Seven reasons that I am not upset right now.

1) If we lose our bowl game, then all the worry will be for naught.

2) If we win our bowl game, then the worst case scenario is a 12-1 season, a BCS win (to go 3-0 in the BCS) and a top-3 finish. That isn’t a bad worst case scenario.

3) If OU loses to Missou, we should play in the NC game.

4) Even if OU wins, there is a possible (albeit highly improbably chance) that we pass them in the BCS and go to the NC game. It would only take about 9 voters.

5) There is also an improbable but possible scenario of Florida beating Alabama but failing to leapfrog Texas, putting Texas against OU in the NC game.

6) Even if OU wins the BCS championship, we would likely still win the AP championship (ala 2003 USC) since we lead them in the AP right now. That would be fun.

7) Maybe this whole situation makes people sympathetic to Colt for the Heisman.

I really don’t care. If we want to place blame, look no further than failing to beat Tech a few weeks ago. That is the beauty of college football: losses haunt you.

A quick tangent…some people are looking at OU going to the Big XII championship game as proof of the flaw of the BCS. Wrong. The BCS puts #1 and #2 together in the championship game. It hasn’t done that yet. That is in a week. The *flaw* is that the Big XII has a stupid tiebreaker. The fifth tiebreaker uses the BCS formula. Conferences should be decided based on conference play, but the BCS, obviously, considers non-conference play. Let’s pretend that Oregon State beat Oregon. That would give us the right example. OSU would absolutely deserve to win the conference based on conference play, but USC would absolutely deserve to play in the NC game (if given the chance) over OSU based on non-conference play. Conference championships should not consider non-conference play. So the Big XII should change its rule. Prospectively…… The rules were the rules at the start of the season, so it is silly to complain about them now. It is like the guy who bitches about blind structure in a tournament after it is clear that it doesn’t suit him. Funny, he could have complained when the tournament started. Or, he could have played faster at the beginning of the tourney to adjust for the structure. Of all the things he should have done, complain is not one of them.

JG and CKA were right that OU won the tiebreaker. However, I don’t think that they thought it would be that close. I also doubt they knew that the NU-CU and KU-Missou games may well have been the difference. What I didn’t know (and am still shocked by) is that OU would beat Tech by a million points. That one I did not factor in when I thought UT would win the tiebreaker – I was going under an assumption that the game would be as tight as the UT-Tech and TX-OU games.

If OU beats Missou, I wish them the best of luck against the SEC champ.

I finally got around to watching the WSOP final table episode. And there’s one thing that bothered me throughout the show: the riduculous advertising on the player’s clothes.

Am I the only one who thinks that poker players look like Nascar drivers?? It is so tacky, and looks incredibly stupid with a player wearing 11 patches from different corporate sponsors.

Show a little class…

I am very much looking forward to the UT-A&M game being back on Thursday night, where it belongs. We haven’t played on Thanksgiving since I was in college, and I miss it. Ain’t much better than sitting on the sofa completely stuffed (and a little bit loaded) and watch a football game.

Since we are favored by 33.5 points, I’m not going to evern try to talk Xs and Os. In summary, we are better in every imaginable way (oh, I forgot, not in the halftime-way of judging teams).

So I decided to compile a list of things I like and dislike about Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University.

Green is a like; red is a dislike.

• The Zone – It is a terrible place to watch a game from. The seats are tiny. Only Aggies would go for a marketing campaign that gets them excited to buy seats….in the endzone.
• Robert Earl Keen – If I ever go on the wagon, I will need to burn all of my REK CDs. Is it possible to listen to Bobby Keen without cracking open a cold one?
• List Eaters – Lists are a lot things. They can be ordinal. They can be chronological. They can not be – they should not be – edible. That is just wrong.
• Secretary of Defense Robert Gates – He is a brilliant man and a patriot. He also had the very easy task of doing better than his predecessor. He did so with flying colors. (Technically, he is a “T-shirt fan”, but since I don’t buy into that, I will let him be an Aggie)
• All fans are myopic. Aggies are blind. They don’t describe themselves in superlatives; they describe themselves absolutes. “All Aggies stand for the entire game. We never leave early. We never talk bad about our team. We sell out every game.” Whatever. Aggies, like all fanbases, have good and bad fans.
• The red, white and blue thing after 9/11/01 – In a society where everything is over-eulogized, this was a fairly simple but powerful display. I liked it.
• Their propensity for violence when they lose – UT in 95, Tech in 01, the SMU cheerleader, the Rice M.O.B/Corps tussle, the list goes on. I know, I know, the other guy is always to blame. Funny, every well-publicized eruption of violence in the SWC/Big XII of which I know, especially those involving actual representatives of the school, have involved A&M. I guess it is just a crazy coincidence.
• KTL – If for no other reason, he introduced me to the idea that you could dip a quesadilla into queso. I thought this was forbidden by Leviticus, but I was pleased to learn that God gave us cheese to let us know he loves us.
• The very gay painted overalls thing. I don’t get it. Somebody explain it to me. We have hot sorority chicks in skimpy orange dresses; they have rednecks with “red ass” painted on their overalls. You pick.
• Aggie jokes – They are good sports about Aggie jokes. They are overly sensitive about actual criticism, but I have never met an Aggie that cared one lick about an Aggie joke.
• That they beat us the past two years.
• That we will beat them this year.

That’s it. I hope it is a good, clean game. And I definitely hope the best team wins.

“I am very excited about the mix of players that we will bring together for this next season,” said Mori Eskandani, High Stakes Poker producer “Viewers are in for a thrill.”

This is me doing my happy dance.

You can’t afford no ring….you can’t afford no ring….I shouldn’t be wearing white, and you can’t afford no ring…

I have been MIA in San Diego since a week ago Sunday. I have more to blog than I could ever get done today, so we will just touch on a few goodies today with more to come during the week.

It does not appear that Tech will win the national championship or the conference championship or even the division. They will, as they always do, only win the ring for best college team in west Texas.

It is interesting how it has all played out in the B12 South this year between the 4 best teams: the team wearing white has lost every time. (Actually, UT literally wore white against OU, but I am using the phrase metaphorically to refer to playing at your opponent’s house.)

It is also interesting that no combination of games could have played out better for the conference for TV. UT won its run of toughies until its last one. Tech took the baton and carried it to the end of their toughies. OU grabbed it and plays the finale against OSU. Every week, the game of the week in the Big 12 South is also the game of the season for the country. Verry interesting.

I am now looking pretty good for predictions 2, 3, 11 and 12.

To say that Tech was going to “pull a Tech” this year would be like predicting a highway gas station restroom would be unflushed when you get in there only to see someone blew dirt all over the bowl, seat and floor. Take a mental picture of that. It is an apt metaphor for how Tech looked last night.

CKA, the link to Texags was brilliant. It seems that 90% of the readers find it funny but some need to adjust either their sarcasm meter, their sense of humor or their reading comprehension.

We played poker in San Diego on Thursday night. We played $0.50-$1.00 NLHE, but you would have never guessed it by looking at the table: over $6,000 in play and pots regularly exceeding $100 pre-flop.

I went the whole night not getting good hole cards, but that didn’t stop me from seeing flops. I didn’t get AA, KK, JJ or AK until I got KK with a few minutes left. Even when I got QQ, I was up against AA. Uggg. Still, I managed to be slightly positive when a big hand came fairly late. Whale McWhalepants was pushing everybody around and I decided to make a stand. With a big main pot and a bigger side pot, he made a big bet. I shoved all in (raise of $460, total pot of $1,800 should he call). I had him on maybe top pair. That gave me 3 outs to the Ace plus 4 outs to a gut shot plus 7 others to the flush. So, it was a semi-bluff, but I felt quite sure that he would fold. I think my body language was my undoing. He called. I didn’t catch anything and he got the side pot (KTL got the main pot w JJ).

I am now stuck $700.

I buy $500 more. I win several hands and run it up to $1,000. I double through WMcWp when my KK holds up. With $2,000ish I call his all-in bet with 9x. He had 7x. My monster 9x held up. My stack is now $2,500. I won $2,000 in thirty minutes. I went from losing $700 to winning $1,300 in thirty minutes.

Three of my top-ten wins or losses (measured by absolute value) are all wins that came on the last hand (or near-last hand) of the night in a home game. All three are north of $1,000 and they all involve small stakes (the biggest being $1-$2 NLHE). In fact, eliminate these three hands and, despite thousands upon thousands of hands played in the last 6 years, I would go from a net winner to a net loser. Kinda puts results-based analysis into perspective.