Article 19 and the Remaking of SMU Football

I haven't posted all season due in large part to the demands of grad school and life in general. But in light of SMU successfully completing a 7-5 season, the most wins in a season since 1984, sealed by the emotional win against Tulane on Saturday, I thought I would write a quick post. In addition to the win yesterday and the season as a whole, SMU grad and Austin filmmaker Thad Matula has completed a teaser trailer for his documentary on the life, death, and rebirth of SMU Football entitled "Article 19" (a reference to the portion of NCAA rules dealing with the so-called Death Penalty). I watched the trailer today and was quite impressed by it. Thad is still filming (I saw his camera operators at tailgate on Saturday and at the Senior Walk on the field after the game) and will likely head to Hawaii to cover the Mustangs at the Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Eve. What he has done so far is very intriguing: interviews with Forrest Gregg, Dale Hansen, Lance McIlhenny, Reggie Dupard and June Jones. The footage he has is excellent. I'm looking forward to watching the final product.

Teaser Trailer:

Untitled from DLP Entertainment on Vimeo.

Frog Week

It's frog week for the ponies and we all know what that means, the traditional frog smack that TCU is too good to play the ponies nowadays. That's like a fat girl getting a make over and then acting like shes to cool to hang out with her smarter, wealthier, prettier next door neighbor that's been sick for 2 weeks (decades) because she has lipstick on...she's still fat. Speaking of...
TCU does have Patterson and his one size too small mock turtleneck sitting on the sideline. But hey, at least the guy can rock out some Hall and Oats.

I will be the first to admit, yes TCU has made huge strides in football over the past few years, and I congratulate them. In fact I think it's great... bring down the BCS, the other little guy in town fighting for press space over the Evil Longhorn Empire, etc....
But come on froggies don't get to cocky or the ponies will have to give you another dose of humility much like in 2005. This is a Rivalry game, one of the few our two schools have, it's tradition, and it's fun. It's fun to have a cross town rival, hijinks occur, smack talk, and it's usually a pretty good game. So you frogs might have had a few winning seasons under patterson's large belt but June and his boys are gaining some ground and the next few years are going to be good.

I'll let my more educated associate Irving disect the frogs (pun!) and breakdown what this game will look like Saturday night. However, I'll give you my top reasons why TCU sucks.

5. Purple: Who thought this was a good idea? Look how angry this guy is because he has to wear it week in and week out. Give me the Red & Blue anyday.





4. Super Frog: What the hell is this? Is it a cat? Did Lisa simpson breed with an alien? No it's super frog the delightfully cuddly mascot of TCU...Peruna may be a mini horse but he's a bad ass.






3. The Campus: pretty....the guy who decided to use yellow brick with a red roof must have been on the same committee that selected purple as the school color and an alien cat as the mascot. Sweet tall, horn thing, cone fountain too. You know I briefly cosidered going to TCU until I vistited the campus, realized frat house shared dorms together, there was a major street dividing campus, and the buildings looked like well like that...advantage Hilltop...

I was going to keep going but I got too bored looking up TCU stuff..... TCU Sucks...

Go Ponies

It's the most wonderful time of the year

In honor of the college football season starting and seeing the first oktoberfest beer of the year in the store yesterday and me remembering my password for this blog I will celebrate in song.

It's the most wonderful time of the year
when the footballs are flying
and everyone's lying that this is the year!
It's the most wonderful time of the year.

It's the hap happiest season of all
with the rivalry meetings
oktoberfests for drinking
it's finally the fall!
It's the hap happiest season of all

They'll be tailgates for hosting
and wins that we're boasting
and losses that make us feel low
they'll be underdog stories
and tales of the glories of
Conference Championships long long ago

It's the most wonderful time of the year
The ponies will be winning
and we'll all be grinning
cause the horned frogs are Queer
It's the most wonderful time of the year!!!!

Happy football season everybody!!! So go grab a paulner munich and get ready for saturday.

Go Ponies

RIP Coach Gansz

Frank Gansz, SMU Special Teams Coach, passed away yesterday at Presbyterian Hospital here in Dallas after experiencing complications from knee replacement surgery. Gansz was a salient figure in both college football and the NFL where his knowledge of football in general and special teams play in particular put him high in the esteem of many.

"He was the finest football coach I ever worked with," [Dick] Vermeil said Monday. "The quality of the human being matched his coaching skills. ... His vibrancy will live forever in the people that he touched."

Junes Jones coaxed Coach Gansz out of retirement in 2008 to help reshape SMU's football program.

Coach Gansz's family was with him when he died. He was 70 years old.



Dallas Morning News Story on Coach Gansz

Thomas Morstead Drafted by the Saints

From ponyfans.com:

2009 Baseball Season Outlook

Well its mid-March and it has been about a month since pitchers and catchers reported to spring training sites in Florida and Arizona. The upcoming season has been somewhat in the back of my mind lately and I think this is due to the fact that there is not much to look forward to, as an Astros fan, in the 2009 season. The release of Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA standings projections and Sean Smith's similar CHONE projections seems to bear me out in my lack of enthusiasm for this season.

Please do not mistake: I remain an avid baseball fan. There are few better feelings than coming home from work at the end of a long day and knowing that the odds are good that I can turn the TV on and find a game on somewhere (even if it is the Cubs, Yankees, or Red Sox). I remain a fanatic Astros devotee. I came of age in the early to mid 90s after the Astros had traded away the foundations of their 80s success. Glen Davis, Alan Ashby, Bill Doran, Nolan Ryan, Mike Scott, Jim Deshaies, Terry Puhl, Kevin Bass, Billy Hatcher, Gerald Young, the list goes on. By the atrocious 1991 season (when the Stros went 65-97 and averaged under 15,000 in attendance per game in the cavernous Astrodome) most of these players were either gone or on their way out the door. I went to games and followed the team on my Astros Buddy pocket radio every night as I fell asleep. My faithful fandom remained intact.

This upcoming season does not bode well though. The team has made no serious personnel changes aside from shedding Mark Loretta, Brad Ausmus, and Ty Wigginton and everyone else is a year older. Ausmus needed to go as he was past his prime as a defensive catcher and was an out and out liability at the plate, but Loretta and Wigginton had productive bats that will be missed.

The aging of Roy Oswalt, Lance Berkman, Carlos Lee, and Miguel Tejada along with no significant replacements for Loretta or Wigginton (Geoff Blum will likely start at 3rd in what will probably turn into a platoon situation) and the fact that the Astros have, outside of Roy Oswalt, no starting rotation to speak of compute into a PECOTA record projection for 2009 of 67-95; second to last in the NL Central. The CHONE projections are hardly better: a record of 72-90, good for last in the NL Central and tied for worst in the MLB.

2009 PECOTA projections

2009 CHONE projections

By the most respectable SABRE-metric projections, the Astros look as though they will be the worst or close to team in all of Major League Baseball for 2009. Fans, I know, are supposed to say things like "well they play the games for a reason", but PECOTA and CHONE have both proven to be accurate predictors of a team's success in a given year and so my attitude for this season is glum.

I will do a full season preview closer to Opening Day. Until then I will be conjuring up beer posts and perhaps at some point an analysis of SMU's 2009 season schedule. Oh, if you want a Rangers preview, talk to Ty.

Back When Things Went Our Way

Hard to believe that there was a time when SMU caught breaks in a game, but there is video proof of it.



I was only 2 when that game was taking place, so unfortunately my only memories of SMU football prior to being a student are from the '90s on Fox Sports Southwest (and it's precursors Prime Sports and HSN) when SMU played brutal schedules and occasionally succeeded in scoring a few upsets under Tom Rossley.

You know the last two season have been rough when you look back on the '90s as halcyon days.