On the road again . . .

At the time of this writing I am many thousands of feet above the Nevada desert headed East in an aluminum tube with 160 other people who all appear to all feel the same way I do (let’s call it “unsettled”). For the middle of the day, it is surprisingly quiet. It’s giving me a little time to reflect on last week’s game against LSU and this week’s game against Auburn.

The cynics in sports will say there are no moral victories. And I get where they’re coming from. Winning is what matters most. Whatever #2 is, it’s way the hell back there. Would you rather lose a close game to a great team or beat a so-so team by 35? I think most people, including me, would take the “W” because losses suck. But not every loss is a complete failure. I mean, sure, this one feels like failure because we were in it, had a lead and could have won. And then we blew it. Feels awful. So, maybe in this case it would feel better if it had been a back and forth game and LSU had just out-manned us.

“Well Boys, we fought the good fight. Gave ‘em a run for their money. They were just bigger, faster, and stronger. There’s no shame in losing. We did the best we could. Keep a stiff upper lip. We’ll get better over time. Blah, blah, blah… [puke]”

Yeah, maybe that would feel better.

Well, to quote one my military heroes, Colonel Sherman Potter, I say “Horse hockey!” I just don’t see it that way. If that were the case, if we were just out-manned, we’d have no reason to be optimistic about the rest of this season. What in the world would we look forward to? Not much. Well I do feel optimistic about this season. What happened to us is we made mistakes. And, yeah, it sucks to let a game like that slip away. But, we can correct mistakes (and we’re not getting any faster or taller between now and February). We can get better at decision-making, turnovers, penalties, route-running and the like. We showed we were man enough to take on the big boys and give them all they could handle for most of the game.

At the beginning of the year, 13 out of 14 SEC teams thought we were going to get beat like a kid who stole something. A lot of SEC fans penciled in a little “W” next to the Texas A&M game on the pocket schedule their realtors mailed them over the summer. We were an afterthought. Now, I promise you, we have their full attention.

If you didn’t watch the LSU game, first of all, it’s probably your fault we lost. I won’t explain the mechanics of it, but rest assured, you should feel guilty it’s probably better if you don’t tell me who you are. The game played out a lot like the Florida game. We raced out to an early lead and then struggled to move the ball for a while. Our defense held up very well for most of the game, but gave up three touchdowns, each after an untimely turnover. We missed field goals, a PAT and were unable to put points on the board after a 76 yard kick return. But, we also put up the most yards that LSU has given up in the last 18 games. We held them to 2 of 16 on third down conversions. Our book-end tackles Joeckel and Matthews more than held their own against LSU’s incredible pass-rush and may have cemented their status as the best tackles in college football. As juniors both are projected to be top 10 picks in this year’s NFL draft. Demontre Moore played big boy football and added to his already gaudy sack and TFL totals. He is also projected to go in the top 10 in this year’s draft (unless we can convince him to stay). We're a good team.

Yeah, we’ve got their attention alright. Even Nick Satan, I mean Saban, is thinking about us.

This week we go to Auburn to play a team in disarray. With Auburn at 1-6, just two years removed from a National championship, coach Gene Chizik is on the hottest of hot seats. It’s gonna get bad over there. For a touch of perspective, just think about all the hand-wringing going on in Austin right now over a 5-2 wrongwhorn team. Mack's on the hot seat. I imagine an irritated crowd of t-shirt fans sticking their carefully manicured hands out of their BMW windows to give Mack the one finger salute as they drive down I-35. Now, replace that group with an angry mob of Alabama rednecks who may not be able to count all 6 losses because their spare hand is holding a pitchfork, but they know it’s a whole lot more than their one win which ain’t good. And they know where coach Chizik lives because it’s the only house in town without wheels.

Yeah, I’ll take the Barton Creek crowd any day.

The problem with Auburn is that they actually do have talent on the roster and they’re desperate. They’re like a cornered animal. A loss to us means they’re eliminated from bowl contention before November, which ain’t good. It also means that Gene Chizik may have to find a new job, which also ain’t good (at least if you’re Gene) cause it most likely involves about a 90% pay cut. I have to believe that we’re going to get Auburn’s best shot on Saturday.

But, I also think that we can win without too much trouble if we play our game and if we’re focused. Our last couple of outings have shown that we can do amazing things one moment and then immediately turn around and wet the bed. We will need to cut out the bed wetting and play relatively mistake free football Saturday. Auburn will be loud and crazy. Hopefully we’ll punch them in the face and not let them get any big ideas. This is the first game in a three game SEC road trip that starts and ends in the state of Alabama with a side trip to currently undefeated Mississippi State sandwiched in the middle. It will be helpful if we don’t wind up in a slugging match and accidentally get someone hurt before we travel to Tuscaloosa two weeks later to take our third shot at a top 10 ranked SEC team.

I thought I should start throwing in some semi-factual tidbits about the SEC teams we play so that people who aren’t already familiar with the SEC can have just enough information to start a bar fight. Auburn’s mascot is Aubie the Tiger. It’s such an original mascot that only two other teams in the conference use the same animal. Everyone loves tigers, they’re Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat! But, to confuse matters, they also have “war eagle’. War Eagle is actually just a battle cry, although they have had live eagles for years and the eagle circles the stadium before the game getting everyone riled up. The official word from the University is that “we’re the Tigers who say ‘War Eagle’.” The official word from everyone else is that this is a retarded explanation because you actually have a damn eagle.

The best known landmark in Auburn is Toomer’s Corner, a beautiful park area with two grand old oak trees that fans will wrap in toilet paper any time something good happens to Auburn. It was in the news a while back when maybe the dumbest Alabama fan (out of a world-class collection of incredibly stupid fans) famously poisoned the ancient oak trees, AND THEN CALLED A RADIO SHOW TO BRAG ABOUT IT. They *69ed his butt and he now resides in an 8X10 hospital jail cell (an upgrade over the wheeled domicile he had been occupying prior to his epic brainfart). Roll tide indeed. Anyway, his trial is scheduled to begin soon, but is temporarily on hold while they examine his brain after stunning revelations that he may have a screw loose.

That’s the news as I choose to report it.

Gig’em and Beat the Hell Outta Auburn!

Chuck ‘96

LSU - Oh man, oh man, oh man.

This is just a quick reminder that this weekend is monumentally important to the Aggies. And not just in terms of wins and losses. This is where we set the precedent for how awesome our fanbase is for visiting SEC fans. An 11:00 AM start might be a deterrent to the average SEC fan, but not us. We're going to have an absolute blowout party after the game. If you are even a little bit on the fence about coming, get your butt off the fence and come on down (or up as the case may be). There will be a lot of people who just hang out during the game, watching it on TV, drinking free beer, waiting for Tim to return and start frying the all that fish. We've got a bartender, kegs, shot girls, musicians, fried food, coonasses and hurricanes.

Come on. Bring friends. Have a drink. Watch a little football.

More to come.

- Chuck '96

Ole Miss? Wow. And now La Tech . . .

If you didn’t watch the A&M / Ole Miss game there’s really nothing I can do to describe it to you effectively. But that doesn’t mean I won’t try. We did everything we could think of to give that game to Ole Miss. We turned the ball over six times. Six. Even people who don’t know anything about football (no offense Bryan) know that six is a lot of turnovers. We came within a hanging chad of giving up a game defining safety. We allowed them to convert on seemingly every third and fourth down conversion attempt (except one). We, on the other hand, failed to convert third and short and we failed to punch it in in the red zone. It was a rough first SEC road game.

But, somehow the good guys pulled it out. The defense came up with huge stops when they absolutely had to and scored a defensive touchdown for the third week in a row. They kept Ole Miss from converting a critical fourth and a centimeter (about a half an inch for you non-metric holdouts) giving Johnny a short field to work with for the go ahead touchdown and the defense came up with the game ending interception in the final minute of play. Johnny Manziel did his thing, ran in circles, ran downfield, sometimes ran backwards, escaped pressure, missed some throws he should have made, made some throws he should have missed, fumbled the ball within sniffin’ distance of the end zone, led two improbable scoring drives in the final eight minutes of play to win on the road and was again clearly the most interesting part of an incredibly interesting football game.

Here’s a highlight video that I think really captures the way other teams see Johnny Effin’ Football:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1A5zDJWsFo

I owe my television an apology from Saturday. If that TV was a person, well, the things I said to it on Saturday would qualify as emotional abuse and I came within a gnat’s nut hair of physically abusing it as well. My poor mother in law was in the room and I may have shattered the heretofore unblemished image I had carefully cultivated with her over the last sixteen years. Theresa even had to take the kids out of the room at one point. With all of that fresh in my mind, the next time a cop looks me in the eye and says “we can do this the easy way or the hard way” I’m taking the easy way. I’d like to see the Aggies win the easy way too. To quote my old friend Sargent Murtaugh “I’m getting’ too old for this sh*t.”

Whew.

And now on to this week. When the schedule came out earlier this year I had circled Louisiana Tech as an easy game to win. After all, A&M has a perfect historical record against La Tech with an average margin of 31 points. There’s no way we’re losing to La Tech, right? But it turns out La Tech actually has a pretty solid team this year and finds itself undefeated and ranked in the top 25 for the first time since Al Gore invented the Internet. They’re scoring 50+ points a game and haven’t been held below 40 yet. They’re also creating a lot of turnovers. This is giving the boys from Ruston, Louisiana a lot of confidence, particularly after we struggled with perennial SEC doormat Ole Miss.

Well, I have two predictions for everyone. First, Ole Miss is better than people think and will finish 4^th or 5^th in the SEC West (rather than the assumed 7^th), which would be good for 2nd in the Big 12-2-2+2. Second, La Tech isn’t bad, but they’re going to get their butts beat on Saturday. La Tech compliments their 3^rd ranked scoring offense with a 106^th ranked scoring defense. And they achieved these impressive numbers against less than stellar competition. We will easily have the best defense and the best offense they have to play all season. The one wrinkle in the deal is that we’ll face their pass-happy offense with a depleted defensive secondary. We’re a little banged up and we’ve got two suspended players (starting linebacker Steven Jenkins and back-up safety Howard Mathews). There might not be a punt all night. We’ll see.

Those that bet, or rather those that take bets have the line at Ags -9. I’d still take that bet. I think we’re at least two TD’s better than La Tech and let’s face it, to win by less would humiliating. We'll beat the spread on moral grounds alone.

This email has already gone on too long, but I think it’s worth mentioning the Ags in the NFL. Ryan Tannehill is playing as well as or better than the two QB’s drafted above him (Andrew Luck and RG III). He may become the franchise player for Miami that no one expected him to be, plus his wife is smokin’ hot. Aside: Speaking of RGIII, he got hurt last week, which sucks because I hear he’s a pretty decent guy. But, what I saw from him in college was that he was exceptional until he got hurt, which was not an uncommon event. And every Baylor Bold person I ever met gave me the one finger salute if I brought it up the possibility of that happening more rather than less in the pros. Well, I’m just sayin’, that’s all. Von Miller has five sacks through five games. With the Peyton show in Denver these days people just seem to accept that Von’s dominance is a given. It’s cool when being a badass surprises people, and it’s even cooler when they just know it’s coming. Jerrod Johnson is giving it another go, this time in the minor leagues. I really want this kid to get his chance in the NFL. Jorvorskie Lane is the starting fullback for the Dolphins and seems to finally have his life in order. And a bunch of linemen continue to get no credit, even from me.

I’m not driving to Shreveport for the neutral site game. I’d like to, but I love my wife too much to leave her alone with the three amigos again this weekend. Plus, when you drive to Shreveport, unfortunately you wind up in Shreveport, which is fine, except that it’s Shreveport, and Shreveport sucks. But, I think everyone else should go. You’ll love it. It’s a short drive from DFW. And someone has to be there to watch the Ags beat the hell outta Bobby Boucher and the South Central Louisiana State University Mud Dogs, err Bulldogs.

Gig ‘em and Beat the Hell Outta Louisiana Tech!

Chuck ‘96

P.S. – Plan on coming to the LSU game next week. I think I just locked up our music for the tailgate. Look up Jordan Camerino on youtube. Good stuff.

I'll miss Ole Miss - But it'll all be ok, I guess

There’s no Dixie Chicken in Fort Worth. So I stopped at a Fort Worth original with similar characteristics, Fred’s Texas, to write this. When you drink a beer at Fred’s there’s two things you can almost always count on finding at the bottom of the bottle, backwash and inspiration. Problem is that after a few beers it can be tough to distinguish between the two. Here’s hoping…

Coming off a complete dismantling of Arkansas the Ags are probably riding pretty high. It was an old fashioned woodshed beating and that little piggy went “wee, wee, wee” all the way home. I’d feel bad for them, but I don’t recall any such sympathy from those guys last year when our promising season went down the toilet like a doobie during a drug bust (for the record I do not now, nor have I ever smoked weed, although ten million pot heads probably aren’t completely wrong). Anyway, our defense kept their offense out of the endzone for the last three quarters (in spite of giving up a lot of yards). The offense dazzled as 10 different receivers caught passes and we racked up over 700 yards of offense on way to a 58-10 drubbing of the Fayetteville swine posse. A little rain came and went. No biggie. It was not enough to dampen the party or the game. Johnny Effin’ Football just added to his legendary status, a mere four games into his pre-professional career. He literally ran circles around the defense. What can you say? Johnny be good!

This week the boys travel to Oxford, MS to take on Ole Miss. Ole Miss has a storied past and a checkered present. Home to Archie Manning, Eli Manning and that dude from the Blind Side (you know the one where Sandra Bullock goes all hot southern badass from Memphis and whips some racist country club ass). She’s on top of my list of people who would be perfect if they were just a little more like my wife. Anyway, Ole Miss put up a better fight against ‘Bama last week than they had against t.u. the week before. At risk of sounding like Lou Holtz, I don’t think we should overlook the Rebels. They’ve got a heck of a QB and they’re playing at home. We’ll have to have our game faces on to not suffer a let-down. Let’s hope KDS (Kevin “Damn” Sumlin, a reference to the SEC media days when he said “damn” no fewer than 17 times in his inaugural press conference) has his team focused for a tougher than projected match up with the quickly improving Rebels.

There’s probably a lot of funny stuff to be said about the Rebs, but I’m in a bar and don’t have good internet access to look it up. Here’s what I know. Those folks know how to party. I wish I was there. They have cocktails, table clothes, chandeliers, silverware and servants. We don’t have anything like that. We have beer and French fries. I bet they have chamber music and debutantes. We have Merle Haggard and Daisy Dukes.

Well.

I do like Merle Haggard.

The game is at 6:00 PM . That gives you enough time to handle all that family stuff your wife, or husband I guess, wants you to do, then go to Wal-Mart to buy her (or him I guess) a romance novel and the kids a new cartoon DVD, lock them out of your man (or women I guess) cave, and watch this ever so important game with your buddies. Hopefully it all works for you. I will be in the comfort of my own home watching the game and planning the tailgate for the LSU game that is a mere two weeks away. So crack open a beer, hold your pinky in the air in honor of our new southern friends, and get ready for our first SEC road game.

Gig ‘em and Beat the Hell Outta Ole Miss!

Chuck ‘96

Arkansas - WOW - LSU coming up in a couple of weeks

OK. First of all, wow. I'm not sure what else you say about the woodshed beating we put on the Razorbacks. If you didn't watch it, shame on you.

We're playing Ole Miss this weekend in Oxford, MS and Louisiana Tech in Shreveport next weekend. I can't attend either of those games although I would really like to hit them both. They are both winnable games against teams that are playing pretty well right now. La Tech is undefeated and we're really the only thing standing between them and a perfect season. I'll have more to say about each game as it gets closer.

The big thing is going to be the LSU game on the 20th. It looks like we'll be 5-1 and they'll be undefeated (depending on how the Florida game goes) for a big time showdown of ranked teams.

Tickets are very difficult to get. Hotel rooms in College Staton, nearly impossible. And I expect the tailgate to be quite possibly the most incredible tailgate in the history of human existence. I have not figured out how to chainsaw a living tiger, so that's out, but this is still going to be one heck of a party.

The whole reason I bring it up now, two and a half weeks early, is that I want to make sure you all have a chance to figure out how to get down there for the party whether you've got tickets or not. You can just hang out at the tailgate and watch the game on all those TV's. Hell, there's no beer in the stadium anyway, the tailgate might be more enjoyable anyway? Tim is going to work up the biggest non-Lenten catfish fry in Texas and I'm going to provide leaedership and moral support. We're working on at least one musical act (Texas country), maybe two. We'll definitely have bartenders (maybe some shot girls) and a good time will be had by all.

This is not a party to be missed. We have to show all those cajuns what they've been missing all these years. I hope to see you all there.

Gig 'em,

Chuck '96