PN-G bamatex

For Crosby, maybe.

I don't think Alabama's recruiting will skip a beat. LSU might see some issues, but I'm skeptical. I think A&M and Arkansas have the most to lose. That said, the burden is on UT to prove itself in this situation, and I think the recruits that take this game seriously (i.e., the ones most concerned about draft stock and national championship potential) see it that way as well. UT has a new coach, and has basically only had one season of national relevance in the last ten years. Whatever damage LSU and A&M suffer in the recruiting game can be easily rectified by beating UT, and my money's on both of them to do that. If Arkansas beats UT - which is very much possible, if unlikely - I don't think anybody suffers any recruitment loss at the hands of UT. Austin's fun for college kids and all, but it can only carry UT's recruiting game so far. There's an argument to be had that OU's a bigger threat to recruiting in the SEC than UT is. The Sooners are more likely to perform well in the near future. There's one more variable we all have to account for, though, and that's the name/image/likeness value. I don't think anybody's sure how that affects recruiting. All bets are off on that one.

I take your point, but I think he is. I've dealt with John Sharp at the Capitol a few times. He's not the type who would take this lying down if he was blindsided by it.

I never meant to say UT came to the SEC with hat in hand. It's hard to have anything else in your hands when they're holding the Longhorn Network out as the first concession. Money and prestige are definitely the drivers for the decision, no doubt about it. And that's the exact reason at least twelve of the fourteen SEC presidents are going to vote to accept Texas and OU when the Southernly democratic process takes place. And to be clear, A&M was included in the discussion. Ross Bjork wasn't. [Hidden Content]

You need to take a look at some SEC history. Vanderbilt has literally run the SEC before. When the SEC wanted to become the first conference in the country to institute a championship game, Gene Stallings was against it and Steve Spurrier's people had mixed feelings about it. Roy Kramer convinced the rest of the conference to go for it and did it anyway. In doing so, he very nearly cost Alabama a national championship. Every single time playoff expansion has been discussed, Nick Saban has verbally and adamantly objected and his boosters have followed suit, but the SEC staff have gone for it without exception because it would guarantee multiple SEC teams competing for a national championship every season. Yet Alabama has never once floated the idea of bolting from the conference. Alabama's still a proud member of the SEC, and most of the fanbase would literally riot at the prospect of Alabama leaving the SEC. I get what you're saying. You've perfectly described how the Big XII is run - and coincidentally, why it's falling apart. The SEC's been around several times as long as the Big XII, and it's because the SEC is designed from the ground up to ensure consensus or near consensus among the conference members before any major decision gets made. I'm not naive enough to tell you that's because of some altruistic commitment to compromise. Rather, it's because the individual SEC members find security in a conference that's built around keeping their collective buy-in, and that's what keeps schools around for a literal century. The SEC was learning the hard lessons of realignment, and reforming itself to account for those lessons, thirty years before the Big XII even existed. Those adaptations are why the SEC is such a durable conference. Culture is very important to Southerners. The SEC has become synonymous with Southern regional identity, and Southern states sticking together is a cornerstone of that identity. The whole, as they say, is greater than the sum of its parts, and that's almost implicitly understood in the South. For its part, Texas A&M understands that, which is why A&M will accept Texas's entry into the SEC when the votes are taken and the required two thirds or more of the conference agrees to it. If Texas really wants to be part of the SEC, it's going to have to make that adjustment. This is not going to be the burnt orange show.

A&M chiefly has concerns about recruiting. There's some consternation over UT joining the SEC's ranks after spending so many decades dragging the SEC and A&M through the mud (remember 'the SEC's academic standards are too low for UT'?), but it's roughly offset by the delicious irony of UT coming to the SEC on its knees now, at least among the A&M fans I run with. On the other hand, being the only Texas school in the SEC has been a big piece of their recruiting pitch over the last few seasons, and that pitch has paid dividends for them. I personally don't think taking that away dooms their recruiting prospects by any means, but it makes it a harder sale, and that's a much more pressing concern in an era when A&M fell just an inch short of a playoff it really should have been in last season. Which brings me to this: Yes, Alabama wants it. No, that's not the end of the story. You know I like and respect you, but this is exactly the kind of thing that leaves me (and other SEC alums with a lot more say in these kinds of things than I have, for that matter) with reservations about adding UT. The SEC is not like the Big XII or the Big 10. It might be dominated by one or a handful of blue chip programs on the football field, but SEC politics is very balanced between the schools. Vanderbilt has as much say in the inner workings of the conference as Alabama does. Don't believe me? Ask Roy Kramer. UT fans have gotten very accustomed to their school being the favored son of their conference. There are no favored sons in the SEC. I can think of several specific instances where Alabama wanted something out of the conference they didn't get because other member schools objected. I don't think UT's ever been told no by their conference leadership regardless of what their fellow members have wanted, or at least not in my lifetime. If UT fans think they're going to come into the SEC and dominate either their division or the conference altogether in a manner even remotely as preferential as what they've experienced in the Big XII, or even if they think there's a pecking order where they only fall behind the likes of Alabama, LSU, Georgia and Florida, they should either disabuse themselves of that notion now, or get ready for a rude awakening. If UT really wants to be a part of this conference, they need to get comfortable with the idea of having equal say in conference conversations as the likes of Kentucky, Tennessee and, yes, even the dreaded Aggies. Mal Moore, God rest his soul, would tell you the same thing. Welcome to the confederacy of college football. I look forward to the first Alabama pep rally at the Texas State Capitol.

As a die-hard Alabama fan and Saban-era alumnus, I earnestly wish Sarkisian the best of luck. I mean that. He is my second favorite all-time Saban assistant behind only Kirby Smart, and he will leave Tuscaloosa with the same well wishes from me that Kirby had. That said, as a UT graduate who has spent the last six seasons watching Texas wallow around in mediocrity firsthand - and as a proud PN-G Indian who’s had to watch the greatest talent ever to come out of his storied hometown program settle for that for two seasons - I also see this for what it is: the worst decision Steve Sarkisian can possibly make. Texas is functionally the new Tennessee. The Big XII is a joke, and A&M has clearly come into its own as the state’s flagship football program. Steve Sarkisian is the Longhorns’ best option, and I’ll give UT’s new leadership full credit for finally securing a quality coaching candidate - an area where past leadership has repeatedly failed. But the problems in the Texas program run much deeper than the coaching staff, and they take a lot more than money and branding to fix. While a former Saban righthand man may be the only coach on the planet capable of finally correcting the chronic, cultural issues that plague the UT campus and constantly inhibit gridiron success, even in my most Crimson-tinted glasses, I wouldn’t bet a plug nickel on it.

Thanks for being real Southeast Texans, Raider and Soulja! I owe y'all one.

I hesitate to do this because this is a PN-G thing, but the team we're up against, Sanderson, has said some very nasty things about Southeast Texas in general ("West Texas class against East Texas trash," as one Sanderson fan put it in the comments), and we need y'all's help. A few weeks ago, Dave Campbell's Texas Football put together a 64 stadium bracket and a six round voting competition to determine the best high school football stadium in Texas. PN-G's Indian Stadium was the only stadium DCTF picked to represent our area. We've pulled off several upset wins over several stadiums DCTF favored over us, and now we're in the championship round against another stadium DCTF picked against us. Folks, some of the things Sanderson has done to win this competition have been absurd. They've posted nasty things about our area in every Facebook group you can imagine in places like Odessa, Del Rio, and Fort Stockton, and it's working - how else could a town of 800 amass 5,800 votes? I know we're #SETXStrong, and I know Southeast Texas sticks together. We'd really appreciate it if y'all could toss in a vote for PN-G and teach West Texas what it means to be from here. I've linked to the poll below, and you'll need to be signed into Facebook to vote. All you have to do is click on "Indian Stadium." Thanks in advance!

I was sitting 19 rows up and only keyed in on Faircloth halfway through, as I was paying attention to what was happening on the field when it started. And if it’s true that it was a fan berating a player at the sidelines, kudos to Coach Faircloth for putting him in his place. Folks, at some point, we - as in, the PN-G fans - need to have a serious conversation - perhaps more appropriate for another site - about our conduct in the stands. As a lifelong PN-G fan who’s watched games in Tuscaloosa, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Atlanta and Austin over the last seven years, and has had to deal with the likes of Tennessee, LSU and Ohio State, I’m unnerved at things I’m seeing from our fans right now, especially as it relates to our own team. Some of us are acting like spoiled brats, berating teenagers on our own side of the field like we’re not up 42-0 in a playoff game, and getting upset every time a high school defense gives up a play like it didn’t just score as much as its opposing offense in a playoff game. It’s also clear that we’re not really sure when we should make noise and when we shouldn’t. I was in the middle of the stands when we started the rumble while we were on offense at least three times against Nederland last week. Frankly, as much as it kills me to say this, Nederland’s crowd put us to shame several times. And just as importantly, we have hundreds of fans pouring out of the stands in the third quarter if we’re up by a large margin. My inner Nick Saban is particularly perturbed by that. Ten years ago, when I was in band, we took all kinds of crap for not playing when the other team was on offense, not playing Cherokee loud enough, not paying enough attention to the game during the third quarter, not giving entertaining halftime shows and generally not contributing enough to the games’ atmospheres. I started commenting on these sites specifically to respond to a lot of those criticisms, and I specifically remember how much it affected other kids in the band. But we listened, and Wells has fixed all of that and then some. Our drumline is doing more to get the crowd involved before and during the game than most college drumlines these days. I also remember how critical people were of our student section back then. Our student section is now the most rabid (in a good way) in the area. It’s time for all these fans that I’ve watched complain in the stands and on these websites for the last decade to take a hard, hard look in the mirror and work on their own in-game conduct. Let the coach worry about what’s going on down on the field; he’s doing a fine job of that right now. We need to figure out what we need to do in the stands to help the kids on the field out, not to make their lives more complicated.

Trust me. Those band kids don’t want any of them.

From what I've seen, Herman is paying particular attention to Roschon's pass completion percentage and his rushing yards. That's not the kind of stuff you look for in a DB.

Roschon is a once in a generation talent. It would, frankly, be stupid of any coach not to recognize and utilize that to its fullest potential. Likewise, Roschon can’t win the game alone, and he hasn’t been. Roschon can throw the ball. But it’s Proenza who catches it for the game winning touchdown against Crosby, and Weunschel who catches it and goes for 15-20 yards after catch against the vaunted Nederland defense. Yes, Roschon has run the ball a lot. He’s also been forced to run the ball a lot the last few weeks as we’ve had more penetration into the offensive backfield with two of our starting offensive linemen out. And when he’s done so, he’s taken what would be sacks for any other quarterback and turned them into gains of 2-5 yards at a time, or he’s found a hole in a defense that’s dropped back into coverage and gone 46 yards for a touchdown after a much needed interception by a much improved PN-G defense. That doesn’t take away the opportunities that Dae Dae and Jalen Williams have exploited for big plays when they’ve been there. It just means that we’ve exploited the opportunities opposing defenses have given us, and there are certain opportunities we’ve only had because we have the kind of dual threat quarterback that Roschon is. Football is a team sport, and this PN-G team is the best we’ve had in a long time. Like any other team, this team does what it takes to win, and sometimes that means that certain players have to make sacrifices so that other players can execute what the team needs executed to put points on the board. That’s life, and it’s a good lesson to learn in high school. Roschon can only do as well as the team around him allows him to, and that’s why they get to lay claim to a team win every bit as much as Roschon does when the clock on the scoreboard hits 00:00. Having this kind of debate doesn’t do anything but create and expand division on that team and in the fan base. We have a playoff game to win, and for the first time in a long time, we might realistically have a state title in the mix. This is not the time to have this kind of division. Y’all keep that in mind. Scalp ‘em, Indians.

Yes, I am. Vince Young wouldn’t have won a national championship in this era. If RJ has the right tools around him, I think he can.

My only regret is that I couldn’t get home more often to watch him play in person. I’ve been telling my classmates at law school for two years now the Longhorns are getting the best QB recruit they’ve ever had next year. Hopefully he’ll be wearing a state championship ring when he gets there. If Texas ever starts playing consistently, I can see him bringing home a national championship at the next level. He might even knock off Alabama in the process. (Once.)

That seems categorically unfair, but I’ll take it as long as we’re the #1 seed.

What is this I hear about PN-G playing the first round at home?

That’s correct.

Roschon was exceptional as always and I’m proud to see him get his revenge on Nederland after they spoiled our perfect record last year. That said, the PN-G defense was the game changer last night. I never thought I’d see PN-G go +3 in turnovers against Nederland in the Faircloth era. We had a pick six called back on a post-turnover block in the back, and Roschon took it to the house on the very next play. That kickoff fumble recovery just about broke Nederland’s back. We had trouble stopping the run at times, but we made adjustments and we did what good defenses do: we took advantage of Nederland’s mistakes. Roschon looked great, but the defense gave him a bunch more opportunities to look great. We’ve made a ton of improvements on that side of the ball the last three games. Give those kids their due.

I wouldn't get ahead of myself. Hispanics in Texas vote Republican a lot more than in other states. Nationally, about a quarter of Hispanics vote Republican. In Texas, Ted Cruz had 37% of the Hispanic vote and that's historically low. Every other Republican on the statewide ballot carried more Hispanics, including Patrick and Paxton. Abbott carried 44% of Hispanics in 2014 and Perry carried 38% in 2010. George W. Bush carried 49% during his last gubernatorial bid in 1998. There's a number of social and cultural factors that I think play into it, but Hispanics here are disproportionately Republican. The Texas Republican Party has also been more successful at electing Hispanics to statewide office than its blue counterpart; George P. Bush and Ted Cruz himself are prominent examples, and we just elected the first Hispanic Republican senator to the Texas Senate in Pete Flores, who stole a border district from the Democrats. It's worth noting that Hispanics comprised 24% of overall turnout last night, an historic high, but one I don't think will be met again for three or four cycles. It's normally hovering between 12% and 20%, and I honestly think the massive increase has everything to do with that turnout game I mentioned earlier. In an ordinary year with a lesser ground game for the Democrats, that number probably goes back down for the foreseeable future.

A couple more notes on the Beto-Cruz election (my thoughts, not from the horse's mouth): In addition to everything I stated earlier, I think this race really boiled down to an old fashioned turnout war. Independents and Democrats (identified by their casting votes in Democratic primaries) comprised a substantially larger portion of the voting electorate than they normally do. That's not because the Democratic base or the number of independents in Texas grew substantially in two years as it might indicate at first glance. It looks to me like a lot of Texans who voted for Trump in 2016 didn't show up to the polls this time, where just about everybody who voted for Hillary Clinton made it a point to. Trump won 4.685M out of 8.696M voters in Texas in 2016. Ted Cruz won 4.240M out of 8.324M voters. Ted Cruz won 425K fewer votes than Trump in an election with 675K fewer voters overall. Meanwhile, Beto O’Rourke won 4.018M voters versus Hillary Clinton’s 3.878M for a difference of 140K additional votes. We know that Beto registered a ton of first-time voters, probably comprising that 140K voters and then some. Trump’s margin of victory over Clinton in 2016 was 808K votes. If you start with that 808K vote margin, take away those 425K votes that didn’t show for Cruz, and add in Beto’s newfound 140K votes, what do you have? About a 243K vote margin. Cruz actually won by a margin of 223K. The math there adds up a little too well. It looks like Beto turned out every single Hillary Clinton voter in the state plus some, where Cruz couldn’t bring out all of Trump’s voters. That makes sense in an election year where the Democrats have the momentum and Republicans don’t, especially after two crazy Republicans decided to act like the redneck al Qaeda. It makes more sense when you take into account that Beto only won four counties that Hillary didn’t (Jefferson being one of those counties, and the other three being suburban counties in Dallas and Austin), all of which went for Trump by comparatively narrow margins in 2016. But I say all of that to say this: I think the fact the math here lines up almost perfectly just reaffirms that the political landscape of Texas today really hasn't changed all that much since 2016. Beto just did a way better job of turning out his base than we did. Given the kind of campaign he ran, visiting every county a half dozen times and running the most voracious ground game Texas has ever seen, that really seems to be the most plausible explanation to me.

And he does so intentionally.

Ed Emmett lost because Ed Emmett had some serious campaign blunders. That said, he was an excellent county judge who deserved reelection. For Houston's sake, I hope to God Rodney Ellis runs things behind the scenes and not this kid. For those wondering, here's essentially what happened with the Beto-Cruz race. I won't say which horse, but a lot of this came straight from the horse's mouth. Ten days ago, we were up by double digits in every race in internal GOP polling. Abbott, Hegar and Bush were all up by 18+. Patrick and Paxton were hovering around 12. Cruz was coming in right at ten points. Then Pittsburgh and the pipe bomber happened. O'Rourke played the typical Democrat in claiming that his campaign was totally unsupported by PACs when in fact he had support from quite a few PACs, just not in the form of direct campaign donations. O'Rourke kept himself and his campaign out of it, but several of those supposedly non-existent PACs made a big deal out of the president's rhetoric in the Dallas and Austin suburbs. The result? Williamson and Hays Counties went blue for the first time in decades. Denton and Collin Counties stayed red, but barely. We started losing voters immediately after the pipe bomber pulled his stupid stunt and it only accelerated as we got closer to election day. To roughly quote my horse, we lost five points in the last five days of the voting period. They kind of backed off over last weekend and we bounced back well on Election Day. But it wasn't enough to recover anything like the lead we started with. To my knowledge, nobody made as big of an issue in any other state, and that's why there's such a stark difference in the results. Republicans overperformed public polls in 48 out of 50 states, the lone exceptions being Texas and Nevada. McSally in Arizona was ahead by fractions of a point and is on track to win by a full point. DeSantis and Scott were both down by two in Florida and are about to win by half a point to a point. Kemp was ahead by a fraction of a point in Georgia and is about to win by two, if Abrams will ever let it go. Hawley in Missouri was ahead by about half a point and pulled it off by about two. Braun in Indiana way overperformed the polls there to beat Donelly by several points, and Blackburn in Tennessee was always projected to win comfortably but still way overperformed her numbers. Heitkamp lost by more than she was expected to in North Dakota. On the House side, the Democrats were projected to gain 39 seats by Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight. They've got 27 and their ceiling, depending on how things shake out in races that are too close to call, is now 34 seats. Given the national trend, if you take away Pittsburgh and the pipe bomber, we're looking at a totally different election in Texas. As much as I hate to say it, the Lone Star State was the only real blemish on an otherwise very good night for Republicans. Trump lost the House like pretty much every president going through his first mid-term, but he lost way fewer seats than Obama and actually gained a stunning amount of ground in the Senate. I just wish he would have talked about the economy a little more. We might have had a better outcome in Texas and might have actually kept the House.

I took a look at the turnout numbers yesterday. TargetSmart has assembled all of the early voter information from every state in the country on their website, and they’ve done some partisan modeling based on prior voting history. If their modeling is accurate and my math is right, Cruz has a double digit victory in sight. That jives with what some of my sources in Austin told me last week.

I stand corrected.