2015 Season Kickoff Extravaganza

2015 Season Kickoff Extravaganza

Praise Tebow

YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?!?!?

You're damn right it's football time. Nice job, reader. It's been at least 3 years since the last season ended, and a lot has changed in that time. Ohio State? A goddamn NFL team. Baylor? Scum. A&M? still not sure if they want to sit at the big boy table or with the kids. Texas? OUR TEAM IS FINE, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE FINE!

2014 Season record 64-33 (not counting bowls, which is good, because I was wrong a lot)

South Carolina 31 - North Carolina 17

It's the first game! These schools don't like each other because of geography! Steve Spurrier is in the stadium! Aaaaand that's pretty much all I know about this game. South Carolina is still reeling from a rough 2014 where they were expected to win the east and were absolutely CRUSHED by Texas A&M (surprisingly not a community college) in the season opener. They went on to a very mediocre record and everyone forgot about them. Does that make them a sleeper? Sure. Whatever. The North Carolina fanbase can safely nap until basketball season starts. Don't tire yourselves out cheering for that 6-6 record, bros and bro-ettes. 

TCU 63 - Minnesota 10

This is going to be a dark day for the Gophers. And not just because their natural habitat is a hole in the ground. Trevone Boykin did some pretty serious footballing last season, and he's just getting started. He's going to finish 2nd in the Heisman race behind whatever magical quarterback machine Ohio State rolls out to claim the trophy. The last time we saw TCU they were doing unspeakable things to Ole Miss and frat-swoop poster child, Bo Wallace. The schedule lines up favorably for them and I think they make the playoffs at the end of the year despite the idiocy of the Big 12's management. Minnesota....well....they should have a full roster of players for the game, at least. 

 Baylor 56 - SMU 24

Baylor wins, SMU loses. Enough football, let's talk about Baylor and ethics. With Jameis Winston graduating, I was looking forward to a good, wholesome, family values football season. Nope. It took Baylor a few short months to wreck that. For those unaware, Baylor took in a transfer player from Boise State who had been kicked off the team for sexually assaulting his then-girlfriend. The details of how much info Boise State told Baylor are fuzzy, but the result is that the player came to Baylor, sexually assaulted another girl and Baylor MADE HER TRANSFER AND COVERED IT UP! Art Briles, who is kind of a dick for all kinds of reasons, isn't handling this all very well and it looks like he might escape blame all together. The lack of accountability college coaches (Art Briles, Jimbo Fisher, Bobby Petrino, etc etc etc) must face is sickening. I'm really hoping there is some form of justice handed down here to the school or coach or BOTH, but I think we all know how this ends. 

Auburn 30 - Louisville 17

Bobby Petrino, last seen in a neck brace apologizing for wrecking his motorcycle while carrying his volleyball trainer mistress to a Denny's for the breakfast of love, has returned to coach Louisville. This is one of the most surreal events of our time. In his career, Petrino has taken secret interviews for other jobs, left the Atlanta Falcons midway through the season without telling anybody, used University of Louisville money to hire a trainer so she could be closer to him for sex things, and been a pretty good football coach. I think this is actually the new American dream. Auburn will have fun offensive plays, make great plays on defense, and then fumble while taking a knee because they don't make a lot of sense. WAR DAMN EAGLE!

Texas A&M 45 - Arizona State 32

Easy, Aggies. This is more an indictment against the supposedly mighty Pac 12 than any belief in your abilities. Arizona State is one of the teams the media has christened as the saviors of west coast football. Along with Oregon, Stanford, USC, Arizona, and UCLA, they're bringin' late night football back! The truth is they'll have some solid games, but the Kappa Sig formal is just WAY too awesome for the football team to miss, so they're going to blow a game or two due to massive hangovers. Arizona State, attend for the party life, stay because you lost your wallet and Uber refuses to pick up students anymore. Texas A&M, the only school to lose to Alabama 59 - 0 last season, has yet again brought in an amazing recruiting class. The kids will realize soon that the reason the coaches made all those home visits wasn't to make the recruits feel special, it was because they didn't want them to see College Station. But, here we are. Now I'll say some nice things about A&M, because if any Aggie fans made it this far into the blog, I respect their commitment. This receiving corps is absolutely disgusting on paper. They're like 9 deep with 5 star receivers. All of their QBs seem to be ridiculous athletes who ALL picked football over baseball. And they wrangled John Chavis away from LSU. I don't know if that adds up to immediate success for this season, but they're well prepped for the future.

Texas Football

Alright, everyone. Let's say this together here: "Moderate expectations". Last season was painful. Our offensive line was decimated by injuries and suspensions, our skill players and QBs were decimated by years of Mack Brown recruiting and coaching, and our defense was decimated by our offense. This year WILL be better, but may not lead to more wins. The schedule looks pretty tough. Outside of Rice and Kansas, we can no longer assume any other game is an easy win. Tech, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, all teams we used to regularly crush, now seem to give us a heart attack every other game. Tyrone "Swiggity" Swoopes is returning as the starting QB, and can only be better than he was last year. He took a lot of heat for poor play, but I really don't think enough can be said about the lack of talent on the line and at skill positions last year. Playing quarterback is no fun when you get the snap and your first thought is "where am I going to get him from this time"? Let's remember that Colt McCoy spent his first two seasons getting his face smashed in before having amazing junior and senior seasons (yes, I KNOW Colt won 10 games in each of those first two years, haters). So, a full season/off-season cycle of Charlie Strong's coaching and recruiting really should do wonders for this team. But we have to remember the dire situation he inherited. Worse than Obama coming into office during the recession in 2008? A resounding YES. Because this has been harder on America. We all know Texas is America's college football team. We have a TV network, dammit! So once again, "moderate expectations".

Oh yeah, we play a game this week too. This is going to be one of our tougher season openers in recent memory. I have a strong dislike for Notre Dame and any institution who has a Secret Police force. And institutions with secret online girlfriends. And institutions who support Brady "Now I'm Done" Quinn. Fun fact: Notre Dame is paying Charlie Weis to coach Kansas right now. Oh, you want to hear about their football team? Well, unfortunately they're pretty good. I don't know exactly how good because they play 9 games against ACC teams and then the military schools, so they could be a national championship caliber team, or a precocious middle school team and still finish 9-3 with that schedule. Sadly, I'm not sure Texas is favored over the middle school team.... If nothing else, this game gives us an idea how far we've come in the offseason, and how far we still have to go before national relevance again. My guess here is we will play much more like a cohesive team in this game, but our lack of offensive explosiveness means our only chance at winning is a low scoring game where we win the turnover battle. I expect a good game and I'm incredibly excited for this season to start. Please don't hurt me, Texas. 

Notre Dame 24 - Texas 17