The Fake Lonnie Finch

One thing is for sure, you look at that list and see names like Daniel Prior and realize that this group, as a whole, has been pretty unselfish. These are the guys who didn't balk at position changes or transfer out when the going got tough. I don't think we'll hit six wins this year. But, if we do, no one anywhere - at any school - would deserve it as much as this group. This is a group that has been through it and stuck with it. Love 'em all. Hilbert Jackson...it just doesn't seem like it's been that long, man. Hoping for the best with all of those guys.

http://www.neoathletics.com/documents/2013/4/5/D1_Norsemen.pdf Some of Dickey's gritiest players came from NEO. NEO is in the Oklahoma State system, so it's not surprising to see many head to Stillwater. Also, the current head coach played QB in high school at Tulsa Union for current TU Hurricane head coach Bill Blakenship. Not surprised, then, to see TU take on a couple of Norsemen a couple of seasons ago. Glad to see us hitting NEO again, as well as having a kid in from Ardmore.

She doesn't make any sense. She says he committed murder but that there wasn't proof to convict him. You either have the proof to convict on a murder charge or you don't. Emmitt, you know this: Any and all killing does not = murder when it comes to the law. This is legal territory covered pages and pages ago. There is a standard for murder and Zimmerman didn't meet it. He was not guilty of murder because murder is either: First degree = premeditated or purposely killing while in the act of committing another felony Second degree = depraved mind/acting with no regard for human life or accomplice to a first degree felony murder Third degree = unintentional killing while committing a "non-violent" felony Zimmerman wasn't in the act of committing a felony, nor was he acting with no regard (i.e., drive by shooting, firing a gun aimlessly into a crowd, discharging a weapon with children in the house, etc.). So, that wipes out any possilbe murder conviction. Which, again, make it all the more ridiculous that the State even tried...but, again, as we've discussed - political pressure. I do think he was guilty of mansalughter. But, as posted before, had they gone manslaughter first, they would have been hammered politically for not going for murder. Politically. Because people do not understand the law, the run around talking about murder. Voluntary manslaughter would have been proof of an intentional act that cannot be justified or excused. I think they could have hung him there - had they not hastily tacked it on during closing arguments. Involuntary manslaughter is a killing that results from culpable negligence. This would have been the easiest to prove of all. But, still, Voluntary would have been pretty easy, too - had it been allowed to be the charge! Again and again and again...everyone got so politically heated up about the thing that the State did the wrong thing to try to placate the Jackson/Sharpton faction. In Florida, a manslaughter conviction which includes the use of a firearm get a mandatory 9 and 1/4 years sentence. Total sentence can be up to 30 years. That would not have been enough to placate the race droolers. But, it would have been a charge that made sense legally. And, it would have been hella easy to prove, given the evidence. Finally, if he had been convicted of manslaughter, this thing still wouldn't be over because Jackson/Sharpton would be Monday Morning Quarterbacking the decision not to pursue murder charges. For old, long suffering Ranger fans, asking the prosecutors to try a second degree murder with this evidence would have been like Pat Corrales asking Tucker Ashford to bat for Al Oliver with the bases load with two out in the bottom of the ninth while behind by only one run back in 1980. So, when you think of the Zimmerman/Martin trial, think of second degree murder as Tucker Ashford and his .125 batting average and 3 RBIs and manslaughter as Al Oliver and his .329/117. I don't know how much more succinct it can be than that.

Will Allen High's Carlos Arochi be at the kicking camp?

It's fine for Monken to be all up in arms about it. But, the question is not whether he will go and still play road games against the big guys - the question is whether his athletic director (and all other athletic directors similarly situated) have the guts to walk away from the pay day. They'd likely try to keep scheduling schools like us the way they formerly did with us/FCS schools. It's not the coaches, it's the athletic directors and presidents that have to start taking a stand.

Why do you lump me in with guys on cable TV? We don't even have a cable package that carries FOX/CNN/MSNBC, etc. We don't even have a cable package that has ESPN! If you come to our house, be prepared to watch a lot of the Spanish channels. But, you won't find the talking heads of either political side because we choose not to have it. I agree with Shelby Steele. He is far more credible to me than Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and their ilk. He is correct in his analysis of the ZImmerman-Martin trial and the reactions to it by the Jackson/Sharptons. Those two are always harping on a political point/solution to everything, while Steele correctly asserts that stable homes should be more of a concern to them than it is.

Yes, but that was Mexico's B-team out there. Maybe one of them has more than 15 caps, and the majority had less than 10. None of those guys plays internationally. They are all Liga MX, which is pretty middle of the road competition-wise when compared to other soccer leagues in Europe. Probably the best of Mexico's Gold Cup squad has been Marco Fabian. But, it's be a while before he's called up to the A-squad with Chicharito, dos Santos, de Nigris, Bravo, and Peralta ahead of him. Bravo is approaching his mid-30s, so maybe he'll get a break in a year or two.

White fathers. The chart show living arrangement for white children. Emmitt was trying to show something to counter Shelby Steele. So. he shows a graph saying 3/4th of white kids grow up in two parent homes. How this fits into countering black professor/commentator Shelby Steele's contention that black leaders ignore the real problems within black society, I don't know. It doesn't really counter it at all.

And, yet, Johnny Quinn, who played his whole career under Dickey is the school's all-time reception yards leader.

Hmmm. I thought Berglund was the starter. Isn't that what people here and in summer/pre-fall college football magazines have said. Do they really have to practice to find out who should start? That hasn't seemed to be fair to Berglund since he hit KU's campus. Shouldn't message board and magazine assumption be enough?

Uniform Critics? They didn't really criticize anything. They simply gave a recent history of the uniforms. Therefore, they should change the name of the site to "Uniform Historians."

"One wants to scream at all those outraged at the Zimmerman verdict: Where is your outrage over the collapse of the black family? Today's civil-rights leaders swat at mosquitoes like Zimmerman when they have gorillas on their back. Seventy-three percent of all black children are born without fathers married to their mothers. And you want to bring the nation to a standstill over George Zimmerman?" Only a Shelby Steele, a black writer, could write this...otherwise, it would be racist. I'm sure that Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and their ilk consider Shelby an "Uncle Tom." As whites, we are all at once supposed to look the other way at the crumbling of the black family and at the same time take the blame for it. Money will not solve the problems of the black family. Political white guilt will not solve the problems of the black family. The only thing that will solve the problems of the black family is more blacks thinking like Shelby Steele. Don't hold your breath. It's not the Shelby Steele's of the world young black people are following. It's Kanye West and his out of wedlock birth with Kim Kardashian that they are more interested in.

This. One money game minimum. And, please, let is be against someone other than the old rotation of OU/UT/LSU. Different road trips, please, for the money games.

But, can't you just hear the complaints if that had been the charge? "He wasn't charged with murder because Trayvon was black and he is white." "Oh, so he got 25 years...Trayvon won't be back on the street in 25 years. Murder would have given him life. He deserves life for murdering Trayvon." Again, prosecution was damned if they did, damned if they didn't because racial tension is so pressed in the media.

Degree in economics. Sexy.

Just about every coach hired anywhere is "inheriting a mess." Otherwise, why would most of the jobs be open. (Yes, I realize some coaches jump from good program to good program. But, most jobs open because of failure/firing or the previous coaching staff.) You cannot get any crappier than the 2001 and 2002 seasons for Tulsa: 2001: 1-10 with the only win coming versus Division I-AA Indiana State to open the season 2002: 1-11 with the only win coming versus a UTEO squad that finished the year at 2-10...with one of those two wins being versus Division I-AA competition At the time, I was in law school up there and was taking the the two Sports Law classes from Ray Yasser (one of the two people who write the caselaw textbooks for law schools. If you love to read lawsuits about collective bargaining agreements, scholarship disputes, injury settlements, etc. in sports, pro and amatuer, you would love this book. Pick up a used copy here: http://www.addall.com/New/submitNew.cgi?query=Yasser+Ray&type=Author&location=&state=AK&dispCurr=USD) Yasser was the legal advisor to the TU athletic department at the time as well, and several former TU football players were in law school as well. The serious talk after the 2002 season was whether or not Tulsa would stay I-A in football or drop the pretense and go I-AA. The 2002 season was their 11th consecutive losing season, a streak during which they won more than four games only once. Going back 15 years, at that point, they'd only had one winning season. Keith Burns had just failed, and many were stunned. Burns had been the defensive coordinator at Southern Cal and Arkansas the six years prior to his hiring at TU. He'd coached under John Robinson at USC and won a Rose Bowl with him. He went to Arkansas with Houston Nutt and his Hog defense shut Texas down in a 27-6 win in the Cotton Bowl following the 1999 season. Burns' calling card was tough defenses, and Tulsa improved from a 2-9 season in 1999 to 5-7 in 2000. The defense surrendered less than 300 points all season, so things appeared to be on the up. Burns seems to have all the right things Tulsa needed. Having played, coached, and recruited at Arkansas, he was familiar with Tulsa area high schools as well as the Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma area that serves the Razorbacks well. In 2001 and 2002, the bottom dropped out severely. Poor offense and bad defense. Skelly Stadium was in horrible shape. My mom had cheered there back in the late 50s/early 60s when she was in junior high and high school. If you thought Fouts was bad, you hadn't seen Skelly. Add on to that the fact that TU donors had scored a huge donation from Donald Reynolds to revamp the basketball arena, but he gave Arkansas money to upgrade their football stadium, and it looked like no one cared what happened to TU football. It was so bad following the 2002 season that their starting quarterback, a local hero, transferred to OU...to play baseball! Burns proved not to be able make it rain recruits at Tulsa. To be fair, Tulsa is a small, small private school, known mainly for petroleum engineering. It is not easy to get into Tulsa anyway. They were on the cusp of being a Top 100 U.S. New & World Report School (as on 2013, they have now been Top 100 for 10 consecutive years). Their acceptance rate for applicants hoevered in the high 30s/low 40s %. Like Rice, you had to be able to really be a good academic student to play football at TU. At the time, TU didn't have any P.E./Coaching/Recreation Management-type degrees than most big schools hustle their football players into. Enter Steve Kragthorpe. A complete gamble. The former NORTH TEXAS and Texas A&M offensive coordinator had just finished two years in the NFL as the QB coach at Buffalo. Kragthorpe came into the fold with the same crappy facilities Dave Radar and Keith Burns had to deal with and the same recruiting challenges of recruiting excellent football players to a small, private school which was academic heavy, In 2003, Kragthorpe did the seemingly impossible. He took a bunch of "inhereted" players from Radar and Burns, combined them with one very average recruiting class, and led the Golden Hurricane to an 8-4 regular season. They lost the Humanitarian Bowl to Georgia Tech. But, the TU donors lit up. Plans to drop to I-AA were put on the backburner. They were replaced with plans to revamp old Skelly. Skelly and the whole area were revamped. Old apartments nearby were knocked down and replaced by new ones. A nice wall and gate were added around the exrerior to give a feel of enclosure for pre-game activities. And, although in my opinion, Skelly is still pretty bush league in size, they did clean it up and give it a nice refacing all around. Anyway, I've taken the long way around just to say this - at a smaller place, with longer odds, "inherited players" were somehow coached into winning and becoming the building blocks to a program that has become a consistently competitive mid-major. "Inherited players"...some coaches make it work with them. Others do not.

Tulane - 2013 Jackson State - Coin Toss, JSU 7-5 last year, played for SWAC Championship, returning most starters, 1-0 or 0-1 South Alabama - Coin Toss, same record as Tulane last year, 9 returning defensive starters, skill position starters on offense return, 2-0, 1-1, or 0-2 @ La Tech - Certain Loss, 2-1, 1-2, or 0-3 @ Syracuse - Certain Loss, 2-2, 1-3, or 0-4 @ ULM - Certain Loss, ULM won this game 63-10 last year...on the road, 2-3, 1-4, or 0-5 UNT - Probable Loss, UNT returns much more than Tulane, 2-4, 1-5, or 0-6 ECU - Certain Loss, Pirates a 2012 bowl team with 8 starters returning on each side of the ball, 2-5, 1-6, or 0-7 Tulsa - Certain Loss, don't be ridiculous, 2-6, 1-7, 0-8 @ FAU - Coin Toss, Pelini's Owl won more last year, won 2 of last 5, 3-6, 2-7, or 0-9 @ UTSA - Probable Win, you'd think, 4-6, 3-7, or 0-10 UTEP - Probably Loss, beat Tulane last year with a bad team will have a better QB this year, 4-7, 3-8, or 0-11 @ Rice - Certain Loss, 4-8, 3-9, 0-12 The Green Wave will be really, really lucky to not be 0-12 in 2013. Road games at La Tech and Syracuse; Tulsa and ULM again, both of which pummelled the snot out of them in 2012. A crappy coach in over his head breaking in a new QB. It all adds up to Tulane sucks again in 2013...and, sucks hard.

Tulane is breaking in a new quarterback under a head coach who didn't even have coordinator duties at any level of play at any time during his coaching career. It was a bad hire and Tulane will continue to lose with him. In short, they are worse off than we are.

If so, call Bruce Van de Velde yesterday.

DQ is based out of Minnesota...Whataburger Cup for Texas ;-)

Also, I think the prosecution was damned from the beginning - both legally and politically. First, there was no way a second degree murder charge was going to possible with the evidence given. Second, a manslaughter-type charge, if pursued from the beginning of the trial - not on the day of closing arguments - probably could have stuck. Third, the problem is, there would have been total outrage had a manslaughter charge alone been pursued instead of second degree murder alone. And, therein lies the problem for the prosecutors. They'd have had a strong case, and probably a successful one, if they'd gone manslaughter from the get go. But, there would have been outrage from the Media/Jesse Jacksons of the world about why it was only a manslaughter instead of murder...and, race, again would have been their battering ram agains the prosecutors. From a legal standpoint, I can't figure out why the prosecution waited until the last minute to throw in the manslaughter. That had to make the jury somewhat believe that the prosecution didn't even believe in their case. WIth a legal background, I can't for the life of me understand why they went straight up second degree murder. I do believe Zimmerman would have gotten 15-25 with a manslaughter conviction had it been pursued fully,

AllI said was that the media only freaks out if a person who is even so much as a half-white kills a black person. To me, color shouldn't matter. A killing is a killing.

The law is fine...unless, you are a criminal. Then, it's a problem.

Bingo.

I just want to say this - keep McCarney, even if we don't win five. Unless...one of the losses is to UTSA. I mean, if we lose to UTSA that will mean we have been leapfrogged by a school that was playing Division II schools a year ago.