The (Not So) Big 12
As an opponent to the relocation of the Seattle SuperSonics to Oklahoma City, Mark Cuban said, “My prejudice is against having a Dust Bowl Division in this part of the country. I don’t think in the big picture that helps the NBA. I think a bigger market helps the NBA.”
Indeed, Cuban ended up being one of only two NBA owners to vote against the Sonics move. Cuban’s characterization of a “Dust Bowl Division” made such an impact that I began to revisit it during the recent conference realignment talk. I have no allegiance to any Big XII school, but I enjoy watching Texas and Texas A&M play. When the chatter surrounding their possible departure for the West Coast began to build, I felt a sense of joy watching the NCAA’s “Dust Bowl Division” fall apart at the seams.
Since its inception, the Big XII conference lacked the natural rivalries of the old Southwest Conference, failed to capture the pageantry of the SEC and, with the exception of Dallas and Houston, lacked major media markets of the coastal conferences. Try as I might, I could not pump myself up for Texas/Iowa State or A&M/Kansas.
Say what you want about the history of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, but watching them play the Aggies failed to capture the excitement of A&M/Arkansas or even the longstanding non-conference rivalry of A&M/LSU.
Okie State has played Texas tough a couple of times over the past decade, but the series lacks the history that a Texas/TCU series could provide (I’ll see your Barry Sanders, raise you a Davey O’Brien, Sammy Baugh and L.T.).
Growing up in the Ark-La-Tex area, I watched a lot of SEC football. I dreamed of one day seeing both Texas and A&M making the move East and joining THE ultimate football conference, getting a chance to expose Texas-style football to homes in Nashville, Jacksonville and Atlanta. The Pac-16 story broke and I recognized that it lacked the appeal of a jump to the SEC, but it definitely seemed better than staying put. Goodbye cornfields and grain, hello Hollywood and beaches!
Fans expressed fear of rivalries being destroyed, but Texas, A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech would have remained together. Would people really miss Kansas State/Oklahoma State that much?
Fans expressed fear of late start times, even though ABC traditionally shows the Pac-10 game of the week in prime-time at the exact same time as the Big XII game of the week.
Some fans even expressed concerns over the cultural differences between the Big XII South schools and some of the West Coast schools, asking what the reception for the Corps of Cadets would be like in Berkeley.
As the cards began to fall last week, first with Colorado bolting to the Pac-10 and then with Nebraska leaving for the Big 10, news began to leak that A&M might break from the herd and head to the SEC. I recognized this would be a much tougher road for the Aggies, but also provided long-term potential and viability for a program in desperate need of revival.
Now it appears that Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State have decided to put all their cards into the Dust Bowl Conference. Simply put, this conference sucks!
The four Texas schools of the Big XII South would have been better served to take the “f you, we’re from Texas” route and brought the band back together–the old Southwest Conference. TCU, SMU and Houston are vastly improved from the last days of the Southwest Conference. TCU would battle for third place in the Big XII as presently constructed. Both SMU and Houston are headed in an upward direction, while Iowa State, Kansas and Kansas State appear headed downwards. Rice has always been the sickly brother of the group, but that doesn’t stop Texas from padding their stats against them every season. The newly formed Southwest Conference could even extend invitations to North Texas and UTEP to make it a truly Texas conference and to give you the magic “10″ number.
However, it appears that the geniuses in Austin feared losing the Topeka and Ames television markets and feared a generation of children growing up without the great Baylor/Missouri rivalry, so we’re stuck watching Texas and Oklahoma dominate the regular season, only to lose to a SEC school in the BCS. Eventually, the ‘Horned Hubris will catch up with the conference and it’s relevancy will be like dust in the wind.
Friday Night Lights Season 4 NBC Premier
Just a reminder for those of you searching for a quality television program. Friday Night Lights has it’s Season 4 premier tonight at 7 p.m. (CST) on NBC. I had a chance to catch Season 4 during the Fall/Winter when it had its run on DirectTV’s “The 101″. The show continues to get stronger with each season.
If you think that Friday Night Lights is just a show about football, you are mistaken. No other movie or TV show has captured Texas life like FNL. It transcends the borders, and paints a portrait of small town America rarely seen. Most television shows focus on life in urban and/or suburban environments, where people live in monolithic communities, never interacting with people outside their own demographics. FNL presents a diverse community, where folks are forced to confront their differences and work together for the community. High school football just happens to be one mechanism they use to unite the community together.
It puzzles me how this program continues to struggle in the ratings.
The Cheapening of Liberal Arts Education
An article published in the March 31, 2010 edition of the New York Times, examining the burgeoning role of psychology and neuroscience in college English departments, sparked a debate on a recent podcast of Slate’s “Culture Gabfest,” regarding the future of college English departments and humanities studies as a whole. The three panelists expressed outrage at the thought of English departments nationwide filling their curriculum with theoretical science (i.e. using MRI scans of people’s brains as they read different texts to determine the impact they have on the brain), in hopes of adding practical applications to their degree program, thus attracting more students, but sacrificing the notion of literature for literature’s sake.
I test drove literally every degree program that the humanities department at my colleges offered before ultimately earning a bachelor’s degree in English. The question of whether or not these departments should do more to make their degrees more marketable is one that I’ve wrestled with for some time. Even though we were the brightest, most creative and unique students on campus and even though we took the most interesting classes, being able to write a paper on the role of misogyny in Hamlet or being able to thoroughly explain the difference between an Italian sonnet and a Shakespearean sonnet has yet to earn me a single job.
God knows I spent many a sleepless night in college asking myself, “what in the hell are you going to do with a degree in (depending on the semester and college: philosophy, history, religion, political science or English),“ but through it all, I never once considered pursuing a degree outside the field of humanities. For me, and many other liberal arts students, college was never about developing marketable skills, but rather about the pursuit of knowledge and honing our analytical skills, which in turn produces students prepared for any field.
Like the podcast panelists, I too am outraged at attempts to cheapen a classical education in the name of economics (and make no mistake about it, this is ALL about economics). I graduated from Texas A&M University-Texarkana, a rural, commuter school in far Northeast Texas. Of all the students in the school’s English department, I was the only one not seeking teacher certification. As a result, much of the departments curriculum was geared towards training these students for the classroom. I always felt the courses, especially the reading lists, to be extremely watered down. As President of the university’s English club, I tried to expand the scope of the department’s emphasis, sponsoring student symposiums and starting a book club where we would tackle some of the best contemporary literary fiction.
I don’t blame my professors. Their hands were tied by administrators who had in essence turned the English department into a glorified vocational school. While I don’t fear Yale, Stanford, Duke, etc. will ever turn their English departments into a trade school, I do fear the trend of cheapening liberal arts education will continue to spread like a virus across academia. The only way to stop the spread is to convince students that knowledge is far more valuable than any salary they may earn in their career
Oxford American
As someone who prides himself on being different from the bloggers on the East and West coasts, I apologize for not making this recommendation sooner. I’ve been reading Oxford American for a few years now, after my mother turned me onto the magazine for its emphasis on Southern writing. But Oxford American is much more than a collection of essays on small towns, trailer parks and Truman Capote wannabes. It is a medium for Southerners and non-Southerners alike to share their unique cultural insights of this most colorful of American regions. In fact, I’ve found this best writing to come from the annual Southern foods edition. The magazine also features yearly specials on Southern films & music (much more than just Elvis, Lynryrd Skynyrd, and the Allman Brothers). Whether or not you’re from the South, I highly recommend this magazine. If nothing else it serves as definite change from the stagnant views you find in the generic East Coast publications.
Spring Snow
On March 19, it was sunny and 71 in Dallas. On March 20, 2010, we received 1.3 inches of snow. Yes, that’s right, the first day of Spring brought SNOW to Dallas. This brings the total snowfall for this season to 17.3 inches and barely misses breaking the all-time seasonal record for the Dallas/Fort Worth area. I’ve lived in this general vicinity for all of my 31 years and have never seen a winter like this. The February snowstorm will be one talked about in Dallas for centuries and I’m glad that I got to experience it, even if we lost our power for about 24 hours. On Christmas Eve, we received enough snow to ensure a White Christmas 2009. Oddly enough, December 23 was a lot like March 19, in that it reached 73 degrees. That means we received twice in one season, the day after a 70 degree day. Very interesting weather pattern indeed. Normally, I embrace the snow and look forward to its arrival when it is predicted. After this season, I must say, I don’t care if I see another snowstorm for some time.
NBA Jam Set to Return
Nothing screams Freshman year of high school like NBA Jam. Well, maybe the untimely death of Kurt Cobain, but the arcade hit, and subsequent Super Nintendo favorite played a large role in my life in 1994. I remember sitting in class, passing notes back and forth with my friends trying to get “cheats” for the game, to unlock players like Michael Jordan and Bill Clinton. After school was out, we would gather at one of the members of our group’s house and play the Super Nintendo version of the game all night long (and all weekend long). On a trip to San Antonio, I remember spending 4 hours and countless quarters in an arcade in our hotel, trying to master the arcade version of the game, only to find out the “cheats” for the Super NES version were different than the “cheats” for the arcade version. Needless to say, I was overcome with joy to read that the game is being revamped and released in December 2010.
Marc Stein, writing for ESPN.Com’s “Weekend Dime,” provided a breakdown of each team’s roster from 1993-1994 and who he would like see represented in the new version of the game. Reading through the list brought back countless memories and filled my head with the voices of the game announcers–”he’s on fire!”
One point where I disagree with Stein, I would pick Jason Kidd, Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry, instead of Shawn Marion, for the Mavericks. Either way, the Mavs team in this version of NBA Jam, will be a significant upgrade from the 1994 version, which featured Derek Harper and Mike Iuzzolino.
The Continuing Story of Dugout Ron
The theater of the absurd surrounding the Ron Washington’s ride on the “white horse,” continues to evolve into one of the strangest, most wheels-off sports story, in the history of Dallas, which considering the Dallas Cowboys, says a lot.
Randy Galloway, a favorite target of Geoausch.Com, wrote a piece for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram this morning alleging a blackmail scheme, on the part of a disgruntled Rangers’ employee, brought this festering pustule to a head. While I may not agree with everything Galloway writes, I do acknowledge that of all the Dallas/Fort Worth media members, his connections in the Rangers’ organization are the deepest. I tend to believe what I read in his column and have no doubt that the Rangers would have never spoken a word of this incident had Sports Illustrated not obtained the leaked information.
According to Galloway, some of this former employee’s demands were met; however, the officials inside the organization refused to write the employee in question a letter of recommendation. In other words, team officials were afraid their integrity would be tarnished if they fudged on a letter extolling this guy’s (or gal’s) worth as employee, but didn’t think twice about the reputation of the club being ran by a junkie manager.
Yes, I called the man a junkie, because Ron Washington’s drug history goes far beyond this one little bump. Anthony Andro, writing for the Rangers blog on the Dallas Morning News’ website, reports that Washington admitted to using “amphetamines” and “marijuana” during his playing days. It was the 1970′s and everyone was using “bennies” and smoking grass, but it makes Washington’s statement yesterday-that he only used coke once-even that much more unbelievable.
While I’ve never had the desire to snort anything up my nose, I have been around cocaine and have had several friends fall victim to the drug’s addictive agents. One thing I know about the drug is that you don’t do it just once and you certainly don’t try it for the first time when you’re 57-years old. While cocaine may not spawn daily cravings–users can go months or years without using–the taste for the drug never leaves your system. Let’s hope Washington is lying about his past cocaine use, because if he really did try coke out on a whim at the age of 57, his problems are much deeper than they appear on the surface. First of all, does that type of person have the maturity necessary for leading a professional sports team?
This story is just beginning to sprout. I firmly believe that as we near the start of the season (and the official sale of the franchise) more information will come to light regarding this situation and Washington’s past use of illegal substances. Based on Washington’s own statements, we can construct a history that leads us to believe that this type of behavior will repeat itself. Whether or not the Rangers will be open with their fans when such an event occurs is open for debate.
One thing is for sure, I bet the Dallas Morning News is regretting cutting the Rangers’ beat writer position.
Ron Washington v. Josh Hamilton
As the local sports talk shows begin to go heavy into Ron Washington talk, some of Washington’s defenders are starting to emerge. One of the more popular arguments among Wash’s defenders is to bring up Josh Hamilton–the Texas Rangers’ star outfielder who has had his own well documented struggles with drug abuse in the past, including a binge cycle last year prior to spring training. The logic is that the Rangers have remained supportive of Hamilton, in spite of his slip-up last spring, getting rid of Washington would create a double-standard.
Is there double-standard? Yes, and it’s well justified.
Josh Hamilton is a player. Ron Washington is the MANAGER, and as such is held to a much higher standard. When a player decides to abuse drugs, he risks having a negative impact on his own personal performance. The manager is charged with making every critical decision for the team. If he chooses to abuse drugs, he risks having a negative impact on the entire organization. If we accept that cocaine impairs decision making abilities, the possible scenarios for disaster to strike with a manager under the influence become infinite.
When a player makes a mistake under the influence, the manager, assuming he is lucid, can take the necessary steps to remove the intoxicated player from the game and limit the damage to the team. If the manager is under the influence, there is no one directly able to replace him, unless he retires to the locker room on his own.
What do you guys think? Is it defensible to have a double-standard when dealing with Ron Washington and Josh Hamilton?
