Monday, September 5, 2011

Thoughts from Week 1, and why we should join the SEC


To lead off, thoughts and prayers go out to the Selmon family. I recall Lee Roy as a heckuva football player. Many I’ve read on the web recall him as a class man, and that’s more important. Lee Roy, may you rest in Peace.

Second, the Baylor win against the Horned Lizards was huge. While TCU lost a lot from last year's team, I believe time will show this is still a quality club. This win gives the Bears some additional exposure nationally, and helps Briles recruit in the state. I think the Bears are poised to be a power in Conference USA in 2012.

Third, if you thought that TAMU's departure didn't blow the Big 9 up, you have to acknowledge that they placed the C4 in place and David Boren told everyone Friday that he'sgot the detonation device and an itch .

As I type this paragraph, I'm watching Houston whip UCLA. Perhaps a Baylor led Conference USA is a better football conference than the PAC 12 anyway.  As I learn later that Sacramento State beat Oregon State and Washington nearly lost to Eastern Washington, I believe this more. Here's my crazy, anti-establishment idea...take all the D-1 Texas schools (sans UT, but include TAMU), add the three D-1 Oklahoma schools, form your own network. You've got UTEP, UNT, SMU, TCU, TAMU, TT, Baylor, Tulsa, Houston, Rice, Boone State and Oklahoma. You've got twelve teams, so you can have the playoff thingy. Partner with Fox or CBS college Sports. You'll have the non-Longhorn eyeballs in Texas and Oklahoma locked up from a televised college sports perspective. If you want to corner the market further on Texas eyeballs, televise Mexican Professional Soccer.

For about two and a half quarters, I was having fantasies about Rice upsetting Texas on the debut of the Longhorn network. Oh well. South Florida wrecking the start of Notre Dame's season was satisfying.

Last night's game was BORING. I really wish I would have watched with Gus Johnson doing the play by play. The only refreshing thing was the Dominique Whaley walk on story.

Other alignment thoughts: this lady does an excellent job of showing how UT can enter theSuper-PAC and deal with the Longhorn network

Overall, I'd rather be in the SEC than the Super-PAC. Ten quick reasons:
  1.  I think it's geographically better. The existing schools in the SEC average 762 miles from Norman, Ok. The Pac-12: 1,472. 
  2. If you want to argue #1 with the East division of the Pac-12, keep this in mind: 5 schools in the SEC West are closer to Norman than Boulder, CO is. The one exception, Auburn. 
  3. All the programs already cheat in the SEC, so the infrastructure is already there. 
  4. All the schools strive to be a university the football team could be proud of. 
  5. The thirteen states with the highest teen pregnancy rates, according to statehealthfacts.org: MS, NM, TX, AR, OK, AZ, KY, TN, LA, NV, SC, AL, GA. The only states in the list above not represented in an SEC with Oklahoma and Texas A&M: Arizona and Nevada. States in the SEC not represented in the list above: none. States in the Pac-12 not represented in the list above: CA, WA, OR. 
  6. With the Pac 16 you'll be getting the occasional 930 pm kickoff of your west coast game. Let's face it: I'm getting a little bit old to be staying up that late watching football.Particularly if Petros Papadakis is doing the color commentary. 
  7. Arizona's got that whole weird non observance of daylight savings time thing going on. So somewhere along the way you're going to miss the first hour of an OU football game. On the bright side, that's only about one quarter when played at the pace of last night's OU-Tulsa game. 
  8. Academics: we like to think of ourselves as an institution of higher learning at the U of O. By doing some researching on satscores.us, I’ve estimated the average SAT score of an incoming freshman at OU to be 1,755. We would be the 5th highest school in the SEC and the 7th highest school in the Pac 10. According to the metric I selected to evaluate, the top 5 schools in the SEC are in the SEC East, and the highest ranking school SEC west school is Auburn. We would be an average school in the SEC, and a below average school in the Pac 12.  
  9. I really think the whole tree-hugger left coast thing just doesn't line up with OU. 
  10. The Sooners would get better coverage on edsbs.com, my favorite college fb website.