Cougar14.2

Proximity is why I mentioned him. He would have had to move all the way to East Texas to take the Liberty-Eylau job in the same class. He really wouldn't have to move to take the Temple job. That factor mixed with a similar athlete make-up to La Vega is why I think he would be successful there. I think he's done all he can at La Vega but he may prefer the comfort over a new challenge.

It's probably the other way around in that if A&M can't hold Texas off recruiting wise then they're probably the ones in trouble. When you evaluate recruiting classes you can't really say "my class was ranked higher so it's better." You have to look at player average, which A&M is only tenths of a point up on Texas in since Charlie has been there. For instance, Texas average player committed in the '16 class is 87.91, even though A&M's class is ranked 13 spots higher right now their average player is only 88.56. Meaning the difference in the players that will actually see the field is fractional, which as TCU shows, can be made up by coaching. The only real difference in the recruiting classes since Charlie has been there is the 5 stars Sumlin was able to go out of state and get like Allen, Kirk and Noil. I think when Texas fans look at the program they see they're probably only a consistent qb away from being where they should be. A&M is a Sumlin exit from the wheels falling off recruiting wise. Aggie fans think that the SEC gets them recruits but it's really Sumlin and the lax environment. If a Dan Mullen or Bret Beilema took over A&M would be Arky or Miss St. and get the same level recruits those schools do. So in the end A&M is probably a Jake Hubanek start from being a joke with the schedule they have next year and Texas is a qb away from being a playoff contender with their schedule.

I don't think he would ever leave La Vega after not going to Liberty-Eylau but if I was Temple I would give Willie Williams a long serious look. Other than Todd Dodge he might be the best coach in Central Texas. Probably will never leave La Vega after 25 years and 170+ wins though, Temple probably wants to make a bigger splash anyway.

I've talked to Rip's uncle at work, he had scholarship opportunities elsewhere at smaller schools but felt confident in his ability to walk on at OU. I think he even had a couple of other FBS offers. You just said Stew got players looks, now you say a kid that played for Stew was overlooked. I'm not arguing coaches make a difference but once again, a kid who bench presses 500lbs in high school is probably going to be successful most Friday nights. Not to mention he was able to put on about 25 pounds in the 5 months before walking on. Galena Park sucks but they're still sending kids to schools like A&M, Colorado and Fresno State. Coaches may sharpen a kid's skill set and some do it better than others but it's up to the community to provide the raw talent.

The ground can be level but all the players are on this side of the see-saw. Out of the 5 losses the last three years they've all been to teams with a very high level talent, most of the time with multiple 3 star or 4 star recruits. That's what you need to beat Crosby now, and that's exactly what Dayton is lacking. Kids like Cody Green and AJ Dugat would have been stars anywhere, it's not really coaching that made them.

I just saw Dominic Merka and Donnie Starks playing in bowl games for TCU and Kansas State this past season. Chance Casey was on the Colts roster at the start of the season. Clayton Callicutt just became Angelo St.'s all-time sack leader and if he's not drafted this year he'll have multiple opportunities to make an NFL roster. Not a single one of those kids played for the current staff. Those are the notable kids, not all the ones we signed prior to them coming. You must be talking about B-team when you say 40-0? None of the current middle school A-teams have ever lost a game, the 8th graders were 7-0-1 last year and 8-0 this year. RP beat nearly 2000 enrollment Angleton by 1 point in overtime in the quarters, not sure how a 7pt win was the closest? RP was a monster, they had the most D1 kids of any 5A squad in the region except for maybe Temple. Keep laughing though, we'll keep winning 10+ and keep trying to trend the losses from 4-2-2-1 and hopefully 0. I'll keep laughing while you come up with mediocre players that will have an impact.

April, I love the way you support your Broncos but I really don't put any stock into anything you say in regards to football. Especially if you're naïve enough to think the AD, which was Stewart at the time, didn't have a say in who would be working for him. That's like Dr. Moore telling Riordan who his offensive coordinator is going to be.

Yeah, and we busted. We got beat by a semifinal squad that lost to the eventual champion. RP's left tackle, Travis Bruffy, was 6-7/280. I can't remember the left guard's name but he was listed at 6-4/335. The right guard, Jack Greene, was 6-3/315. All those kids went D1, we just got beat at our own game and hopefully learned from it. We won't see anything close to that in this district. Manvel, Foster and potentially PAM are on the non-district schedule for next year since Nederland and Angleton didn't seem to get us ready. As far as the talent thing you don't have to look much into it, just look on the field. I think both 7th and 8th grade squads lost 38-6 to Crosby while both teams went undefeated. The freshman squad has a stud running back but that's all they have and we beat them too. Our jv doesn't have any qb's or rb's and is usually our worst team in the program but still beat Dayton. I had one of the linemen's mom I work with tell me "I don't really know about football but when I watch the games it looks like we're pretty bad. I think we only won one or two games so far." You told me Dillon Moore and some other kids would make a difference on varsity this year too, yet Dayton lost by the largest margin since 2009. There's a reason other schools in the district are signing multiple players and Dayton isn't.

I think they kept the offense in tact because it was basically the same staff minus Stew, meaning it was a much smoother transition and they didn't have to re-teach anything. Saying Dayton played defense when Nations was there is like saying Dayton played offense when Hancock was there(before he was elevated). It seems like more people think the OC was the better defensive coach.

What do nail biters have to do with if a guy is the best fit or not? Both guys were coordinators under Stewart, right? The DC got the job and during those five years the program dipped. Now you're saying that the OC has the job everything will be better. I'm not saying it won't. I'm just asking why they're viewed so differently? You say you're very good friends with Stewart, well he hand-picked Hancock from what I gathered. Now you're saying your friend didn't make the best choice and Nations was the better candidate all along? Kind of weird to praise him, then second guess him. I definitely think he would be on Stew's level if he can compete for district championships with what Dayton has coming up from the 7th grade on though, they're pretty thin on talent with the kids out there now.

How long has it been since Nations actually called a play on a sideline? Do people in Dayton feel this is the best hire from an X and O standpoint or do they feel like this is the most comfortable hire for the school board? Interesting how one assistant is viewed as incompetent but the other is held in such high regard.

My thought is that East Texas ching-a-laid us by not including Nac somewhere out there. One of our districts is going to have about a 300 mile round trip on a Tuesday night. That would be a stiff district though, almost as tough as the Cypress or Klein/Spring districts down here.

Man, you can tell there's no football to talk about. Y'all are lucky Crosby lost in the second round . . . Again. I was just saying that stuff highlight motives for the actions of the young man. No way trying to justify any of it. I was thinking some background data would show why everybody doesn't view decision making through the same prism. My family is probably the perfect example. My mom and some of her brothers went to school on athletic scholarships and got degrees, they started a trend. Only two of the nine first cousins I have that went to school on some sort of athletic scholarship didn't graduate. Out of 22 of us 16 have at least have a bachelors degree, I assume the number will grow generationally. So not everyone needs sports to shake an environment but I'm telling you from being close to different situations it's the most efficient and realistic way to change course in some cases. I've seen the flip side too. I have a cousin and brother-in-law that were murdered and I have another cousin doing life. My wife is from the Dallas area, she has four maternal uncles. Two were murdered, the other two have life sentences. Other than her the only other person with a degree in her family is her cousin who played ball before blowing out his knee, he's a teacher now. They all come from the same type of areas, it's just that in those type places the opposite ends of the spectrum can literally be across the street from each other. It's a common reality, yet hard to wrap your mind around even in theory. As far as the education thing, let's be honest. Half the guys inside these refineries earning these six figure incomes can barely read, spell and punctuate at a high school level. A GED and some experience is all you need to make it these days. Half the time the foreman is making more than the engineer anyway. Education really isn't the issue, it's the proximity to bad choices that lead so many kids astray. People have to be realistic when they start talking about academic scholarships and college being attainable to all. One of those cousins I spoke of graduated Pre-Med in biology and is now a pharmacist in Liberty County, not even she qualified for a real academic scholarship. I guess you can attain it through financial aide and the accrual of massive sums of student loan debt though. Trade schools give you skills the majority of the time that are market dependent, I do agree they teach important skills though. I'm not saying the kids need athletics, I'm saying the truly motivated are going to thrive anyway. That's more than evident. My argument for the importance of athletics is geared towards kids like the article is about, not the "it's the only way out" argument some are trying to turn it into.

You don't have to buy it, I'm not trying to sell you on it. Nor am I making excuses or did I say it couldn't be done. As I stated before, only about 12% of the total US population is black yet 60% of the males incarcerated are black. That's what I mean by viewing survival differently in different places. That's not a coincidence the numbers look like that, it's a direct reflection of choices and opportunities. It's kind of like saying Native Americans have problems with alcoholism, then getting to actually go to indian reservations and finding out what the basis of the problem is. Before I saw it myself I was actually believing what Tom Daschle stood in front of my political science class saying, my opinions changed and I even vote democrat. If you've never had to live in the environment some of these kids come from then you'll never fully grasp it. It's kind of relative when you say "privilege" too. Obviously you were un-athletic but in every other instance of life I would be willing to bet you were more "privileged" than this kid was. Even in a case like Tony Brown being arrested at Alabama the decision he made for that to happen is probably one a kid from Bridge City doesn't make. Growing up in Beaumont you've probably seen the police pick with you for what you deem minor infractions. He probably saw the police being there as picking with him, similar to what may have happened to him or his buddies at home, and reacted accordingly. The BC kid has probably never had a run-in with the police other than a traffic violation and therefore would be more compliant. Yes kids make bonehead decisions, I'm just highlighting why in some places some of those dumb decisions get you stuck in the mud and others get you a prison sentence.

It's not worth it to you and I. Neither is walking into a crowded area with a suicide vest on to do harm to innocent people. It happens though. I doubt if you told him someone would be harmed he would even go. The way you look at survival is completely different than the way a minority youth in a poverty stricken urban area does. It doesn't make it right, it's just the way it is. I'm just trying to give you some substance behind the numbers you'll constantly rolled out on shows like O'Rielly and Hannity. The "Jones'" don't live in his neighborhood or go to school with him, I highly doubt he's ever seen them.

It's probably life in prison or death in the street if he talks. Pretty tough decision when all you were probably looking for is some money to buy shoes or clothes.

The kid could care less about the actual rims, it's the $500 he could sell them for to the guy up the street that they're after. It says this kid was the lookout while the others went it, meaning a statement as simple as "Hey, watch out while we hit this lick" is probably what's going to get him a life sentence. At Ike, where he went to school, probably 70% of kids qualify for free lunch. It's not a stretch to think he was in the same boat. In those types of households in can be hard to teach the value of hard work sometime, especially when the child has seen the parent/parents work hard and still be on section 8.

A realistic 5A split would probably put about 130 schools in each class and have a difference of 600 students. This year in the 5A-D2 playoffs Crosby could have literally added WOS' enrollment and players and still had about 100 less kids than RP. If you split 5A still only about 50% of teams would make the playoffs, technically 50% of the teams in 4A-D2 can make the playoffs with a 1-9 record. In 5A and 6A you're getting top 10 matchups in bi-district sometimes. Yes, a split would water down the 5A and 6A product some but if you're going to do the lower classes a solid then it needs to be done across the board, which is my argument.

That's exactly why athletics are so important in the minority communities, often times even stressed more than academics. I think that's highlighted by the fact that even though blacks are only about 12% of the US population they make up about 70% of NFL players and about 74% of NBA players. Athletics are often times the only realistic way some of these kids don't end up as a statistic on one of those steamers running across Fox later in life.

It's more than likely that the car is the reason they broke in in the first place. I assume the rims on the car the family mentioned are what we call 84's in the Houston area. People in the Houston area have been murdered over these rims in car jacking attempts since the mid-90's. If he had the money to buy the rims he probably also had several thousand dollars of other upgrades on/in the car. Believe it or not they'll take a fixed up Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac or Lincoln before they steal the Mercedes right next to it. They're much easier to strip and flip.

Splendora's nearest neighbor is New Caney, both town and school wise. Plus, Splendora High School is only 8 miles from Texan Drive stadium where they would actually play the games. It's over 20 miles for them to Moorehead where Caney Creek plays. It just wouldn't make a lot of sense to drive an hour to play Caney Creek when Splendora is 30 mins up the road.

If it goes like this, 73% of teams are already guaranteed a playoff spot before they even take the field for the '16 season. 69% of all teams in 4A-D2 would make the playoffs.

. . . And the district gets even tougher, smh. Porter has about 1,800 kids right now. They'll probably be right at 2,000 for the '18 realignment. He basically is getting the same type of athletes and enrollment he had at K-Park. Very good hire for Porter.

The way Stepp has it it's one 9 team district, four 8 team districts and three 7 team districts. I think they could go 19-5A: Willis, Caney Creek, Huntsville, Magnolia, Magnolia West, Waller, Tomball, Tomball Memorial 21-5A: Crosby, Dayton, Barbers Hill, Humble, K-Park, Splendora, New Caney, Porter 22-5A: Nederland, PNG, Ozen, Central, Lumberton, PAM, Vidor, Nacogdoches Keep all the other districts the same. Makes six 8 team districts and two 7 team districts. Switching Caney Creek and Splendora saves on travel for both schools. Nac's travel is equally bad for all three region 3 possibilities so why not let them play with other East Texas schools?