Arkstfan

Since SMU has returned to playing football, two six or better win seasons. Rice has had only four more. Temple has had only one period. In hindsight SMU probably would have been better served if they had asked the SWC for permission to return to football in 1988 as a I-AA with the plan of returning to I-A in 1991 or 1992.

That's not a mistake. We are still the Indians. We've not changed. All we've done is expressed an intention to change at some point in the future, probably after the last sport of this academic year is played.

After four games Middle's opponents have punted 12 times. Troy's opponents have punted 14 times after three games. FAU opponents 13 times after three ASU opponents 10 times after two. Their defense has got to start making some stops if they want to be in the mix.

My former boss many years ago was friends with a guy who always dressed scruffy. The friend owned a large egg processing company and was just as likely to be down on the line helping as hob-nobbing with large buyers. He had a large cattle farm mostly as a hobby. The two went to a big sale and on the way back he asked my boss to stop at a car dealership to look at trucks. A salesman dressed all slick comes up to help him and kept trying to steer him away from the expensive high end trucks and was pushing stripped down models and used trucks. He finally tells the guy no thanks and sees another sales man hustling to help others who aren't interested and this sales guy appeared to be struggling based on how he was dressed. So he talks to him, the guy had just started and was happy to show him the best trucks and some top-end Continentals. He asks the sales guy what he drives and he tells him its a five year old pick-up but his wife has it because its the only car they have. He tells the new sales guy he's ready to talk about buying. They go to the office and visit a bit and the guy buys the most expensive pick-up and most expensive Continental and a Mustang convertible. He calls his wife and tells her her to come to the dealership with their current car because he just bought her a new Continental, tells my boss he'll drive the new truck home. The sales guy asks him about the Mustang and he says call your wife and tell her to come get her new car.

I used to say I'd never move back to Jonesboro but I'd take a lateral move there if I had a chance. The thugs have moved into our neighborhood (something just awesome about the cops walking the neighborhood with flashlights checking the bushes as happened Saturday night). They've got good public schools that aren't run by the Federal courts. We had fans complaining about the traffic for the Memphis game who had to drive a whole 20 minutes to get home and put on dry clothes to wait for the officials to finally OK the start of the game (I drove over 2 hours and cussed myself for failing to remember to bring an extra pair socks in the event of rain). You get cultural crapola like art exhibts, orchestra performances, and plays that you just don't find in small metro areas without a college. You don't get fine dining and probably can't get Chinese food delivered but for a small city it would be hard to beat. I don't like the fact that you've got to drive an hour to get to real airport and two hours if you want to go to an airport with competitive air fare but all-in-all not bad place.

Denver has to have more sports in place or has to find a new home for the 2013 season. They will not add the needed sports because they couldn't do it without cutting some of their other sports like skiing and hockey that they are very good at. I think UNO's fate is up in the air. They need to add back the sports they had before Katrina and add one more. Unless enrollment continues to rise that may not be financially feasible.

Wear a Mean Green shirt and a Hog hat. You might need a bed pan some day and it would come in handy.

It works like this Sun Belt "We're getting better" Media "You've not won any significant games" SB "What about these wins" Media "You've not done it consistently" Now win a few consistently and it goes like this SB "How about all these wins" Media "It's one thing to do it a few times, but that's not like playing an eight game [insert favorite conference here] schedule. You can't do that." SB "Of course we can't we'd have to be in the [insert named conference here] to play a full schedule."

Most Sun Belt football schools aren't true commuter campuses. FAU and FIU probably more than anyone but as I recall UNT has quite a few on-campus residents. Conference USA lacks historic ties except for a few clusters of schools that have been in other affiliations together before, same story for the Sun Belt. Conference USA has geography issues, as does the Belt. Conference USA has issues with basketball/football focus, as does the Belt. Conference USA has issues of public vs. private with their schools, which the Belt does not have. What makes the difference is that CUSA has more fans with a "we're better than his $hithole conference" attitude. SMU, Rice, and Houston all have memories of being nationally ranked in a top conference (admittedly old memories for Rice). East Carolina has been ranked in somewhat recent memory as have Marshall and Southern Miss. Memphis, UTEP, UAB, and Tulsa have been serious national powers at times in basketball (Memphis is now). The SWC leftovers are still stinging by being shunned by the Big 12 and then watched TCU move on without them. The old CUSA schools are stewing over Louisville, Cincinnati, and USF moved on to the Big East. The fans grumble about the Sun Belt being schools that recently moved to I-A, yet UAB and Marshall are in that same boat and see ya later USF was as well. The core problem is a belief that it is their manifest destiny to be THE challengers to the BCS rich boys or be THE next in line to get promoted. When the reality of the level of play hits them anger is the natural response. Belt fans are mostly glad to fight against "the man" and share similar experiences of fighting for ounce of respect.

Man I love that movie.

The mental breakdown is fascinating. We need to quit playing schools with suspect academics.... let's play Grambling. It helps highlight part of what I see as the unstable future of CUSA. SMU, Rice, and Tulane wail about having to play academically inferior schools yet are in a conference with 8 schools with academic standards along the same line as the Sun Belt (excluding Denver). Several years ago those schools plus Tulsa made a run at forming a league with Army and Navy.

The standard is tickets sold, FAU goes into the season with the ticket issue resolved via corporate sponsorship and donor buys. They just announce turnstile rather than sold counts because they know the media will give them heck if they announce 20,000 tickets sold (USF got slammed at least once a year for several years for that practice).

We lost focus after the 21-0 lead and let SMU back in. We got too aggressive trying to swing the momentum back throwing on 3rd and 1 instead of just punching it in for the first down. Keep our head screwed on and we name our score. Only call that really stood out for me on the night was the SMU fumble ruled an incomplete pass. We slobber-knocked the qb from behind and some how they thought it was an attempted pass.

I don't give a hairy rats about a fair sampling of football fans, because the majority are stupid and/or ignorant. They think a school from the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East, Pac-10, or SEC should NEVER lose to a school from the MAC, Sun Belt, WAC, CUSA, MWC or I-AA. It includes people I know who honest to God make their decision on whether or not to attend Razorback non-conference games on whether it is televised because if it isn't on TV it's a team they'll blow out. The biggest hit the Sun Belt got in officiating was the Alamo Bowl and that was BS. ESPN blah blah blah blahed about how they didn't know how to do video replay when a play didn't get reviewed, the reason it wasn't reviewed was because the pager the Alamo Bowl gave them failed. Then Lloyd I lost to a I-AA because I'm stupid and went for 2 early Carr called a timeout later to force a replay review for a play the officials had looked at and upheld and once again ESPN did the same rant about the officials. ESPN does that because they can get away with it. If you think Slive, Delaney, or Swofford would let them get away with it you are badly mistaken.

Conference gains respect. The standard of AD's, presidents, chancellors, and fans for what is the acceptable standard for a program rises. The MAC was a dump conference with zip for respect. Marshall waltzes in kicks everyone's rear for a couple years and then next thing you know they're knocking off SEC, Big 12, ACC, and Big 10 schools.

And the Big XII had to admit an error in the Texas-ASU game and had to use replay to over-rule a play called as a fumble and touchdown for ASU. The Belt has plenty of company.

They sure spent a lot of time talking about the Sun Belt being winless, which wouldn't have bothered me so much if they hadn't said ASU is 0-2.

A couple of your good friends at SMU are angry because they are too dumb to understand a farked photo. http://www.arkst.com/board/index.php?topic=31989.0

That series makes too much sense, but while I realize SMU has a lot of money, I doubt they can afford UNT's asking price for unreturned games. Before we signed our 2/2 home/home series with Memphis they wanted to make it a 3 for 1, our AD told them what ASU's price would be for the two unreturned games, they countered with a 3 for 2 and ASU told them the price for the one unreturned game. Few weeks later they called back and we signed a home/home.

They probably would have gotten the head back. Back when La.Tech's specialty was brawling (had four in one season and got more video entries than Miami in the NCAA's "emphasis video" on unsportsmanlike conduct) one of their players threw a helmet at an ASU player. It glanced off his shoulder pad and up into the stands on the student section. The students played keep away from the cops for a couple minutes until one made a break for the gate with it and was caught by the police. I figure if the guy had wanted the helmet he wouldn't have thrown it away.

You'd think a start-up would use Alamo Stadium. It's dumpish but has around 23,000 seats.

UTSA is Division I. If they add football it would automatically be FCS unless they wanted to move to FBS and could meet the criteria. There is a freeze on schools moving from FCS to FBS until 2011 which wouldn't have any real impact UTSA because they would be unlikely to play their first game before 2009. I suspect that the NCAA power brokers are trying to figure out how to make it even harder to go from FCS to FBS without making it so bad that teams get knocked down and new rules will be in place come 2011.

No question every school has them and pretty much always has. The difference is letting that mob rule.

A better solution is treat all players as hard working young men who deserve respect and not hurled profanity. I don't know squat about Navy or its fans. Army has some great fans who can liven up a tailgate with some good stories and a handful of whiners who felt their school was disrespected because our band played the fight song and our team sang it to the fans at home rather than sitting quietly while they sang to the 200-300 fans they had at ASU.

I loathe the profanity that passes for smack talk today and the general vulgarity that seems at times to overwhelm our culture. That said. Navy ball players (or Army or Air Force) deserve no different treatment than any other opponent. They are undertaking a challenging career choice but that deserves no more respect than the kid who took two years out of his life to be a missionary, the kid wanting to get a teaching degree and go work in the inner city, the guys going on to be cops, firefighters, the future med school guys who will end up doing a lot of stuff for free to help others, a guy like Oren O'Neal who walked on, slept on friend's couches until he earned a scholarship then lost a year due to a medical condition that resulted in losing part of his lung, yet still made the NFL. Until we expect fans to back off every player with noble ambitions and career choices, the academies don't get a pass. When they walk on the football field they don't represent the United States of America vs. a foreign foe. They represent one of the 120 FBS schools against another school.