The Porch, y'all. pull up a seat and kick back.

[utee94]

Clemson has been an Achilles heel for us.  So they always give me pause. And they’ve been laying waste to most everyone on their schedule.  I guess A&M was an exception.

I see your point about the proportions being different.  It requires a bit more thinking than just that though.  

Most of those conference wins (and it was 11 not 10, I’ve lost count!) have come after beating Texas.  8 of the 11 by my count.  Some times we’ve also beaten Texas but then didn’t win the conference like in 2002 and 2004, during the five year streak.  

And three of Texas ten wins were in the 1990s.  If we’re talking 2000 on, OU’s winning advantage is nearly 2:1.  And that’s what it’s been this decade too, 6 to 3.

Anyway, I know it won’t change your mind, which is fine of course, because you’re a great fan of your team and I respect that, but I’ll just say that when we play Texas as the two overall best teams in the Big 12, it feels no different than when we used to play Nebraska as the two best teams overall in the Big 8.  Always a tough game, but I always like our chances.

Fair enough.
Oh, and... SCOREBOARD.

[MikeDeTiger]

And Clemson?  No.  They barely beat the completely average Texas A&M team I've watched all season long.  In previous years they might have been on a similar level to Alabama, but this year's Alabama team might just be the best college football team I've ever seen, and this year's Clemson team isn't the same as the past few.

Oh geez.
You're better than this, and I expected better from you.  
MY GOD THIS OKLAHOMA TEAM IS THE GREATEST TEAM WE'VE EVER SEEN NOBODY COULD POSSIBLY oh wait, nevermind.  
Insert team X, repeat.
Mississippi State just showed an few elite D linemen is all you need to make Alabama's offense look ugly.  Hell, LSU made them look normal, which most people didn't even think was possible--dump people, who don't learn from history--and they did it without any elite linemen.  Then Simmons and Sweat reminded everybody, oh hey, nobody looks good when your line is getting blown up and a QB doesn't have time.  Of course both LSU and MSU lack anything resembling an offense.  But a team that fields one is out there, and this Alabama team is not as deep or as good against the pass as even previous versions.  
Clemson also was playing Kelly Bryant vs. A&M.  Trevor Lawrence is a bit of a different animal.  Clemson also recruits bit studly D-linemen.  They'll give that greatest team you've ever seen another whale of a game.  

[utee94]

Oh geez.
You're better than this, and I expected better from you.  
MY GOD THIS OKLAHOMA TEAM IS THE GREATEST TEAM WE'VE EVER SEEN NOBODY COULD POSSIBLY oh wait, nevermind.  
Insert team X, repeat.
Mississippi State just showed an few elite D linemen is all you need to make Alabama's offense look ugly.  Hell, LSU made them look normal, which most people didn't even think was possible--dump people, who don't learn from history--and they did it without any elite linemen.  Then Simmons and Sweat reminded everybody, oh hey, nobody looks good when your line is getting blown up and a QB doesn't have time.  Of course both LSU and MSU lack anything resembling an offense.  But a team that fields one is out there, and this Alabama team is not as deep or as good against the pass as even previous versions.  
Clemson also was playing Kelly Bryant vs. A&M.  Trevor Lawrence is a bit of a different animal.  Clemson also recruits bit studly D-linemen.  They'll give that greatest team you've ever seen another whale of a game.  

You seem to be taking this quite personally.  There's no reason for that.
Texas 2005 was an incredible team and still played some close games.
I guess the 95 Huskers didn't, and they're my true "best team ever."  
My actual point was, I don't think Texas could beat Alabama.  Have you seen what our defense looks like this year, the ISU game notwithstanding?  
I do think Texas could beat Clemson.  I suspect it would be a close 1-3 point affair either way.  Because that's sort of our thing, this season.

[MikeDeTiger]

I'm with you Mike - I only like alcohol for the effect not the taste (except for beer and wine, but those are in a different category in my book).

I can't remember the last time I was actually drunk.  I can't even remember the last time I had hard liquor at all.

But back in the day, I made the mistake of mixing motorcycles with mojo (which in the usmc was just pouring koolaid and/or some kind of juice into a bin with whatever hard liquor we had on hand) regularly.  

I remember leaving the NCO club one night after beaucoup shots of 151, celebrating somebody's retirement, on my bike, yelling my goodbyes to all at the top of my lungs (a mildly obnoxious but happy drunk, or at least so they tell me).  Next thing you know someone is shaking my shoulder and saying "Yak are you okay??" (my nickname was yak, everyone in the usmc has a nickname), and I realize I've got dirt in my mouth, laying sideways in a ditch and my bike was still "running" somehow with the back tire up in the air and spinning, but of course this was all a blurrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

And then there were the "races" I had with fellow biking buddies on those NC back woods highways. Lit. It's amazing i lived to be 22. I believe my mother was praying daily for me, and I give her all the credit.

See, and I don't even have these kinds of ordeals to blame stuff on.  I've heard a hundred stories just like this and half of them came from people I knew, whose stories I helped them live through.  But not me.  I never blacked out, and I don't really understand the concept.  Either I go to sleep, or I'm awake.  I'm unfamiliar with walking, talking, performing actions that I am not aware or or can't remember.  And I've been reeeeeeally drunk.  But I remember it all.  I remember having free will and making conscious decisions to do every stupid thing I ever did.
Because the sad fact is in my case what they say about alcohol is really true.  Alcohol doesn't change me, it just lowers my inhibitions.  Whatever dumb things I did, I was inclined to do them anyway and alcohol just made me braver.  
Charley's story humbled me and forces me to amend my earlier story to tell the whole truth.  I can't blame making out with somebody I shouldn't have on the booze.  That was there anyway, the alcohol was just a convenient excuse.  Fact is I've messed around with more people than just her that I shouldn't have, and I was usually sober.  Ugly truth is, there was a period of time when I willingly chose to be stupid concerning women.  
I never got mean when I drank.  Never got violent.  Never got criminally inclined (what I did that one time that could've landed me in the clink was an honest mistake, I had no idea what I was doing was illegal).  Because I'm not any of those things sober.  The chance to press some flesh with a good looking female, well, I'd like to blame indiscretions on the alcohol, but I can't.  
I do think it'd probably be a different story today, because I've been super happy with my now-wife for the 3+ years I've been dating her, in a way I never was before.  I imagine I'd be fine to drink now and there'd be no problems, mostly because I don't have the urge to chase other women sober anymore.  
But the fact remains, I just don't like the taste of most alcohol.  

[MikeDeTiger]

You seem to be taking this quite personally.  There's no reason for that.

Admittedly, yes, I am tired of hearing every year how this is the greatest Alabama team we've ever seen and they are perennially the greatest team of all time.  And I'm tired of the fact that while it's hyperbole to a sickening extent, that it's true enough that they are routinely one of the best, possibly the best, team in that given year, and I'm tired of being stuck in a division with them.  
One of the reasons I like the B12 board is because that stuff doesn't exist here, so...yeah, bit of a reaction when I come to my favorite lounge and suddenly the same smell I'm trying to get away from everywhere else was detected.  

[utee94]

Well I can certainly understand that.

So how 'bout something we can ALL agree on-- well, everyone that matters anyway--

OU sucks.

[Shiner]

On the topic of Kyle Field.... I believe that DJ was instituted last season.... I haven't been to a home game last season or this.  From what I hear, I may be better off for it.  The feedback I've heard is that the DJ thing is an absolute abomination and most everyone doesn't just dislike it... they HATE it.  And yes the commercialism is now also overwhelming.

But as mentioned... I supposed it's done to appeal to recruits... because it sure as hell isn't appealing to stodgy old Ags with big checkbooks.

Kyle Field, like much about A&M.... is but a shell of its former self.  And it makes me sad.  But.... it's just a symptom of a changing world we live in.  The unfortunate part is that I don't see much changing for the better.


Which is why........... I prefer whisky in my egg nog.  

[utee94]

^^^^^^^^^^

You may be my evil twin, but when you are right, you are so very, very right.  Amen brutha.

And I didn't think the atmosphere at Kyle Field was terrible-- it's just not as "pristine" as it used to be.

Honestly, the game with the absolute best "old-school" college football atmosphere, that I've been to in the past couple decades, is the TX-OU game at the Cotton Bowl.  There's still some ads and a little bit of piped in music,  but for the most part it's just the two bands, the two sets of cheeleaders, the cannon and the sooner dudes with their pop guns.  It's just an unbelievable COLLEGE football environment and reminds me of what it was like in our home stadium a couple of decades ago.

[FearlessF]

I miss the 80's

[MikeDeTiger]

If I never hear that stupid rap song "I'm from Louisiana" at another LSU game, it will be too soon.  But they play, like...a bunch.  And that's a shame because I love the standard LSU fight songs.  The band still does their thing plenty often and still puts on amazing halftime shows, but it'd be better if it were 100% the band, and none of the piped in crap.

The game-day atmosphere itself....well, that's been covered ad nauseum.  Combination of a spoiled rotten fan base who won 10-11 games so much they forgot how to be happy with good seasons, a generation who's flat out spoiled in general, and the administration slowing pricing out the average fan over the last 10 years such that Tiger Stadium is full of a bunch of trophy wives and status hogs who can't be bothered to show up, stay late, or make noise....and you get what we have now.  It's not Death Valley until further notice.  



Speaking of ticket prices....I just checked on tix for the UT/LSU game next September.  Man, UT (and almost certainly LSU in 2020) can go **** themselves.  I really wanted to make that game and take my wife to her first Longhorn game, but I ain't paying $1650 for two tickets.  Cheapest I saw were $350 per, and that was for the super nosebleeds.  Even if I had it, that's insane.  I routinely scalped tickets for Texas games in 2005, pretty decent seats too, for a solid price I was willing to pay, and that was during a season everybody knew they were on a NC run.  This crap?  Hellz no.  

[UT-Erin03]

If I never hear that stupid rap song "I'm from Louisiana" at another LSU game, it will be too soon.  But they play, like...a bunch.  And that's a shame because I love the standard LSU fight songs.  The band still does their thing plenty often and still puts on amazing halftime shows, but it'd be better if it were 100% the band, and none of the piped in crap.

The game-day atmosphere itself....well, that's been covered ad nauseum.  Combination of a spoiled rotten fan base who won 10-11 games so much they forgot how to be happy with good seasons, a generation who's flat out spoiled in general, and the administration slowing pricing out the average fan over the last 10 years such that Tiger Stadium is full of a bunch of trophy wives and status hogs who can't be bothered to show up, stay late, or make noise....and you get what we have now.  It's not Death Valley until further notice.  



Speaking of ticket prices....I just checked on tix for the UT/LSU game next September.  Man, UT (and almost certainly LSU in 2020) can go **** themselves.  I really wanted to make that game and take my wife to her first Longhorn game, but I ain't paying $1650 for two tickets.  Cheapest I saw were $350 per, and that was for the super nosebleeds.  Even if I had it, that's insane.  I routinely scalped tickets for Texas games in 2005, pretty decent seats too, for a solid price I was willing to pay, and that was during a season everybody knew they were on a NC run.  This crap?  Hellz no.  

Where are you seeing those prices, or trying to buy them from?  
I'm sure there will be some released for general public through the regular UT box office, even if it's a limited number of seats released for sale that way.  That's how I usually buy them, much like concert tickets, if I hawk-eye the release dates and get myself ready for them.    I try to never pay more than face value for the events I go to, as long as I understand the system and when they are released to general public.  

[UT-Erin03]

When UT when to play USC in California, it was one of the first "sold out" games in years for them - and we got our tickets through the USC box office at face value the day they went on sale to public.  It can be done, is all I'm saying...   and I'm pretty good at doing it.

[MikeDeTiger]

Whatever site that was the fbs schedules site takes you to when you view schedules and it offers "buy tickets"...I think it's ticketmonster.com or something like that. 

I don't pretend to understand how tickets do what they do.  I'm guessing Texas hasn't put them on sale, but how can people sell tickets if UT hasn't released any for sale yet?  

I'd be happy to pay face value, but I'm not sure what the chances are of grabbing anything like that.  

[UT-Erin03]

Whatever site that was the fbs schedules site takes you to when you view schedules and it offers "buy tickets"...I think it's ticketmonster.com or something like that.

I don't pretend to understand how tickets do what they do.  I'm guessing Texas hasn't put them on sale, but how can people sell tickets if UT hasn't released any for sale yet?  

I'd be happy to pay face value, but I'm not sure what the chances are of grabbing anything like that.  

Okay, yeah all resale sites are going to be ridiculous this far out and likely they are people who have season tickets putting them up for bid.  Not people who have bought single game tickets at face value, so those prices are not at all accurate for what the face value is going to be. 
I would wait at least 6 months, and I also want to go to this game so I'll keep you in the loop with any information I have on hand.  Right now UT hasn't even announced prices yet for 2019 games, so I wouldn't even try to buy anything from anywhere for next year.    Football is different than concerts, but I know enough to work the system as far as I can to get face value tickets.   You already know I'm eyeing this series so I'll do what I can to see about reasonable tickets for you and myself!