brown has proven time and time again that he votes with his bias for Texas more than any legitimately objective standard. And on the strength of a system like this we want to create a playoff? (By the way, Bob Stoops does not get a vote in the coach’s poll. Arbitrary, arbitrary, arbitrary.)
Ultimately, there is no way to combat the arbitrary nature of college football polling. It is inherent in the system. There is no polling without arbitrariness. And there is no college football without polling. Instead of trying to fix an unfixable system, why not enjoy college football for what it is. 50-48 suggests going back to the pre-BCS system. Was it really so horrible when the coaches and AP split and gave us two national champions? Is it really such a bad thing to win a conference championship and make the argument that the sportswriters got it wrong? The whole impetus behind the BCS was to create better television matchups for ABC. That was the only reason.
Remember, college football was built through the conference system. Conference championships were always the most important part of college football. And conferences were created to match like universities in a certain region. Not universities with similar resources regardless of region, all agreeing upon a standardized schedule so an objective decision could be made on a legitimate national champion.
And speaking of legitimacy, let us return briefly to Texas, crying as it is about the Big 12 Championship Game. In the three-way tie between Texas, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma, it is Oklahoma who has the strongest non-conference schedule. It is Oklahoma who has higher offensive and defensive rankings. It is Oklahoma who is ahead in the polls. Are these categories arbitrary? Of course they are. But they are what we have. As far as “better” can be determined in the hit-or-miss game of gauging success in college football, Oklahoma has all the earmarks.
Look carefully at Mack Brown’s ballot when the final coach’s poll comes out. If he places Texas above Texas Tech, which he surely will, any pity argument he tries to make will immediately become invalid.
So, to sum up:
1. A playoff will never be tenable in a system based on voting.
Voting has always been a constituent part of college football.
Therefore, a playoff is untenable for college football.
2. Everyone who voluntarily wears burnt orange is a monumental dick.
Mack Brown voluntarily wears burnt orange.
Therefore, Mack Brown is a monumental dick.
QED.
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
PS: We here at 50-48 are very cognizant of the fact that this isn’t a fully systematic argument, and that it tends to rambling in spots. But rambling is par for the course here. And we’ve been frittering our time away with work and depression, leaving little time to shore up the loose ends. Forgive our mess!
PPS: On this very topic: BOOMER SOONER.
In 2006, Texas A&M defeated Texas in Austin during the last regular season game of the season. In the final coach’s poll of the season—the one in which coaches are required to attach their names to their choices—Mack Brown ranked his team ahead of Texas A&M.
In 2007, Texas A&M defeated Texas in College Station during the last regular season game of the season. In the final coach’s poll of the season—the one in which coaches are required to attach their names to their choices—Mack Brown ranked his team ahead of Texas A&M.
In 2008, Texas Tech defeated Texas in Lubbock during the heart of the regular season. In the final coach’s poll of the season—the one that will come out next week—Mack Brown will rank his team ahead of Texas Tech.
But somewhere in between that second and third paragraph, Mack Brown began pissing and moaning about head-to-head matchups as being the ultimate arbiter of championship status. How is it that Mack Brown can think his team is better than Texas Tech (to whom he lost) and Oklahoma (whom he defeated), and still emphasize the viability of head-to-head matchups? How is it that he can think that his team was better than Texas A&M two years in a row, even after losing to them both times? Hypocrisy, thy name is Bevo.
This seeming paradox cannot be reconciled because it isn’t actually a paradox. It is rather a mangled form of reductio ad absurdum by Mack Brown—a shell game designed to magnify his plight to ridiculous ends in the hopes that people will forget the core reality of his situation. And judging by the chatter on sports television and radio, it’s working. Sports fans, as much as I love them, have never been the brightest bulbs on the tree.
What’s missing from the sanctimonious calls for head-to-head matchups is the fact that college football has NEVER been dependent upon such realities. This is the same inherent flaw in similar sanctimonious calls for a college football playoff system. Such has never been a part of the college football pantheon.
A playoff works in the NFL, for example, because all teams are given the same resources. There is a level playing field, making all teams essentially equal at the start of the season. When a playoff arrives, it is a modification of a regular season where all teams play each other, with an equal pay scale, an equivalent schedule, etc.
But such is not the case in college football. 1A teams are not working with equal resources, with equal recruits. There is no draft to ensure that talent is spread evenly throughout. There is no uniform scheduling mandate. The BCS, for example, arbitrarily includes basketball conferences such as the Big East, ACC, and Pac-10, even though these conferences are patently undeserving of their status. Cincinnati, for example, will be representing the Big East in the BCS this season, after being included in the conference a couple of years ago. Is Cincinnati as talented as TCU, Boise State, BYU, Utah, et. al.? Of course not. The one difference between Cincinnati and those schools is that they were invited in mid-decade to join the Big East. Their program didn’t change. Their facilities and their resources didn’t change. They just put a new conference logo on their jerseys. Their schedule didn’t get appreciably harder, because the Big East is not a football conference. Its best teams left years ago to join the ACC. Everyone in the Big East would happily acknowledge that Utah had a stronger football program, but Utah was far, far away out west. Cincinnati was close enough to the East Coast to make them a viable candidate. Plus, they had a strong basketball team.
You see? The arbitrariness of the system leaves no room for the precision of a playoff. USC, for example, has probably more talent than anyone in the country. They do their best to play a relatively strong non-conference schedule. Unlike all of the teams in my beloved SEC, USC does not schedule 1AA cupcakes. But USC cannot be a viable candidate for the national championship game because they play in a horrible conference. It isn’t their fault. They’ve always been in the Pac-10. (On this subject, were I the athletic director at USC, I would be demanding that the Pac-10 make overtures to BYU and Utah to create a twelve-team conference, complete with a championship game. And yes, believe me, I like saying nice things about USC just about as much as you like reading them, but—to use my favorite sports cliché—it is what it is.)
The third best conference in the country this season is, far and away, the Mountain West, just behind the SEC and Big 12. But the conference’s inconsistency in securing big-time recruits and its distance from major media markets ensures that it will never be considered a BCS conference. In a playoff system, would the Mountain West be given an automatic bid into the tournament? Who knows? And, if they were, would they deserve it every year? Probably not.
But, wait, 50-48, you might be saying. What about the NCAA basketball tournament? That works. Yes it does. But that’s because a 64-team tournament allows for enough teams into the system to ensure that the best teams are included. While some deserving teams on the outside of the 64-team circle might be left out, all legitimate title contenders can be included into the system because of its girth. In addition, with the more limited skill set, relative lack of positional specialization, and far-reaching AAU playing and evaluating system, the competitive distance between the various teams and conferences is far smaller. Also, the lack of physical demand that basketball puts on a player’s body (compared to football; we here at 50-48 are not presuming that basketball is easy by any means) makes a large-scale tournament with multiple games per weekend a real possibility. It is not a possibility in football.
What all of these basketball checks make up for, of course, is the fact that half of the tournament invitations are chosen by a selection committee—not by conference championships. Football doesn’t have such checks, but it does have the same core problem. The college football rankings are not based on wins and losses, not based on similar competitive schedules, but rather on the opinions of sportswriters, all of whom are judging how a 50-point victory against Louisiana-Monroe, for example, compares to a 5-point win over Purdue. Again, it is all arbitrary. In such a system, a playoff becomes just as silly as the BCS.
The two core elements of this argument are objectivity and history.
There is no objective standard for judging who are the “best” teams. Records don’t work, because the schedules are so varied. Recruits don’t work, because teams like Notre Dame who get great recruiting classes stink on hot ice. Conference championships don’t work, because all conferences—including all conferences in the BCS—are not created equal.
And history tells us that objectivity doesn’t matter anyway. National championships in college football have always been mythical—have always been the choice of sportswriters. It wasn’t until the 1970s that bowl games even counted towards championships. Bowl games were designed as showcases for certain cities, who invited teams who received significant publicity throughout the season to play an exhibition at their local venue. Let me say that again—exhibitions. When the Hogs won their national championship in 1964, for example, they were chosen prior to their bowl game win. They shared the championship with Alabama.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind the bowl games counting as part of the press’s championship voting. If that system had been in place in 1964, Arkansas wouldn’t have had to share the title with Alabama. (Joe Willie Namath got his ass waxed in the Orange Bowl that season.)
But regardless, the championship has always been arbitrary. Now, the BCS doesn’t even use the AP poll to determine champions. It uses the coach’s poll—a poll created by coaches who don’t watch college football because they’re busy with their own teams on Saturday. Liars and con men like Mack Brown vote in that poll. And Mack Brown has proven time and time again that he votes with his bias for Texas more than any legitimately objective standard. And on the strength of a system like this we want to create a playoff? (By the way, Bob Stoops does not get a vote in the coach’s poll. Arbitrary, arbitrary, arbitrary.)
Ultimately, there is no way to combat the arbitrary nature of college football polling. It is inherent in the system. There is no polling without arbitrariness. And there is no college football without polling. Instead of trying to fix an unfixable system, why not enjoy college football for what it is. 50-48 suggests going back to the pre-BCS system. Was it really so horrible when the coaches and AP split and gave us two national champions? Is it really such a bad thing to win a conference championship and make the argument that the sportswriters got it wrong? The whole impetus behind the BCS was to create better television matchups for ABC. That was the only reason.
Remember, college football was built through the conference system. Conference championships were always the most important part of college football. And conferences were created to match like universities in a certain region. Not universities with similar resources regardless of region, all agreeing upon a standardized schedule so an objective decision could be made on a legitimate national champion.
And speaking of legitimacy, let us return briefly to Texas, crying as it is about the Big 12 Championship Game. In the three-way tie between Texas, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma, it is Oklahoma who has the strongest non-conference schedule. It is Oklahoma who has higher offensive and defensive rankings. It is Oklahoma who is ahead in the polls. Are these categories arbitrary? Of course they are. But they are what we have. As far as “better” can be determined in the hit-or-miss game of gauging success in college football, Oklahoma has all the earmarks.
Look carefully at Mack Brown’s ballot when the final coach’s poll comes out. If he places Texas above Texas Tech, which he surely will, any pity argument he tries to make will immediately become invalid.
So, to sum up:
1. A playoff will never be tenable in a system based on voting.
Voting has always been a constituent part of college football.
Therefore, a playoff is untenable for college football.
2. Everyone who voluntarily wears burnt orange is a monumental dick.
Mack Brown voluntarily wears burnt orange.
Therefore, Mack Brown is a monumental dick.
QED.
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
PS: We here at 50-48 are very cognizant of the fact that this isn’t a fully systematic argument, and that it tends to rambling in spots. But rambling is par for the course here. And we’ve been frittering our time away with work and depression, leaving little time to shore up the loose ends. Forgive our mess!
PPS: On this very topic: BOOMER SOONER.
Monday, December 1, 2008
50-48 #57: A RIVER OR STREAM ARE THE METAPHORS BY WHICH CONSCIOUSNESS IS MOST NATURALLY DESCRIBED
50-48 #57: A RIVER OR STREAM ARE THE METAPHORS BY WHICH CONSCIOUSNESS IS MOST NATURALLY DESCRIBED (WILLIAM JAMES, PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY, 1890)
Fourth and one. Oh my God, fourth and one. You’ve had so many chances, Casey. And you’ve fucked them all up. Given every opportunity, you have managed to piss it all away time and time again. In that regard, we’re much alike, you and me. We’re sort of like kindred spirits. (With the notable exception that I don’t have an engagement website, where I’m staring at my blushing bride-to-be in tall grass and sunlight. No bride-to-be would have me. And I don’t like sunlight.) You make your mistakes on a giant grassy rectangle. I make mine everywhere else, careful to avoid grassy rectangles like they were peopled with poisoned tootsie rolls or gonorrheal pseudo-virgins. It’s a sanctified place for me, a holy place. Woe be to me were I to charge in and sully that like I’ve sullied everything else.
And so here you are, on this hallowed ground, this place where the 1964 national championship team played. Where the Miracle on Markham happened. Fourth and one. Fourth and one. Don’t fuck this up Casey. I have been sitting in this car the entire game, listening with dread and gumption as the game has ebbed and flowed. I have been driving through Louisiana, passing slow LSU fans time and time again, each seeing the Razorback paraphernalia all over my car and responding with looks ranging from quizzical to sympathetic to angry. I have put up with this for you, Casey. I know I’ve said a lot of bad things about you in the past. I resented your status as Hootie’s pet. I resented that South Carolina game two years ago when Hootie put you in to replace Mitch. That wasn’t your fault, Casey. You were just doing what you were told. There were lots of Nazis, too, who felt they had no choice but to follow orders.
Hootie is a Nazi, Casey. I hope you see that now, thinking as you probably are of your blushing bride-to-be, running hand-in-hand with her through what I imagine now to be a wheat field, running your hands over the stalks and feeling the flowers tickle your palm. Do you remember Casey? Do you remember how peaceful it made you feel? You there running through the wheat with what’s-her-name? Far away from the losses and the interceptions and the fumbles? Does it tickle, Casey? Find that place inside yourself now, Casey. Go to that wheat field. Soak in the sunshine. And while you’re thinking about it, make your bride-to-be naked. Nudity helps, Casey. It calms the nerves. Cleans the palate. If I weren’t driving right now, I would take all of my clothes off, too.
It’s raining where I am, Casey, just like it’s raining there in Little Rock. Your brother started the game so well, when we jumped out to that early lead. My car ride was happy at that point. I was eating Combos, Casey. The ones with the cheddar cheese inside the pretzel hull. How do they do that, Casey? Do you think they foist the cheese into prefabricated tubes? Or do you think they build the pretzel tubes around the cheese?
None of that matters now, Casey. Stop thinking about my Combos. Fourth and one. Fourth and one. I almost lost faith on our last drive, when we got to the twenty before failing, failing, failing. I thought about my horrible semester, about all the things that had gone wrong, made magnified by what seemed another inevitable loss. And this one to LSU! I wore my Mitch Mustain protest jersey to work last week, Casey. Not because I was mad at you, but because it’s the only jersey I have, and I wanted everyone at my Louisiana job to know precisely where I stood when it came to this game. Louisiana people don’t understand the concept of protest jerseys anyway. Studies have shown that 98% of Louisiana residents can’t even spell “protest jersey,” Casey. 98% of them are morbidly obese. 98% of Louisiana’s women have had abortions. 98% of its men have a chicken wing lodged in one or another part of their esophagus or small intestine.
98% of French people make fun of Louisiana people for being French wannabes. And 100% of everyone else makes fun of French people. This is just math, Casey. I tell you now because I you don’t want to lose to such folk. You’ve lost so many times before. And so have I. But you’re better than them, Casey. I’m not, but you are.
These Combos are so good, Casey. Normally I like to suck them for a moment, pulling the salt off each tube before trying to suck the cheesy center out of its cloister. But I’m not doing that now, driving here as I am in the rain down an interstate peopled with SUVs and pickup trucks littered with LSU stickers, the drivers chewing tobacco or shrimp or sausage or whatever it is Louisiana drivers chew when they’re driving in the rain. I’m crunching the Combos, Casey. Calming my nerves and keeping me from grinding my teeth.
I’m so nervous, Casey. I know it’s fourth and one, and I know you’ve failed so many times before, but I believe in you. This will be your legacy. One good effort here. One simple touchdown, and all will be forgotten. Your slate will be clean. You will be washed white as snow. That isn’t just me saying that, Casey. It’s Jesus. This is a sentiment buried deep in that book that everyone carries around but no one ever reads. “And so it comes to pass that if thou makest a fucking touchdown here, thy sins will be wiped clean. I’ll ride you to heaven on a fluffy white cloud, and we’ll have a dance party. Rhianna will be there. And Tim Tebow will circumcise your baby for you.” First John 8:16, Casey. Look it up.
But not now. Now there’s business to attend to. Fourth and one. If I were there, I would give you one of these delicious Combos. I would take all of my clothes off. Fourth and one. Fourth and one. I’ve been driving for so long now, Casey, and the rain hasn’t let up all day, driving as I am in this car that was robbed and vandalized two months ago. I’m paying for my sins, Casey. And you can pay for yours. Just please, please, please don’t fuck this up.
Jim Hawthorne and his LSU color commentator seem cautiously optimistic about the Tiger defense’s chance of stopping you, Casey. But I still have faith. I have almost swerved off of the road fourteen times during this game. I just passed a policeman. I have to pee. Please, Casey. Please, please, please.
Oh my God. Here it goes. We aren’t running! It’s a pass play on fourth and one. Fourth and one! And there’s London Crawford. He’s open, Casey! “He is WIDE open,” says Jim Hawthorne, the frustration seeping from his voice. “Touchdown Arkansas.” TOUCHDOWN ARKANSAS!
I almost swerved my car into that nice woman’s Buick, Casey. But I didn’t. I missed her. You did it, you did it, you did it! Hootie can take his smoke draw and shove it up his fat ass. I have to pull over, Casey. I’m bouncing all around the car. I can’t stay in my lane. And it’s raining, Casey. I'm driving 97 miles per hour. I don’t have to pee anymore. Or rather, I have become one with my pee and all other things. The universe is expanding, Casey. I’ve never screamed so loudly in my car when it wasn’t directed at another driver in anger.
This is what joy feels like, Casey. You did it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Your legacy is secure. You will never go unemployed in Arkansas as long as you live. You will never have to buy another drink again. And when I get back there, if I ever get out of this rain, away from all of these LSU cars and trucks, staring now with far more anger than sympathy, the first one’s on me.
I love this rain. And this pavement. And all of these LSU cars and trucks. I love everything right now. We’re much alike, Casey. We’re sort of like kindred spirits. You redeemed yourself on a giant grassy rectangle. It’s a sanctified place, a holy place. Woe be to me if I don’t charge in and try to redeem myself, too. Thank you, Casey. Thank you, Hogs. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You mean more to me than you’ll ever know.
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
PS: Stay tuned later in the week (if we here at 58-48 find the time) for another installment, designed as it will be to provide a withering denunciation of the claim by those crybaby pussies from Austin that the Longhorns somehow deserve to be in the Big 12 championship game. They don’t. Mack Brown is a surreptitious, two-faced, lying fuck, and we here at 50-48 intend to call him out on it. (SPOILER ALERT: This analysis will include a necessary critique of any and all calls for a playoff system in college football. 50-48 is anti-playoff. It is also anti-BCS. But rest assured, it welcomes all of those from the opposition. Unless they’re from Austin. We here at 50-48 hate those Longhorn shitheads more than anything else on earth.)
Fourth and one. Oh my God, fourth and one. You’ve had so many chances, Casey. And you’ve fucked them all up. Given every opportunity, you have managed to piss it all away time and time again. In that regard, we’re much alike, you and me. We’re sort of like kindred spirits. (With the notable exception that I don’t have an engagement website, where I’m staring at my blushing bride-to-be in tall grass and sunlight. No bride-to-be would have me. And I don’t like sunlight.) You make your mistakes on a giant grassy rectangle. I make mine everywhere else, careful to avoid grassy rectangles like they were peopled with poisoned tootsie rolls or gonorrheal pseudo-virgins. It’s a sanctified place for me, a holy place. Woe be to me were I to charge in and sully that like I’ve sullied everything else.
And so here you are, on this hallowed ground, this place where the 1964 national championship team played. Where the Miracle on Markham happened. Fourth and one. Fourth and one. Don’t fuck this up Casey. I have been sitting in this car the entire game, listening with dread and gumption as the game has ebbed and flowed. I have been driving through Louisiana, passing slow LSU fans time and time again, each seeing the Razorback paraphernalia all over my car and responding with looks ranging from quizzical to sympathetic to angry. I have put up with this for you, Casey. I know I’ve said a lot of bad things about you in the past. I resented your status as Hootie’s pet. I resented that South Carolina game two years ago when Hootie put you in to replace Mitch. That wasn’t your fault, Casey. You were just doing what you were told. There were lots of Nazis, too, who felt they had no choice but to follow orders.
Hootie is a Nazi, Casey. I hope you see that now, thinking as you probably are of your blushing bride-to-be, running hand-in-hand with her through what I imagine now to be a wheat field, running your hands over the stalks and feeling the flowers tickle your palm. Do you remember Casey? Do you remember how peaceful it made you feel? You there running through the wheat with what’s-her-name? Far away from the losses and the interceptions and the fumbles? Does it tickle, Casey? Find that place inside yourself now, Casey. Go to that wheat field. Soak in the sunshine. And while you’re thinking about it, make your bride-to-be naked. Nudity helps, Casey. It calms the nerves. Cleans the palate. If I weren’t driving right now, I would take all of my clothes off, too.
It’s raining where I am, Casey, just like it’s raining there in Little Rock. Your brother started the game so well, when we jumped out to that early lead. My car ride was happy at that point. I was eating Combos, Casey. The ones with the cheddar cheese inside the pretzel hull. How do they do that, Casey? Do you think they foist the cheese into prefabricated tubes? Or do you think they build the pretzel tubes around the cheese?
None of that matters now, Casey. Stop thinking about my Combos. Fourth and one. Fourth and one. I almost lost faith on our last drive, when we got to the twenty before failing, failing, failing. I thought about my horrible semester, about all the things that had gone wrong, made magnified by what seemed another inevitable loss. And this one to LSU! I wore my Mitch Mustain protest jersey to work last week, Casey. Not because I was mad at you, but because it’s the only jersey I have, and I wanted everyone at my Louisiana job to know precisely where I stood when it came to this game. Louisiana people don’t understand the concept of protest jerseys anyway. Studies have shown that 98% of Louisiana residents can’t even spell “protest jersey,” Casey. 98% of them are morbidly obese. 98% of Louisiana’s women have had abortions. 98% of its men have a chicken wing lodged in one or another part of their esophagus or small intestine.
98% of French people make fun of Louisiana people for being French wannabes. And 100% of everyone else makes fun of French people. This is just math, Casey. I tell you now because I you don’t want to lose to such folk. You’ve lost so many times before. And so have I. But you’re better than them, Casey. I’m not, but you are.
These Combos are so good, Casey. Normally I like to suck them for a moment, pulling the salt off each tube before trying to suck the cheesy center out of its cloister. But I’m not doing that now, driving here as I am in the rain down an interstate peopled with SUVs and pickup trucks littered with LSU stickers, the drivers chewing tobacco or shrimp or sausage or whatever it is Louisiana drivers chew when they’re driving in the rain. I’m crunching the Combos, Casey. Calming my nerves and keeping me from grinding my teeth.
I’m so nervous, Casey. I know it’s fourth and one, and I know you’ve failed so many times before, but I believe in you. This will be your legacy. One good effort here. One simple touchdown, and all will be forgotten. Your slate will be clean. You will be washed white as snow. That isn’t just me saying that, Casey. It’s Jesus. This is a sentiment buried deep in that book that everyone carries around but no one ever reads. “And so it comes to pass that if thou makest a fucking touchdown here, thy sins will be wiped clean. I’ll ride you to heaven on a fluffy white cloud, and we’ll have a dance party. Rhianna will be there. And Tim Tebow will circumcise your baby for you.” First John 8:16, Casey. Look it up.
But not now. Now there’s business to attend to. Fourth and one. If I were there, I would give you one of these delicious Combos. I would take all of my clothes off. Fourth and one. Fourth and one. I’ve been driving for so long now, Casey, and the rain hasn’t let up all day, driving as I am in this car that was robbed and vandalized two months ago. I’m paying for my sins, Casey. And you can pay for yours. Just please, please, please don’t fuck this up.
Jim Hawthorne and his LSU color commentator seem cautiously optimistic about the Tiger defense’s chance of stopping you, Casey. But I still have faith. I have almost swerved off of the road fourteen times during this game. I just passed a policeman. I have to pee. Please, Casey. Please, please, please.
Oh my God. Here it goes. We aren’t running! It’s a pass play on fourth and one. Fourth and one! And there’s London Crawford. He’s open, Casey! “He is WIDE open,” says Jim Hawthorne, the frustration seeping from his voice. “Touchdown Arkansas.” TOUCHDOWN ARKANSAS!
I almost swerved my car into that nice woman’s Buick, Casey. But I didn’t. I missed her. You did it, you did it, you did it! Hootie can take his smoke draw and shove it up his fat ass. I have to pull over, Casey. I’m bouncing all around the car. I can’t stay in my lane. And it’s raining, Casey. I'm driving 97 miles per hour. I don’t have to pee anymore. Or rather, I have become one with my pee and all other things. The universe is expanding, Casey. I’ve never screamed so loudly in my car when it wasn’t directed at another driver in anger.
This is what joy feels like, Casey. You did it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Your legacy is secure. You will never go unemployed in Arkansas as long as you live. You will never have to buy another drink again. And when I get back there, if I ever get out of this rain, away from all of these LSU cars and trucks, staring now with far more anger than sympathy, the first one’s on me.
I love this rain. And this pavement. And all of these LSU cars and trucks. I love everything right now. We’re much alike, Casey. We’re sort of like kindred spirits. You redeemed yourself on a giant grassy rectangle. It’s a sanctified place, a holy place. Woe be to me if I don’t charge in and try to redeem myself, too. Thank you, Casey. Thank you, Hogs. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You mean more to me than you’ll ever know.
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
PS: Stay tuned later in the week (if we here at 58-48 find the time) for another installment, designed as it will be to provide a withering denunciation of the claim by those crybaby pussies from Austin that the Longhorns somehow deserve to be in the Big 12 championship game. They don’t. Mack Brown is a surreptitious, two-faced, lying fuck, and we here at 50-48 intend to call him out on it. (SPOILER ALERT: This analysis will include a necessary critique of any and all calls for a playoff system in college football. 50-48 is anti-playoff. It is also anti-BCS. But rest assured, it welcomes all of those from the opposition. Unless they’re from Austin. We here at 50-48 hate those Longhorn shitheads more than anything else on earth.)
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