The Hokies lose only three offensive starters from last year's team. However, there are still a lot of fresh faces that I'm looking forward to hearing about when Tech starts spring practice April 1. The biggest key for Hokies will be developing depth on the offensive line. They'll get the chance to do so as only two returning starters (LT Ed Wang and RT Blake DeChristopher) will participate in spring drills. Guard Sergio Render had surgery on his left shoulder and won't be available.
RB Ryan Williams
This is a no brainer. Hokie fans are excited to finally see the redshirt freshman in action. Williams was redshirted last year because he was unable to earn enough playing time at running back to justify playing him in his first year. Williams had trouble with pass blocking, which will get you on Billy Hite's bad side quickly.
Williams will at least return kicks for the Hokies next season and is expected to provide the lateral-moving shifty type running style in the backfield that complements the hard-nosed running style of Darren Evans. I think you could also see Williams line up in the slot a lot next year as well.
WR Brandon Dillard
Dillard was the star of last year's spring game but tore his Achilles’ tendon in July and missed the 2008 season. I'm interested to see if Dillard's speed is anywhere close to what we saw last spring out of him.
The Hokies need a speedy wide receiver and Dillard can provide that if he's back. If he isn't, hopefully he can at least provide much needed depth at the position.
OL Jaymes Brooks
Brooks played well during the Orange Bowl against Cincinnati for the ineligible Nick Marshman. I'm interested to see which guard position he plays during spring practice. In the Orange Bowl, he played right guard and Render moved to the left spot. We'll find out if that move is permanent this spring.
The key for the Hokies will be maintaining the chemistry and progress the offensive line made toward the end of last year. They have to replace the main cog in center Ryan Shuman, who graduated, and if they can do that they should be able to hit the ground running in 2009.
Who are you interested in seeing perform during spring drills?
Linkage
Hokies
- BCO welcomes a new writer in HokieJayBee. He announces his presence with authority.
- The A-Line looks at the ACC's postseason performance, including that of the Hokies.
- The North End Zone is glad Tech's basketball season (and the weekend) is over.
Atlantic Coast Conference
- The Legacyx4 has an in-depth look at Georgia Tech's first day of spring practice.
- Brendan at From Old Virginia gives his thoughts on the guys at the top of UVa's bball coaching search.
- Impressive research by Tomahawk Nation. Leonard Hamilton does a much better job of improving his players than another hoops coach I know.
- David Glenn at ACCSJ interviews Aaron Curry.
Randomness
- South Park will have a Jimmy Buffett influence tonight.
- An Oklahoma team claimed a hoops national title.
- Burnt Orange Nation took a trip to G'boro for the NCAA Tournament.
- OMG! Miller's back! Too bad the season's dead. However, one Sabres fan still enjoys going to the games. Is she a fellow masochist?
- If The Captain can't hit OR field, what was the point of bringing him back?
Showing posts with label oklahoma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oklahoma. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
The Fran Fraschilla Drinking Game
Living in Big 12 country, I have to watch a lot of basketball games involving ESPN color commentator and former New Mexico head coach Fran Fraschilla. What has amused me about Fraschilla's broadcasting the last few years is he seems to be interviewing for his next head coaching job throughout each telecast.
I'm sure there's a lot of color guys who do this, but Fraschilla is the most blatant. Well, as if you needed another reason to drink on Wednesday, Coach Fran will be calling the Notre Dame-UAB game at 9 p.m. on ESPN. If I'm conscious, I'll play along. But, I haven't lasted 'til 9 p.m. in many a St. Patrick's Day.
Fran Fraschilla Drinking Game
Coaching
One Drink: Fran needlessly over analyzes a mundane situation with coach-speak.
Two Drinks: Fran draws up his own play in an end-game situation.
Three Drinks: Fran mentions he coaches at a lot of summer camps.
Sucking Up
One Drink: Fran mentions the AD of a team involved in his game.
Two Drinks: Fran mentions the coach of another sport of a school involved in his game.
Three Drinks: Fran praises the town/facilities/fans of a school involved in his game.
Players
One Drink: Fran mentions a player as a conference award candidate.
Two Drinks: Fran mentions a player as a national award candidate.
Three Drinks: "I would have won a lot more games if I had (name of player) on my teams."
Finish your drink: Fran takes credit for improving a player at a summer camp.
So there you go. No complicated rules. Just straight forward drinking for when Coach Fran calls a hoops game. Enjoy.
I'm sure there's a lot of color guys who do this, but Fraschilla is the most blatant. Well, as if you needed another reason to drink on Wednesday, Coach Fran will be calling the Notre Dame-UAB game at 9 p.m. on ESPN. If I'm conscious, I'll play along. But, I haven't lasted 'til 9 p.m. in many a St. Patrick's Day.
Fran Fraschilla Drinking Game
Coaching
One Drink: Fran needlessly over analyzes a mundane situation with coach-speak.
Two Drinks: Fran draws up his own play in an end-game situation.
Three Drinks: Fran mentions he coaches at a lot of summer camps.
Sucking Up
One Drink: Fran mentions the AD of a team involved in his game.
Two Drinks: Fran mentions the coach of another sport of a school involved in his game.
Three Drinks: Fran praises the town/facilities/fans of a school involved in his game.
Players
One Drink: Fran mentions a player as a conference award candidate.
Two Drinks: Fran mentions a player as a national award candidate.
Three Drinks: "I would have won a lot more games if I had (name of player) on my teams."
Finish your drink: Fran takes credit for improving a player at a summer camp.
So there you go. No complicated rules. Just straight forward drinking for when Coach Fran calls a hoops game. Enjoy.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Showcasing Lane Stadium
A friend of mine who's as a big a college football fan as you will find wants to road trip with me to Lane Stadium this year. However, being an Oklahoma grad, he's unwilling to miss an OU home game.
Therefore, we've come up with two choices for his Lane Stadium experience: Sept. 26 against Miami (an OU off week) or Oct. 29 against UNC on a Thursday. Being a veteran of the last three Thursday Night specials at Lane, I know how insane the place is for those games.
However, Miami is Miami. So what do I do? Do I suggest he come to Blacksburg for the guaranteed night game against the Heels and then high-tail it back the next day so he can see OU play K-State? Or do I bring him to Blacksburg on a Saturday when the Hokies play one of their most hated rivals? Right now, I'm leaning toward the Miami game. What are your thoughts?
UPDATE (2:40 pm): Unanimously, the vote is for the Thursday Night game against UNC. Now, the questions is how do I convince him to skip the OU-KSU game on Oct. 31 and go to The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party/Coke Orgy instead?
Therefore, we've come up with two choices for his Lane Stadium experience: Sept. 26 against Miami (an OU off week) or Oct. 29 against UNC on a Thursday. Being a veteran of the last three Thursday Night specials at Lane, I know how insane the place is for those games.
However, Miami is Miami. So what do I do? Do I suggest he come to Blacksburg for the guaranteed night game against the Heels and then high-tail it back the next day so he can see OU play K-State? Or do I bring him to Blacksburg on a Saturday when the Hokies play one of their most hated rivals? Right now, I'm leaning toward the Miami game. What are your thoughts?
UPDATE (2:40 pm): Unanimously, the vote is for the Thursday Night game against UNC. Now, the questions is how do I convince him to skip the OU-KSU game on Oct. 31 and go to The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party/Coke Orgy instead?
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Why I Consider Myself a Hokie, Recruiting and More ESPHeather Stupidity
[rant]
Monday night I went to the Oklahoma-Tennessee women's basketball game in Oklahoma City to witness Pat Summitt's 1,000th career win. Needless to say, it didn't happen and it was two hours of my life I'll never get back. It was the first women's hoops game I've ever gone to out of my own free will and will be the last for a while.
If you like turnovers, missed free throws and questionable officiating, women's hoops is the sport for you!
As some of you may know, I'm a Hokie fan, but a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. I don't consider myself a Sooner and I rarely go to OU games, even though I live within walking distance of Owen Field. Well, Monday I was reminded why I'm a Hokie.
Despite the fact their women's team just had one of its biggest wins in program history (on ESPN Big Monday, no less) and had just beaten the team that most casual fans associate most with the sport, OU fans could do nothing but bitch and moan while leaving Ford Center after the game.
Why? Because Courtney Paris fouled out, ending her string of 112 consecutive double-doubles. I won't get into why I think Paris is the most overrated player in the history of any college sport. It would waste your time and I would be admitting I pay any attention at all to women's hoops.
However, because the streak ended and because OU fans felt Paris had been hosed by the officials on all five of her fouls and had been fouled every time she missed an open layup (which was a lot on Monday), they booed relentlessly after the game and walking out of the Ford Center, it felt almost as if OU had lost. God, I had OU fans.
That's why I'm a Hokie. I like to believe Virginia Tech fans would have handled the situation a lot better instead of being the unbelievable pricks most Sooner fans are.
[/rant]
Recruiting news
David Glenn on Hokie Recruiting: ACC Sports Journal has a must-read breakdown of how Tech did building its recruiting class, where it went right and where it went wrong. If you're still on the "Fire Stiney" bandwagon, you'll want to ignore the part under the Top Recruiter sub-head, but there's a lot of great information here.
Great class, but...: VT Fan thinks we have another solid recruiting class. But the gorilla in the room is that it's bereft of a quarterback.
Jagodzinski'd: Kudos to Georgia Tech for pulling an offer from a recruit who committed then made an official visit to Auburn. My question is could Virginia Tech get away with doing this? How would our fans react if Beamer made a similar move?
ESPHeather gets deleted from my RSS reader
For her sake, I hope ESPN made her write this crap. This article annoys me mainly because I don't follow recruiting and really don't care.
The level of talent you bring into a program doesn't matter if it doesn't develop or gel (FSU) and you shouldn't get credit as a great recruiter if you take average talent and turn it into a winner (Wake Forest). It's all nonsense. Recruiting only exists to give us something to care about that gets us to Spring Football.
Arguing about who is the best recruiter in the conference is a worthless endeavor.
Monday night I went to the Oklahoma-Tennessee women's basketball game in Oklahoma City to witness Pat Summitt's 1,000th career win. Needless to say, it didn't happen and it was two hours of my life I'll never get back. It was the first women's hoops game I've ever gone to out of my own free will and will be the last for a while.
If you like turnovers, missed free throws and questionable officiating, women's hoops is the sport for you!
As some of you may know, I'm a Hokie fan, but a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. I don't consider myself a Sooner and I rarely go to OU games, even though I live within walking distance of Owen Field. Well, Monday I was reminded why I'm a Hokie.
Despite the fact their women's team just had one of its biggest wins in program history (on ESPN Big Monday, no less) and had just beaten the team that most casual fans associate most with the sport, OU fans could do nothing but bitch and moan while leaving Ford Center after the game.
Why? Because Courtney Paris fouled out, ending her string of 112 consecutive double-doubles. I won't get into why I think Paris is the most overrated player in the history of any college sport. It would waste your time and I would be admitting I pay any attention at all to women's hoops.
However, because the streak ended and because OU fans felt Paris had been hosed by the officials on all five of her fouls and had been fouled every time she missed an open layup (which was a lot on Monday), they booed relentlessly after the game and walking out of the Ford Center, it felt almost as if OU had lost. God, I had OU fans.
That's why I'm a Hokie. I like to believe Virginia Tech fans would have handled the situation a lot better instead of being the unbelievable pricks most Sooner fans are.
[/rant]
Recruiting news
David Glenn on Hokie Recruiting: ACC Sports Journal has a must-read breakdown of how Tech did building its recruiting class, where it went right and where it went wrong. If you're still on the "Fire Stiney" bandwagon, you'll want to ignore the part under the Top Recruiter sub-head, but there's a lot of great information here.
Great class, but...: VT Fan thinks we have another solid recruiting class. But the gorilla in the room is that it's bereft of a quarterback.
Jagodzinski'd: Kudos to Georgia Tech for pulling an offer from a recruit who committed then made an official visit to Auburn. My question is could Virginia Tech get away with doing this? How would our fans react if Beamer made a similar move?
ESPHeather gets deleted from my RSS reader
For her sake, I hope ESPN made her write this crap. This article annoys me mainly because I don't follow recruiting and really don't care.
The level of talent you bring into a program doesn't matter if it doesn't develop or gel (FSU) and you shouldn't get credit as a great recruiter if you take average talent and turn it into a winner (Wake Forest). It's all nonsense. Recruiting only exists to give us something to care about that gets us to Spring Football.
Arguing about who is the best recruiter in the conference is a worthless endeavor.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Road Trip No. 9: OB and BCSCG
"If you wonder why you ride the carousel / You do it for the stories you can tell" - Jimmy Buffett, "Stories We Could Tell"
Football: Virginia Tech vs. Cincinnati
Football: Oklahoma vs. Florida
Dolphins Stadium
Miami Gardens, Fla.
Miles Round Trip: Over 3,000
Total Dollars Spent: A lot. A whole lot.
I really don't know how to begin the story of my trip to Miami other than with this: I'm pretty sure I broke my foot the Tuesday before the BCSCG. This was shortly after we all got kicked out of a South Beach bar at 4 a.m. But I'm getting way, way ahead of myself.
This was one of those trips that no one else would believe because you yourself aren't completely sure it happened. Did I really just spend eight days in South Florida? Did Virginia Tech really just win a BCS bowl game? Did we really just get kicked out of South Beach? Did I really just pay face value to sit a dozen rows up on the 25-yard line for the title game? These are questions you ask yourself after the fact because the whole trip (all 12 days including travel) was a blur. Thank God for photos.
Highlights
- The bunks I slept in for the Virginia Tech game collapsed at 5 a.m. Good thing I was in top bunk.
- Don't ask me what I thought of such-and-such play during the Orange Bowl. I don't remember the game and I haven't watched the DVR.
- I left profane voice mails for friends of mine after the Orange Bowl in front of children and Cincy fans in the parking lot after the game.
- Dude, we totally won a BCS bowl game!
- I was so hungover I almost killed myself while driving twice the day after the Orange Bowl.
- I spent four days between the games laying in a hammock and not doing much else.
- I ate stone crab twice and grilled dolphin once during the trip. "Is this tuna-safe dolphin?"
- The group I was with on the 6th wasn't allowed into two bars on Ocean Drive and kicked out of a third one.
- I flirted with a Finnish chick on South Beach who was thoroughly impressed with my knowledge of hockey players from Finland. Then one of my buddies scared her away by being an obnoxious ass hole.
- Later that night, I'm pretty sure I broke my foot while running after a buddy of mine who was certain he knew where his hotel was and I didn't. He was wrong. I was wearing flip-flops and landed on the side of my foot on the sidewalk. I've spent the days since then limping around.
- I had to pick up or drop off friends at all three major airports in South Florida. Thanks for flying into PBI, Canada! You ass.
- I saw four Gator fans wearing jorts and playing beer pong in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart next to Dolphins Stadium the day of the BCSCG.
- I bought Natural Ice at the same Wal-Mart because they were out of almost every other beer. Fortunately they had Yuengling.
- All four people in our group got into the BCSCG for face value. Suck it, scalpers.
Best quotes
"'Tis better to be idle and drunk than merely idle."
On the 6th, we were looking for a bar called Mangoes on South Beach. One of the two guys I was with asked for directions to Mangoes by asking people, "where are the bitches?" Later, he said this to a group of Latin women who couldn't understand a word he said (OK, they probably understood bitches). So I said, "ask them, 'donde estan las bitches.'" So he asked them just that. The group of women pointed toward Mangoes.
The day of the game we were taunting Gator fans by referring to their team as "Crocodiles." Don't judge us, we were hammered. We did this to one equally inebriated Florida tool who responded with, "naw, man, crocodile's teeth are on the outside!" One of the girls tailgating with us replied with, "so are your mom's."
Photos
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Cincinnati on YouTube
As part of your crash-course on the Hokies' opponent for the 2009 FedEx Orange Bowl, here are select YouTube clips of Cincinnati's season.
2008 Stadium Entrance
Cincinnati 28, Pittsburgh 21
Cincinnati 26, West Virginia 23
Oklahoma 52, Cincinnati 26
2008 Stadium Entrance
Cincinnati 28, Pittsburgh 21
Cincinnati 26, West Virginia 23
Oklahoma 52, Cincinnati 26
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Road Trip No. 7: OU vs. TT
Gobbler Country Road Trip No. 7
Football: Texas Tech at Oklahoma
Owen Field
Norman, Okla.
Miles Round Trip: 4
Total Dollars Spent: $130 ($80 ticket and $50 food and drinks)
Unfortunately there aren't a lot of pictures to post for a couple of reasons. First, my camera broke early in the game. The combination of it being old and held together with tape and being a drunk ass hole was just too much for it to take. Also, a lot of the pictures were of me being a drunk ass hole. Those aren't getting posted on this blog. Sorry, Charlie.
I'm usually unimpressed with the home crowds at OU, but this one was different. Bob Stoops had asked the fans to be loud and rowdy for the Sooners' tilt with the Red Raiders and the fans obliged. It was by far the loudest I had ever heard OU fans for a home game.
Also, sneaking into the student section was an adventure. It wasn't difficult to get by the security, but it was difficult because so many people had sneaked into the student section and the aisles and stairs were blocked by people.
It was a fun atmosphere, especially since OU played so well and everyone was happy. Except for the people sitting in front of me. I tried to pick a fight with them when they started chanting "over-rated" (I can't stand when people do that) and I was almost successful.
Our tailgate was perfect. We had our tents set up right across the street from the stadium and had plenty of food and drinking games to get ready for kick off. In the words of Jimmy Buffett, "rum and cooked animals and bullshit by the ton." All the ingredients for a successful tailgate.
ESPN GameDay for the OMGGOTY!!!1 of the Week.
No flag poles allowed at GameDay... except for the Wazzu guys.
Yeah, I've got nothing. It's a bunch of students dressed as Superman riding around the stadium five hours before kickoff on bicycles. Provide your own punchline.
Tailgating along Lindsey Street.
It's Miley!
Touchdown, Oklahoma. There were a lot of those.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
OU-Texas for $90
It's OU-Texas week. When I was an undergrad at the University of E.K. Gaylord, I never really bought into the hype surrounding OU-Texas week. I covered the game three years and went down without going to the game another. But my redshirt senior year was different. I felt I needed to experience OU-Texas as a fan just once. However, I also only had $100 to my name.
Screw it, we're going.
The same was true for my roommate, Canada. The reason we called him Canada is a story in and of itself. He isn't from Canada, he's from Ohio. The public school system in Oklahoma isn't very good, one thing led to another and now he's "Canada".
So Canada and I decided to head down to Dallas the Thursday before OU-Texas without tickets or a place to stay and only $200 collectively to our names. We were able to leave Thursday because OU gives its students the Friday before OU-Texas off so they can go down to Dallas early and get in the proper frame of mind before the game.
Thursday Night
We got to Dallas at around 11 p.m. and went to my favorite Dallas bar, The Flying Saucer in Addison. The Saucer was always a Thursday tradition for the group of us that went down to OU-Texas every year. Because it was my redshirt year and Canada was a year younger than me, we were the only two from the usual group in Dallas this year. The alumni of the group were slackers and didn't make the trip.
We closed down the Saucer and blew about $25 each of our bankroll. Now, to find a place to sleep at 2 a.m. on Thursday in Dallas. Fortunately for us, the Canuck knew a girl who had a thing for him who lived near Addison. We were both too hammered to drive, so we called her for a ride.
Even though she had work at 6 a.m. the next day, she drove to The Saucer, picked us up and drove us back to her place. We found out later it wasn't her place, but some house she was housesitting. In order to get out of spending the next three hours in the guest room with her, Canada and I had to share the master bedroom of these people's house.
She took the Canuck to get my car on her way to work, he came back to the house and we had the run of the place for the day. We drank their coffee, ate their food, used their thankfully heated pool and waited for other friends who were getting into town that night.
Friday night's alright for fighting
The Friday of OU-Texas is a rite of passage for students of both universities. The place to be is the West End, where copious amounts of drinking, yelling and brawling always take place. Police in riot gear and on horses are prevalent, but most of those in the West End are oblivious to them.
The police let everything go: public intox, minor in possession, even the occasional public urination ... as long as you don't get into a fight. If you get into a fight, you're history.
(Quick side story. A few years prior a friend of mine got into a fight the night before OU-Texas. He gets put into detox, along with a cell full of OU and Texas fans. They aren't going to let any of them out for 12 hours, which in my friend's case is 1 p.m. Too bad the game's at 11 a.m. He's resigned to the fact that he'll be missing this year's game.
Until the next morning when a guy in a red Armani suit wearing a red cowboy had strolled into the jail. He asked all OU fans to step to the front of the cell. He announced he was paying all of their bails, filed all of them into his stretch limo, gave them booze and a ride to the game.)
So we get to the West End at 10 p.m., get over-served at a bar and wander out into the street, which is wall-to-wall people. There's yelling, there's shoving and eventually fighting.
At this point I've lost Canada, who ran into another girl who was into him and took him back to her boyfriend's hotel room to presumably play Parcheesi and Scrabble. I run into my buddy Gabe who was in town from the Left Coast and had a table at another bar. This was clutch because Gabe chose a real major at OU and therefore makes a lot more money than I do. So when he's hammered he usually picks up my tab.
Now in the proper frame of mind, we re-entered the street where all hell had broken loose. There's cops in riot gear trying to break up a fight between two people who weren't students or fans of either school. A lot of older people will go to the West End on Friday just to watch the spectacle, but it isn't very often that they end up joining the fray.
They finally reach who they perceive to be the instigator and taze him in the groin. His reaction to being tazered in the groin spooks the police horse, which tramples him. We decided that was a sign we should leave the West End. Now, I have to find a place to stay for the night.
Gabe's hotel is a no-go. It requires wrist bands to get in and it will be impossible to get Canada and I into the hotel. So I call up my buddy Ed, who is staying in a hotel on the north side of town. We can stay there, for free. Victory. But, it's a 20 minute drive and I need to be there soon since its late, which means I have to find Canada.
Using a cell phone on the West End on Friday is an exercise in futility. I can't get a signal out, so I start walking in the general vicinity of where I think Canada went. Sure enough, I find him and the girl and neither of them are anywhere near sober. Both are stumbling and falling over, but we somehow carry the girl to the car and head to Ed's hotel.
When we got there, Ed was mad that there was more than just the two of us, meaning we'd have to cram 11 people into this hotel room instead of 10. However, both Canada and I brought air mattresses, so all was forgiven. Somehow, Canada and the girl fit onto one twin sized air mattress and I take the other. I made sure to sleep no where near those two.
I would title this section "Saturday in Fair Park" but I fucking hate Chicago.
This was the first time I'd been to Dallas for OU-Texas for a game that wasn't at 11 a.m. That, thankfully, allowed us to sleep in until 10, because if you aren't on the road by 11, you aren't going to get to the game until right at kick or later. Traffic is that bad.
I dropped the girl off at one of her friend's hotel and me and the Canuck headed to Fair Park, where the Cotton Bowl is located. I hate going to OU-Texas. I absolutely hate it and Fair Park is why. It's in a bad area of Dallas, there's not enough parking and you have to park on somebody's lawn. Then you have to walk through the bad area of Dallas to the gate to the fair.
If you have an OU-Texas ticket, you get into the fair for free. If you don't, like me, you have to pay the outrageous price of admission to the fair. And once you enter, you have to pay the outrageous coupon (or as Ron White says, coopin) prices to buy outrageously coopin priced beer.
[rant]
Most OU and Texas fans want the game to stay at the Cotton Bowl because they love the idea of the old building with one toilet per 10,000 fans, cramped concourses and dumpy seating to continue to host one of the more important football games of the season.
Me? I say move it to Jerry World as soon as humanly possible.
They also love the idea of the fair, the Super Midway, the funnel cakes and the rides.
Well, I'm a former carny. I hate fair food, fair games and fair rides.
Get the game to Jerry World as soon as possible and I will be a lot happier playing cornhole, grilling and tailgating under a tent in a huge parking lot than I ever would be at the Texas State Fair. Big Tex can go fuck himself.
[/rant]
But that's getting off the story. Canada and I now had just enough money for gas to get home. Canada already has a ticket because he ponied up for season tickets before the season started. Me? I went to 10 college football games that year, one of which was in the state of Oklahoma. I had to find a ticket.
I knew I was going to have to wait until after kickoff to afford a ticket. So I found my dad, took the rest of his coupons off his hands and waited in the air conditioned beer tent until the time was right.
I know I can sit with my dad once I get into the stadium so it doesn't matter where the ticket is. With seven minutes to go in the first quarter, I got into the OU-Texas game for $10.
After the game, an OU loss, we hung around the fair for a few hours to wait for traffic to die down. I still had a good amount of coupons from my dad, so I used those entertainment until it was time to go. Entertainment, of course, meant futile efforts to win stuffed animals by knocking down milk jugs with a softball. This was followed immediately by futile efforts to catapult a rubber frog onto a flimsy lilly pad in a tank of water.
Last temptation of Canada
Once back in the car, we realized quickly that it was on its last leg. We noticed on the ride down that something was wrong with my car, but it was painfully obvious on the way north on I-35. There was a weird, mold-like smell coming out of the A/C and something just wasn't right. I originally blamed Canada for the smell, saying he had left a wet towel in the car.
We stopped at Humperdink's in Addison, which was the tradition after the OU-Texas game for a final beer and dinner. When we got back to the parking lot, we found the car wouldn't start.
We got the car jumped and started back north. We knew we couldn't afford to turn the car off, so we filled it up with the car running at a Race Trac in Denton. Canada then went in to get coffee to make sure we made it back to Norman.
He returned to the car with fantastic news. In the five minutes he was inside, he met two girls and one of the girl's moms. They were OU students/fans who wanted to take us to a nearby bar and then have us spend the night at the mom's house.
Now we had a dilemma. If we went with the girls, we might never get back to Norman because of the car. After about a 30 second pause, we realized we had enough adventure for one weekend and went back to Norman with $10 in each of our pockets.
The next day I found out the head gaskets on my car were shot and I needed a new battery. The smell? Well, that was the result of coolant leaking onto the engine, evaporating and then coming through the vents into the car.
We should have asphyxiated and died.
Epilogue
This year I won't be going to OU-Texas. For years, I cursed the Cotton Bowl, Fair Park, 11 a.m. kickoffs and vowed, "that's it, I'm never coming back, this is the last time," only to return the next season. Finally, last year I broke the streak. Despite living in Dallas, I skipped OU-Texas and drove to Clemson to see the Hokies.
Some friends, including Canada, had the run of my apartment while I was gone. I returned from South Carolina to find all my food eaten and all my beer imbibed. I expected nothing less.
That's one reason I'm not going. I no longer feel the need to go back every year. Another reason is financial. Although I've proved I can do OU-Texas for cheap, I've got a flight to Boston coming up for the Oct. 18 game, a drive to Tallahassee the following week and drives to Blacksburg for games Nov. 6 and 29. I think I'll save my money for those trips.
But the main reason I'm not going to OU-Texas this is simple. How in the hell could I possibly top the year the Canuck and I did it for $90?
Screw it, we're going.
The same was true for my roommate, Canada. The reason we called him Canada is a story in and of itself. He isn't from Canada, he's from Ohio. The public school system in Oklahoma isn't very good, one thing led to another and now he's "Canada".
So Canada and I decided to head down to Dallas the Thursday before OU-Texas without tickets or a place to stay and only $200 collectively to our names. We were able to leave Thursday because OU gives its students the Friday before OU-Texas off so they can go down to Dallas early and get in the proper frame of mind before the game.
Thursday Night
We got to Dallas at around 11 p.m. and went to my favorite Dallas bar, The Flying Saucer in Addison. The Saucer was always a Thursday tradition for the group of us that went down to OU-Texas every year. Because it was my redshirt year and Canada was a year younger than me, we were the only two from the usual group in Dallas this year. The alumni of the group were slackers and didn't make the trip.
We closed down the Saucer and blew about $25 each of our bankroll. Now, to find a place to sleep at 2 a.m. on Thursday in Dallas. Fortunately for us, the Canuck knew a girl who had a thing for him who lived near Addison. We were both too hammered to drive, so we called her for a ride.
Even though she had work at 6 a.m. the next day, she drove to The Saucer, picked us up and drove us back to her place. We found out later it wasn't her place, but some house she was housesitting. In order to get out of spending the next three hours in the guest room with her, Canada and I had to share the master bedroom of these people's house.
She took the Canuck to get my car on her way to work, he came back to the house and we had the run of the place for the day. We drank their coffee, ate their food, used their thankfully heated pool and waited for other friends who were getting into town that night.
Friday night's alright for fighting
The Friday of OU-Texas is a rite of passage for students of both universities. The place to be is the West End, where copious amounts of drinking, yelling and brawling always take place. Police in riot gear and on horses are prevalent, but most of those in the West End are oblivious to them.
The police let everything go: public intox, minor in possession, even the occasional public urination ... as long as you don't get into a fight. If you get into a fight, you're history.
(Quick side story. A few years prior a friend of mine got into a fight the night before OU-Texas. He gets put into detox, along with a cell full of OU and Texas fans. They aren't going to let any of them out for 12 hours, which in my friend's case is 1 p.m. Too bad the game's at 11 a.m. He's resigned to the fact that he'll be missing this year's game.
Until the next morning when a guy in a red Armani suit wearing a red cowboy had strolled into the jail. He asked all OU fans to step to the front of the cell. He announced he was paying all of their bails, filed all of them into his stretch limo, gave them booze and a ride to the game.)
So we get to the West End at 10 p.m., get over-served at a bar and wander out into the street, which is wall-to-wall people. There's yelling, there's shoving and eventually fighting.
At this point I've lost Canada, who ran into another girl who was into him and took him back to her boyfriend's hotel room to presumably play Parcheesi and Scrabble. I run into my buddy Gabe who was in town from the Left Coast and had a table at another bar. This was clutch because Gabe chose a real major at OU and therefore makes a lot more money than I do. So when he's hammered he usually picks up my tab.
Now in the proper frame of mind, we re-entered the street where all hell had broken loose. There's cops in riot gear trying to break up a fight between two people who weren't students or fans of either school. A lot of older people will go to the West End on Friday just to watch the spectacle, but it isn't very often that they end up joining the fray.
They finally reach who they perceive to be the instigator and taze him in the groin. His reaction to being tazered in the groin spooks the police horse, which tramples him. We decided that was a sign we should leave the West End. Now, I have to find a place to stay for the night.
Gabe's hotel is a no-go. It requires wrist bands to get in and it will be impossible to get Canada and I into the hotel. So I call up my buddy Ed, who is staying in a hotel on the north side of town. We can stay there, for free. Victory. But, it's a 20 minute drive and I need to be there soon since its late, which means I have to find Canada.
Using a cell phone on the West End on Friday is an exercise in futility. I can't get a signal out, so I start walking in the general vicinity of where I think Canada went. Sure enough, I find him and the girl and neither of them are anywhere near sober. Both are stumbling and falling over, but we somehow carry the girl to the car and head to Ed's hotel.
When we got there, Ed was mad that there was more than just the two of us, meaning we'd have to cram 11 people into this hotel room instead of 10. However, both Canada and I brought air mattresses, so all was forgiven. Somehow, Canada and the girl fit onto one twin sized air mattress and I take the other. I made sure to sleep no where near those two.
I would title this section "Saturday in Fair Park" but I fucking hate Chicago.
This was the first time I'd been to Dallas for OU-Texas for a game that wasn't at 11 a.m. That, thankfully, allowed us to sleep in until 10, because if you aren't on the road by 11, you aren't going to get to the game until right at kick or later. Traffic is that bad.
I dropped the girl off at one of her friend's hotel and me and the Canuck headed to Fair Park, where the Cotton Bowl is located. I hate going to OU-Texas. I absolutely hate it and Fair Park is why. It's in a bad area of Dallas, there's not enough parking and you have to park on somebody's lawn. Then you have to walk through the bad area of Dallas to the gate to the fair.
If you have an OU-Texas ticket, you get into the fair for free. If you don't, like me, you have to pay the outrageous price of admission to the fair. And once you enter, you have to pay the outrageous coupon (or as Ron White says, coopin) prices to buy outrageously coopin priced beer.
[rant]
Most OU and Texas fans want the game to stay at the Cotton Bowl because they love the idea of the old building with one toilet per 10,000 fans, cramped concourses and dumpy seating to continue to host one of the more important football games of the season.
Me? I say move it to Jerry World as soon as humanly possible.
They also love the idea of the fair, the Super Midway, the funnel cakes and the rides.
Well, I'm a former carny. I hate fair food, fair games and fair rides.
Get the game to Jerry World as soon as possible and I will be a lot happier playing cornhole, grilling and tailgating under a tent in a huge parking lot than I ever would be at the Texas State Fair. Big Tex can go fuck himself.
[/rant]
But that's getting off the story. Canada and I now had just enough money for gas to get home. Canada already has a ticket because he ponied up for season tickets before the season started. Me? I went to 10 college football games that year, one of which was in the state of Oklahoma. I had to find a ticket.
I knew I was going to have to wait until after kickoff to afford a ticket. So I found my dad, took the rest of his coupons off his hands and waited in the air conditioned beer tent until the time was right.
I know I can sit with my dad once I get into the stadium so it doesn't matter where the ticket is. With seven minutes to go in the first quarter, I got into the OU-Texas game for $10.
After the game, an OU loss, we hung around the fair for a few hours to wait for traffic to die down. I still had a good amount of coupons from my dad, so I used those entertainment until it was time to go. Entertainment, of course, meant futile efforts to win stuffed animals by knocking down milk jugs with a softball. This was followed immediately by futile efforts to catapult a rubber frog onto a flimsy lilly pad in a tank of water.
Last temptation of Canada
Once back in the car, we realized quickly that it was on its last leg. We noticed on the ride down that something was wrong with my car, but it was painfully obvious on the way north on I-35. There was a weird, mold-like smell coming out of the A/C and something just wasn't right. I originally blamed Canada for the smell, saying he had left a wet towel in the car.
We stopped at Humperdink's in Addison, which was the tradition after the OU-Texas game for a final beer and dinner. When we got back to the parking lot, we found the car wouldn't start.
We got the car jumped and started back north. We knew we couldn't afford to turn the car off, so we filled it up with the car running at a Race Trac in Denton. Canada then went in to get coffee to make sure we made it back to Norman.
He returned to the car with fantastic news. In the five minutes he was inside, he met two girls and one of the girl's moms. They were OU students/fans who wanted to take us to a nearby bar and then have us spend the night at the mom's house.
Now we had a dilemma. If we went with the girls, we might never get back to Norman because of the car. After about a 30 second pause, we realized we had enough adventure for one weekend and went back to Norman with $10 in each of our pockets.
The next day I found out the head gaskets on my car were shot and I needed a new battery. The smell? Well, that was the result of coolant leaking onto the engine, evaporating and then coming through the vents into the car.
We should have asphyxiated and died.
Epilogue
This year I won't be going to OU-Texas. For years, I cursed the Cotton Bowl, Fair Park, 11 a.m. kickoffs and vowed, "that's it, I'm never coming back, this is the last time," only to return the next season. Finally, last year I broke the streak. Despite living in Dallas, I skipped OU-Texas and drove to Clemson to see the Hokies.
Some friends, including Canada, had the run of my apartment while I was gone. I returned from South Carolina to find all my food eaten and all my beer imbibed. I expected nothing less.
That's one reason I'm not going. I no longer feel the need to go back every year. Another reason is financial. Although I've proved I can do OU-Texas for cheap, I've got a flight to Boston coming up for the Oct. 18 game, a drive to Tallahassee the following week and drives to Blacksburg for games Nov. 6 and 29. I think I'll save my money for those trips.
But the main reason I'm not going to OU-Texas this is simple. How in the hell could I possibly top the year the Canuck and I did it for $90?
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