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Tom Hicks opens up some bubbly

23.1 million off the Rangers books. Can we save this for Santana or Peavy and not Torii Hunter please?

Lateral madness

If you haven’t seen it already… move over Stanford-Cal and Music City Miracle… Trinity University with the craziest game ending play I’ve ever seen.

Texas v. Nebraska

Why did I think Nebraska would be good this year? The Huskers roll into Austin in supremely hilarious disarray, which we’ve come to find out is what happens eventually when you entrust any sort of executive power to Bill Callahan. This team can’t wait for the season to be over and I think they may actually welcome not having to play in front of their tractor lovin’ home crowd so they don’t have to bear the shame again of giving up 40 points at home. When a team turns on a coach as this team apparently has, they either spiral further into disarray or the players band together against the coaching staff and put together surprising efforts. Early returns are that the former is the case. Mack Brown is looking for win no. 100 as a Texas head coach and he should get it easily. Then again this is the same team that allowed Baylor to hang within a TD for much of the game. However, UT hasn’t played at home in a month and they should be fired up for this one. 38-10.

Leonard Davis wants his change…

…And I suggest you give it to him.

Romo took out an interesting insurance policy this past offseason. That 150K premium is a doozy but hes gettin paid either way it looks like.

So the talk this week in the NFL is globalization. I’m not really sold on this whole idea as I think a large part of what makes the NFL wildly popular here is that its our sport. The rest of the world doesn’t play it (well) nor do they understand it. So now Goodell is talking about expansion into London? Talk about home field advantage. For the Cowboys slant lets ask Jerry Jones what he thinks. Quoted from this NYT article:

The league faces a much harder sell to get the Dallas Cowboys — known for some reason as America’s Team — to play here, even once in a generation. The owner of the Cowboys, Jerry Jones, emerged from a private conference on sports globalization yesterday to insist that international games were fine for some teams. “It probably doesn’t fit us,” Jones quickly added. He said American football was based upon “my town against your town” rivalries, best played out in their home stadiums.

I’m gonna go ahead and agree that its a bad idea. Jerry certainly won’t want to give up a home game. Also, props to the NFL for half assing their globalization strategy. What better way to bring your product to the good people of London than by sending a team with the worldwide commercial appeal of the Miami Dolphins.

Last, we have an extremely detailed look at the Cowboys uniforms from some weird lookin guy on ESPN Page 2.

Wednesday stuff

A few news items of note…

• Rangers 3rd base coach and organizational catching instructor Don Wakamatsu has left to become the bench coach for the hated A’s. I guess its time to change our signs. Too bad for him cuz he’ll miss out on the spiffy new team plane. In all seriousness its a key loss for the Rangers especially considering the amount of work Wak was probably going to put in this offseason with Salty and the smorgasbord of Rangers catching prospects. He was also a calm presence on the coaching staff compared to the fiery and sometimes insane Washington. They probably didn’t mesh that well is my guess. I hope Wak enjoys the domineering Billy Beane as his boss.

• In more encouraging Ranger coaching news, the Mets will retain Howard Johnson as their hitting coach and pass on Rudy Jaramillo. It will cost the Rangers but chances are looking better that Rudy will stay on as hitting coach.

• J-Ho sprained his wrist last night but it appears to be minor. He’s out for the first two games anyways cuz of suspension so that gives him time to heal up.

• A very interesting read on Tank Johnson from ESPN Mag which details the events of his arrest for gun possession and his friend’s murder the next night. He has what the article terms an “obsession with guns”. Apparently he carries around handwritten goals that are written in Chinese, which he learned in high school. This would mean Tank knows how to write more Chinese than I do… I’m not sure what to make of that. It also talks about how white people are afraid of him and deny him apartment leases.

Recapping Weekend Football

Two games, two similar tales. Turnovers and self inflicted wounds did the Horns and Cowboys in for the 1st half this weekend. Talent took over in the 2nd half. Texas pretty much takes it week by week in terms of whether they want to play well or not. For the most part, they played like crap. Thank God we played Baylor’s spread offense. Those wide open intermediate routes, Texas LB’s chasing receivers all over the field, and our apparent bend but don’t break defense against the hapless Bears are going to be a problem when we play Tech. Tech also doesn’t suffer from lack of talent and poor QB throws. Our offensive line looked awful again but the offense managed and would have been fine if it weren’t for turnovers. Of course, like clockwork our defense returned a meaningless pick 6 late in the game to make it seem like we dominated the game and that our defense makes big plays. I don’t want to be so negative about our team but I can’t help it. This team is just flat out annoying.

Late in the 1st half the Cowboys entire season flashed before my eyes. We had just given up a fumble return for a TD and Romo limped off the field on one leg. The injury indeed hampered Romo in the 2nd half but we’ve got this backup RB named MBIII whos pretty good. Huge day for the special teams as McBriar repeatedly put the Vikings in bad field position, KO coverage contained AD (or AP, take your pick), and a TD return off of a blocked FG. D was good in containing Peterson but its somewhat easy when Tarvaris Jackson is the QB. 6 pass completions is flat out embarrassing. I think he threw downfield more than 15 yards just once. The D line is starting to look pretty good against the run and it should only get better with the addition of Tank. Ellis is starting to contribute along with backups like Stephen Bowen and Jason Hatcher. Hatcher has made more plays this year in backup duty than Marcus Spears has as a starter. This makes 3 sloppy games in a row for the Cowboys. I’m happy with 6-1 but the Cowboys can play a lot better. They have to or we could see a nightmare 2nd half akin to last year. We’ll see what this team really is after the bye week as they go through the NFC East gauntlet @Philly, @NY, and then the Skins. Efforts like this past weekend won’t get it done. 2-1 in that stretch would be great.

Short and Sweet

Goin to the game. 31-10 Da Boys. AD under 100. Tavaris Jackson will be hilarious. Romo carves em up.

Texas is painful to watch at times. More later.

Tony Romo gives Underwood the Heisman

Yes, that right folks… Tony Romo’s powers aren’t limited to the football field. The Jedi Master apparently has the ability to resist the wiles of the other sex and make them crumble before him. When the other person is Carrie Underwood, well thats a power to behold. The link was in the DMN Cowboys blog so you can stop before you try making a joke about how Albert peruses Entertainment Weekly’s website. Here’s the pertinent portion anyways:

Though Underwood seemed to be enjoying a blossoming relationship with the Dallas Cowboy earlier this year — he was her date to the ACM Awards and each flew to the other’s side for their respective birthdays — she swears they were never a couple. ”At one point it seemed like that’s where it was headed,” she says, ”but point blank, he is about football. I don’t know if it’s that I’m not quite his type or whatever, but I don’t think he’s at the point in his life where he would be willing to sacrifice football. He hated so much that people thought that he was paying more attention to me and that was causing him to not do well.”

The force is strong with this one. Perhaps if Anakin had such abilities, then the Emperor never would have succeeded.

Duane Akina is either a liar or doesn’t watch game tape

Spin city! I’ve done Akina a favor with the title of my post cuz the 3rd option would be that hes completely retarded. I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt and am assuming that our DC knows what football is. Thus, I can only come up two conclusions… Akina is either lying through his teeth or has never actually reviewed our game tapes. Please refer to the following Chip Brown article which discusses the need for our young LBs to be on the field. If you’re too lazy to follow the jump then I’ve provided the quotes below for you. Perplexing to say the least: “The three older linebackers have won a national championship and played really well for us and done some great things,” Brown said.

“Last year, we didn’t have much help for them, so they could wear out easily. Right now, we’re able to keep fresh people in the game. That’s an advantage we have at Texas that a lot of people don’t have.”

Mack, contrary to popular belief, there are such thing as LBs who start and play the whole game. Please don’t tell me our poor LB play last year was due to not having anyone behind them so they got tired. I’m gonna go ahead and blow a hole through that theory cuz those same LBs still suck this year. Try again.

Added Akina, “All six of them deserve to play. They’re all playing well. The older ones have spilled a lot of blood for this program. And I’m one that maybe believes they should still be playing.

Here we go. They’re seniors and they haven’t failed their classes, gotten injured, or committed a crime so they deserve to start. We are now a DIII football program. And now perhaps the best gem:

“There’s nothing on tape that says they should not. And yet the younger ones are playing well, too, and there’s nothing on tape that says they should not be playing, either. That’s why you see them rolling in and out.”

??????????????????????? They haven’t done anything wrong on tape? Aside from Derry being sealed off on every run play and not having any ability to go sideline to sideline, Bobino getting waxed on every blitz, and Killebrew simply doing nothing (except commit personal fouls)… I guess Duane is right. Theres nothing on tape that says they shouldn’t start.

“Like a running back out of high school has problems with pass protection, young linebackers have trouble with pass drops,” Brown said. “In high school they didn’t worry about it. They were just attacking the ball. The discipline in pass drops takes them a little longer.”

Thank God we have LBs that have been so effective in the passing game or else we would be forced to put in playmakers. Theres no sense in giving them in game experience. The handling of our LBs is comical at this point.

For further reading entertainment, I’ll refer you to Scipio’s Iowa State post-mortem. Solid and hilarious as usual including this gem: “Killebrew contributed 30 yards of personal fouls, making him Iowa State’s 2nd most productive player behind Scales.” The truth hurts when it comes to our older LBs.