she was being an ass.
The chair umpire made the match about him.
The two things are not mutually exclusive.
p.s. any time you or anyone else throws a "SJW" blast in their comments, it simply reveals you more than it helps you.
Ketch's 10 Thoughts From the Weekend (FIRE!!!!!!!!)
- Thread starter Ketchum
- Start date
The chair umpire made the match about him.
The two things are not mutually exclusive.
p.s. any time you or anyone else throws a "SJW" blast in their comments, it simply reveals you more than it helps you.
This was my thoughts as well. I'm a Serena fan, but she knew what she was trying to do. Perhaps the umpire thought the same and thus awarded the penalty.
Correction - I meant he's been a tennis official more than 20, not 40, years.
And all I can say about you is how come no one's surprised you have to put a sexist spin on something where there's no evidence of it? Your title is well-earned.
Serena is a tacky-ass, steroid-pumped prima donna who is bad for tennis. She is the ultra opposite of Chris Evert who was all class.
Typically, I like to think I'm the guy that won't scream "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
On days when I'm especially feeling like a good self-pat-on-the-back, I call myself the voice of reason.
Not today. Today I'm that guy.
Under normal circumstances it would probably be crazy to make judgment calls after 15 games of evidence. I willingly admit that what something looks like with such a small sample size can absolutely be misleading.
Yet, I would contend that the reaction to which I'm confessing is warranted by the sense of urgency of the here and now.
The situation in Austin can't be viewed through a vacuum. There's more going on than the Longhorns simply playing a worse (or at best break-even) brand of football in game No. 15 under Herman that they did when they were playing in game No. 2. In a world where Bob Stoops is leaving recruiting meat on the bone at Oklahoma and Texas A&M is an insignificant gnat on the window of life, you can get away with making special considerations for Tom Herman's current plight, all in the name of keeping alive the idea that Santa Claus is a real thing.
Texas doesn't live in that world anymore. Lincoln Riley absolutely looks like the real deal, the kind of coach Texas thought it was getting when it hired Herman. Meanwhile, Jimbo Fisher has done in two games what Herman is still only dreaming of doing in Austin, which is creating a wave of momentum with a big-time, prime-time performance against one of the big dogs in the sport. From an optics standpoint, the best prospects in the looming 2020 class just saw A&M play a recent national champion off its feet in an amazing atmosphere in the most highly-rated game of the weekend, while Texas held off a non Power-5 conference opponent on a channel most recruits probably can't find on their TVs.
Put your head in the sand all you want, but Texas A&M had a moment this weekend. When Fisher tells the nation's best running back that they're one player like him away from competing for championships, that kid can see it clearly. When Herman tells the same kid the same exact message, I'm not sure that the kid can see it without closing his eyes really, really, really hard.
And that's a big problem.
The world around Texas is evolving quickly and in taking its own sweet time to evolve at a meaningful rate, Herman and Co. have created a situation where a justifiable panic in the streets exists at any early point in his tenure than it did in Charlie Strong's tenure. Someone asked me after the game if Herman had replaced Charlie Strong as the Michael Scott of college football. Hell, no. He's more Robert California than anything else at the moment.
Honestly, it takes a special kind of unspectacular to put me in a position where I'm defending the virtues of Strong's tenure at Texas, yet here we are.
Texas fans are smart. They know the implications of the current situation. Dare I say, they understand the implications of the situation better than their coach.
This thing either starts turning around quickly ... or else.
Or else?
Or else me screaming, "Fire!" won't have been premature. It'll have been right on time.
No. 2 - A truly special moment on Saturday ...
Allow me for a moment to say a few words about what transpired before the game on Saturday at the Orangebloods tailgate scene.
Over the years, we've done a lot of really good things as a community, but I can safely say that I have never been more emotionally moved as the owner of this site than I was about two hours before game-time when we took time to honor the members of Orangebloods that we've lost over the course of the last few months.
After @OBRob gave a moving dedication, tears swelled as we listened to @meroney's friends and parents detail just how much Orangebloods meant to him and how much the outpouring of support since Christian's death had meant to them.
I've said it before, but this is the most amazing dysfunctional family a person could ever hope to be a part of and Saturday was a special little moment. The football might not be good, but the relationships we have on this site with each other have proven to be invaluable. I'm just thankful to be involved with such a special community.
Thanks to everyone that helped remind me on Saturday just how wonderful this group of crazies truly is.
No. 3 - When your best leaders aren't your best players ...
One of the moments of the Tulsa game that stands out in my mind nearly 24 hours after the game ended occurred in the aftermath of Sam Ehlinger's third quarter fumble, which was a total game-changer. After the play was over, senior captain Breckyn Hager ran over to Ehlinger and seemed to scream something that was part encouragement, part motivation and part desperation.
From one Westlake Chap to another, Ehlinger gave virtually no reaction to Hager's motivation, good, bad or indifferent. In that exact moment, it was hard not to look at Hager trying to ignite Ehlinger and think that he needed to ignite himself as much as anything. On a night when he had two tackles and was as disappointing as any player on the field, I wondered if Hager had a right to yell at anyone, captain's badge or not.
Frankly, it's a stark reminder that the Longhorns have five captains on the team right now (Hager, Andrew Beck, Elijah Rodriguez, Chris Nelson and Anthony Wheeler) that would probably struggle to find playing time for a team competing for a national championship. None of them made a single play of significance against Tulsa and that seems rather important.
Just file this truth away for the future ... if you have five captains on your team and none of them are playing at all-conference levels, your team is going to have a limited ceiling. When your captains are performing at all-conference and all-America levels, your team has no ceiling if it has the right quarterback and coaching staff.
No. 4 - I can't believe I'm writing this ...
Tom Herman might have 99 problems, but through two games the offensive line ain't one.
Herb Hand's group has been better than ok, but just being ok represents miles of improvement from a year ago. The pass protection has been perfectly fine and while this team can't line up and overpower anyone, the work in the run game has been ... well ... ok.
Of course, this group still needs to prove it against quality competition, but it's important to acknowledge that the critical areas of needed improvement are improving when the improving is needed. It could all go sideways for this group as early as Saturday, but for now the o-line receives a tip of the cap from yours truly, considering you can make a case that it's been the best position group on the team through 120 minutes of football.
No. 5 - Tweet that deserved its own section ...
No. 6 - Compare and contrast ...
Each week, I'm going to take a look at a player from the Lone Star State that explodes on the scene with a dominant performance and I'll compare him to the players in his recruiting class at the same position.
This week's player of focus is Texas A&M wide receiver Kendrick Rogers after he recorded seven receptions for 120 yards and two touchdowns against Clemson. Rogers was regarded as a high three-star player in the Class of 2016 and ranked as the No. 75 overall player in the state of Texas.
Other than Texas A&M, his next best offers were from TCU and Mississippi State.
Here's a look at his peers in that class from the state of Texas:
No. 4 - Sachse's Devin Duveynay (signed with Texas): Starts for the Longhorns as a junior and has five receptions for 64 yards and a touchdown in two games.
No. 7 - Spring Westfield's Tyrie Cleveland (signed with Florida: Starts for the Gators and has four receptions for 31 yards and a touchdown in two games.
No. 16 Navasota's Tren'Davion Dickson (signed with Baylor): Has already been in and out of two programs. We'll probably never hear from him again.
No. 19 DeSoto's Dee Anderson (signed with LSU): Has two receptions for 10 yards in the first two games of his junior season.
No. 25 Langham Creek's Quartney Smith (signed with Texas A&M): In the A&M receiver rotation, but only a back-up at this point in his career.
No. 27 Houston Bellaire's Courtney Lark (signed with Houston) A starter with the Cougars, Lark has eight receptions for 126 yards and two touchdowns through two games.
No. 42 Wichita Falls Rider's T.J. Vasher (Signed with Texas Tech) A starter with the Red Raiders, Vasher has seven receptions for 117 yards through two games.
No. 7 – Buy or Sell …
BUY or SELL: Herman is head coach in 2020?
(Sell) I'd be lying if I said otherwise based on what we've seen on the field thus far through two games into his second season.
BUY or SELL: You need to revise your prediction for season record?
(Buy) After the loss to Maryland, I dropped my season prediction from 8-4 to 7-5. I'll hold off on going lower than that for a few weeks because I already had Texas losing to USC, TCU and Oklahoma before the season started, as part of my 8-4 record.
BUY or SELL: Ogre's win over the Omega Mu was more compelling than Texas' win last night, but the similarities are striking.
(Buy) The Omega Mu came into the match ranked in the top 10. That was the greatest victory of Ogre's life.
BUY or SELL: The locker room is behind Herman?
(Buy) Yes, I do believe this to be true.
BUY or SELL: Hiring a second-year Conference USA head coach to take the reins at Texas was a much more risky proposition than Orangebloods staff was willing to admit at the time?
(Sell) I'm only speaking for myself, but I was always of the opinion that Herman was a risk. I've been banging on that pot for a while.
BUY or SELL: CDC wont fire Herman this offseason, but he will make him sacrifice his assistants?
(Sell) Del Conte won't have to force Herman to do anything. He'll know without anyone telling him that sacrifices will need to be made, just like Charlie before him.
BUY or SELL: Next week, the game gets out of hand by half time with USC winning big and we see a minimum of three QB’s in action?
(Sell) This will be another four-quarter game and I don't think anyone other than Sam Ehlinger takes a snap at quarterback this week.
BUY or SELL: Herman’s faux bro beard is another example of his immaturity (see rampant gun chewing last year, the dance in the bowl game, etc)?
(Sell) The bro-beard looks good on him. Much better than the goatee look.
BUY or SELL: OB sees a significant dropoff in its subscription base due to longtime fans finally succumbing to apathy?
(Sell) It's not the drop-off in subscribers that is concerning, it's the inability to grow because of the apathy. Our community is such a strength that few really want to leave this family of ours once they get in, even if there is some self-loathing over the football piece to it in the middle of it all.
No. 8 – Eternal Randomness of the Spotty Sports Mind …
... Very quietly, the injury to Oklahoma running back Rodney Anderson was one of the stories of the college football weekend. Potentially losing him for the entire season would be a serious blow to a team with national championship aspirations.
... It's only two games, but Kyler Murray looks like a bad mofo.
... It's unfair that Nick Saban has a guy like Tua Tagovailoa as his quarterback. Someone bring back Greg McElroy.
... What the hell is happening at Florida State under Willie Tagert?
... Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma and Ohio State look different than all the other teams across the country.
... The first time Michael Dickson punted in the NFL, he hit it 60 yards. Later in the day, this happened...
... Not quite caring as much as a fan made Sunday's performance by the Dallas Cowboys much easier to tolerate. That's a bad football team, folks.
... DeShaun Watson looked very mortal on Sunday. Very. Signed, A guy that drafted him in fantasy.
.... I haven't talked to @Suchomel or @DustinMcComas today, but I'm guessing Steelers Nation is on tilt right about now. Probably not as on-tilt as Bills fans, but on-tilt nonetheless.
... My Serena hot-take - I thought she was out of line in losing her mind to the chair umpire, but I'm also not going to pretend that the chair umpire pulled the kind of power play that would never be attempted against a male with the stature of Williams. I don't know what the hell is going on with the tennis world right now, but it these moments of disrespect against Williams seem to be occurring a lot. That being said, Serena has to be better than that because she essentially let that moment define the entire weekend.
... Novak Djokovic might be the most underrated all-time great player in the history of tennis. That dude has 14 career grand slams, which is only one less than Johnny Mac and Andre Aggasi combined.
No. 9 - The List: Top 10 Literary Masterpieces I Hope Tom Herman References This Season ...
10. Pride and Prejudice
9. Charlotte's Web
8. Where the Sidewalk Ends
7. The Hunger Games
6. The Sound and the Fury (Benjy's section)
5. 1984
4. The Scarlet Letter
3. Lord of the Flies
2. The Grapes of Wrath
1. Where the Red Fern Grows
No. 10 – And Finally...
Dear Cub Scouts of America …
Please ditch the popcorn and go find some cookies to sell. It doesn't make any sense at all that you'd have an inferior product and you'd sell it for four to five times the cost of a box of Girl Scout Cookies.
Basically, I'm suggesting that Cub Scouts get in on the cookie market that the girls seem to think they have a monopoly on. I don't understand why the Cub scouts can't make their own cookies and just make sure that the sale of those cookies is months removed from when the Girl Scouts do their thing.
Anything is better than $20 popcorn.
From the perspective of a woman who cannot stand Serena (or tennis bc I find it boring, but I digress...)—Serena’s actions took away from Osaka’s limelight. Serena was on her way to losing, but Osaka’s victory will be questioned bc of the poor management of the situation by Serena and the ump. That said, the ump was wrong. Serena’s response was not wholly different from reactions men have had in similar situations in tennis and other sports. Officials should never impact games. I happen to have a strong personality and have to be very measured in how I express myself at work bc I’m female. There are several men who have equally strong or stronger personalities than I who can express strong opinions or strong reactions to situations that I cannot without the risk of being labeled as yelling at or intimidating someone. The word perception is thrown around like candy, and men at my office do benefit from the double standard of perception applied to the same situation for different genders. I don’t offend easily, and think it ridiculous that people are easily offended by jokes, comments, etc. I even think sexual harassment training is silly. People need to lighten up. I am not the “feminist”or “snowflake” type. I’m actually more conservative in my politics. All that said, I do see the double standard applied to Serena. Just an ugly situation all the way around.
They both needed to respond better than they did, but Serena is the person who mattered yesterday not the chair ump.
Nobody was watching for him.
Typically, I like to think I'm the guy that won't scream "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
On days when I'm especially feeling like a good self-pat-on-the-back, I call myself the voice of reason.
Not today. Today I'm that guy.
Under normal circumstances it would probably be crazy to make judgment calls after 15 games of evidence. I willingly admit that what something looks like with such a small sample size can absolutely be misleading.
Yet, I would contend that the reaction to which I'm confessing is warranted by the sense of urgency of the here and now.
The situation in Austin can't be viewed through a vacuum. There's more going on than the Longhorns simply playing a worse (or at best break-even) brand of football in game No. 15 under Herman that they did when they were playing in game No. 2. In a world where Bob Stoops is leaving recruiting meat on the bone at Oklahoma and Texas A&M is an insignificant gnat on the window of life, you can get away with making special considerations for Tom Herman's current plight, all in the name of keeping alive the idea that Santa Claus is a real thing.
Texas doesn't live in that world anymore. Lincoln Riley absolutely looks like the real deal, the kind of coach Texas thought it was getting when it hired Herman. Meanwhile, Jimbo Fisher has done in two games what Herman is still only dreaming of doing in Austin, which is creating a wave of momentum with a big-time, prime-time performance against one of the big dogs in the sport. From an optics standpoint, the best prospects in the looming 2020 class just saw A&M play a recent national champion off its feet in an amazing atmosphere in the most highly-rated game of the weekend, while Texas held off a non Power-5 conference opponent on a channel most recruits probably can't find on their TVs.
Put your head in the sand all you want, but Texas A&M had a moment this weekend. When Fisher tells the nation's best running back that they're one player like him away from competing for championships, that kid can see it clearly. When Herman tells the same kid the same exact message, I'm not sure that the kid can see it without closing his eyes really, really, really hard.
And that's a big problem.
The world around Texas is evolving quickly and in taking its own sweet time to evolve at a meaningful rate, Herman and Co. have created a situation where a justifiable panic in the streets exists at any early point in his tenure than it did in Charlie Strong's tenure. Someone asked me after the game if Herman had replaced Charlie Strong as the Michael Scott of college football. Hell, no. He's more Robert California than anything else at the moment.
Honestly, it takes a special kind of unspectacular to put me in a position where I'm defending the virtues of Strong's tenure at Texas, yet here we are.
Texas fans are smart. They know the implications of the current situation. Dare I say, they understand the implications of the situation better than their coach.
This thing either starts turning around quickly ... or else.
Or else?
Or else me screaming, "Fire!" won't have been premature. It'll have been right on time.
No. 2 - A truly special moment on Saturday ...
Allow me for a moment to say a few words about what transpired before the game on Saturday at the Orangebloods tailgate scene.
Over the years, we've done a lot of really good things as a community, but I can safely say that I have never been more emotionally moved as the owner of this site than I was about two hours before game-time when we took time to honor the members of Orangebloods that we've lost over the course of the last few months.
After @OBRob gave a moving dedication, tears swelled as we listened to @meroney's friends and parents detail just how much Orangebloods meant to him and how much the outpouring of support since Christian's death had meant to them.
I've said it before, but this is the most amazing dysfunctional family a person could ever hope to be a part of and Saturday was a special little moment. The football might not be good, but the relationships we have on this site with each other have proven to be invaluable. I'm just thankful to be involved with such a special community.
Thanks to everyone that helped remind me on Saturday just how wonderful this group of crazies truly is.
No. 3 - When your best leaders aren't your best players ...
One of the moments of the Tulsa game that stands out in my mind nearly 24 hours after the game ended occurred in the aftermath of Sam Ehlinger's third quarter fumble, which was a total game-changer. After the play was over, senior captain Breckyn Hager ran over to Ehlinger and seemed to scream something that was part encouragement, part motivation and part desperation.
From one Westlake Chap to another, Ehlinger gave virtually no reaction to Hager's motivation, good, bad or indifferent. In that exact moment, it was hard not to look at Hager trying to ignite Ehlinger and think that he needed to ignite himself as much as anything. On a night when he had two tackles and was as disappointing as any player on the field, I wondered if Hager had a right to yell at anyone, captain's badge or not.
Frankly, it's a stark reminder that the Longhorns have five captains on the team right now (Hager, Andrew Beck, Elijah Rodriguez, Chris Nelson and Anthony Wheeler) that would probably struggle to find playing time for a team competing for a national championship. None of them made a single play of significance against Tulsa and that seems rather important.
Just file this truth away for the future ... if you have five captains on your team and none of them are playing at all-conference levels, your team is going to have a limited ceiling. When your captains are performing at all-conference and all-America levels, your team has no ceiling if it has the right quarterback and coaching staff.
No. 4 - I can't believe I'm writing this ...
Tom Herman might have 99 problems, but through two games the offensive line ain't one.
Herb Hand's group has been better than ok, but just being ok represents miles of improvement from a year ago. The pass protection has been perfectly fine and while this team can't line up and overpower anyone, the work in the run game has been ... well ... ok.
Of course, this group still needs to prove it against quality competition, but it's important to acknowledge that the critical areas of needed improvement are improving when the improving is needed. It could all go sideways for this group as early as Saturday, but for now the o-line receives a tip of the cap from yours truly, considering you can make a case that it's been the best position group on the team through 120 minutes of football.
No. 5 - Tweet that deserved its own section ...
No. 6 - Compare and contrast ...
Each week, I'm going to take a look at a player from the Lone Star State that explodes on the scene with a dominant performance and I'll compare him to the players in his recruiting class at the same position.
This week's player of focus is Texas A&M wide receiver Kendrick Rogers after he recorded seven receptions for 120 yards and two touchdowns against Clemson. Rogers was regarded as a high three-star player in the Class of 2016 and ranked as the No. 75 overall player in the state of Texas.
Other than Texas A&M, his next best offers were from TCU and Mississippi State.
Here's a look at his peers in that class from the state of Texas:
No. 4 - Sachse's Devin Duveynay (signed with Texas): Starts for the Longhorns as a junior and has five receptions for 64 yards and a touchdown in two games.
No. 7 - Spring Westfield's Tyrie Cleveland (signed with Florida: Starts for the Gators and has four receptions for 31 yards and a touchdown in two games.
No. 16 Navasota's Tren'Davion Dickson (signed with Baylor): Has already been in and out of two programs. We'll probably never hear from him again.
No. 19 DeSoto's Dee Anderson (signed with LSU): Has two receptions for 10 yards in the first two games of his junior season.
No. 25 Langham Creek's Quartney Smith (signed with Texas A&M): In the A&M receiver rotation, but only a back-up at this point in his career.
No. 27 Houston Bellaire's Courtney Lark (signed with Houston) A starter with the Cougars, Lark has eight receptions for 126 yards and two touchdowns through two games.
No. 42 Wichita Falls Rider's T.J. Vasher (Signed with Texas Tech) A starter with the Red Raiders, Vasher has seven receptions for 117 yards through two games.
No. 7 – Buy or Sell …
BUY or SELL: Herman is head coach in 2020?
(Sell) I'd be lying if I said otherwise based on what we've seen on the field thus far through two games into his second season.
BUY or SELL: You need to revise your prediction for season record?
(Buy) After the loss to Maryland, I dropped my season prediction from 8-4 to 7-5. I'll hold off on going lower than that for a few weeks because I already had Texas losing to USC, TCU and Oklahoma before the season started, as part of my 8-4 record.
BUY or SELL: Ogre's win over the Omega Mu was more compelling than Texas' win last night, but the similarities are striking.
(Buy) The Omega Mu came into the match ranked in the top 10. That was the greatest victory of Ogre's life.
BUY or SELL: The locker room is behind Herman?
(Buy) Yes, I do believe this to be true.
BUY or SELL: Hiring a second-year Conference USA head coach to take the reins at Texas was a much more risky proposition than Orangebloods staff was willing to admit at the time?
(Sell) I'm only speaking for myself, but I was always of the opinion that Herman was a risk. I've been banging on that pot for a while.
BUY or SELL: CDC wont fire Herman this offseason, but he will make him sacrifice his assistants?
(Sell) Del Conte won't have to force Herman to do anything. He'll know without anyone telling him that sacrifices will need to be made, just like Charlie before him.
BUY or SELL: Next week, the game gets out of hand by half time with USC winning big and we see a minimum of three QB’s in action?
(Sell) This will be another four-quarter game and I don't think anyone other than Sam Ehlinger takes a snap at quarterback this week.
BUY or SELL: Herman’s faux bro beard is another example of his immaturity (see rampant gun chewing last year, the dance in the bowl game, etc)?
(Sell) The bro-beard looks good on him. Much better than the goatee look.
BUY or SELL: OB sees a significant dropoff in its subscription base due to longtime fans finally succumbing to apathy?
(Sell) It's not the drop-off in subscribers that is concerning, it's the inability to grow because of the apathy. Our community is such a strength that few really want to leave this family of ours once they get in, even if there is some self-loathing over the football piece to it in the middle of it all.
No. 8 – Eternal Randomness of the Spotty Sports Mind …
... Very quietly, the injury to Oklahoma running back Rodney Anderson was one of the stories of the college football weekend. Potentially losing him for the entire season would be a serious blow to a team with national championship aspirations.
... It's only two games, but Kyler Murray looks like a bad mofo.
... It's unfair that Nick Saban has a guy like Tua Tagovailoa as his quarterback. Someone bring back Greg McElroy.
... What the hell is happening at Florida State under Willie Tagert?
... Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma and Ohio State look different than all the other teams across the country.
... The first time Michael Dickson punted in the NFL, he hit it 60 yards. Later in the day, this happened...
... Not quite caring as much as a fan made Sunday's performance by the Dallas Cowboys much easier to tolerate. That's a bad football team, folks.
... DeShaun Watson looked very mortal on Sunday. Very. Signed, A guy that drafted him in fantasy.
.... I haven't talked to @Suchomel or @DustinMcComas today, but I'm guessing Steelers Nation is on tilt right about now. Probably not as on-tilt as Bills fans, but on-tilt nonetheless.
... My Serena hot-take - I thought she was out of line in losing her mind to the chair umpire, but I'm also not going to pretend that the chair umpire pulled the kind of power play that would never be attempted against a male with the stature of Williams. I don't know what the hell is going on with the tennis world right now, but it these moments of disrespect against Williams seem to be occurring a lot. That being said, Serena has to be better than that because she essentially let that moment define the entire weekend.
... Novak Djokovic might be the most underrated all-time great player in the history of tennis. That dude has 14 career grand slams, which is only one less than Johnny Mac and Andre Aggasi combined.
No. 9 - The List: Top 10 Literary Masterpieces I Hope Tom Herman References This Season ...
10. Pride and Prejudice
9. Charlotte's Web
8. Where the Sidewalk Ends
7. The Hunger Games
6. The Sound and the Fury (Benjy's section)
5. 1984
4. The Scarlet Letter
3. Lord of the Flies
2. The Grapes of Wrath
1. Where the Red Fern Grows
No. 10 – And Finally...
Dear Cub Scouts of America …
Please ditch the popcorn and go find some cookies to sell. It doesn't make any sense at all that you'd have an inferior product and you'd sell it for four to five times the cost of a box of Girl Scout Cookies.
Basically, I'm suggesting that Cub Scouts get in on the cookie market that the girls seem to think they have a monopoly on. I don't understand why the Cub scouts can't make their own cookies and just make sure that the sale of those cookies is months removed from when the Girl Scouts do their thing.
Anything is better than $20 popcorn.
For the most part I will give you a thumbs-up. My give-a-shit meter has been compromised.
I think she lost her shit. The ump did not help things. I see it like baseball in that you are allowed to argue you side of things to a point then you are warned. Keep on with your point you get tossed. I think the ump realized he screwed up but wasn't about to admit it, they necmver do. She decided she wasn't going to quit until she got an apology. He then decided if she going to go full dumbass so will I. That pretty much summed it up for me. They were both in the wrong.
I don't disagree with her it might have been handled different had it been a male player but I also feel like she wouldn't let it go. The argument from her lasted half the set and took her out of the match she was already out of....
The moment he took a game away from her to make it 5-3, she had every reason to lose the plot.
In the history of tennis, nothing like this had really every happened before. McEnroe going full foul mouth in 1987 is not the same thing.
I'm right in the middle of most people on this. I feel like the both have responsibility for the outcome, and the 51% is on Serena's side. She was basically taunting the ref and daring him to enforce some arcane rule--any rule. If you've had kids you know the situation. They just stare at you and defy you to pull a card on them. If don't do it now, they keep pulling shit until you do.
To me, that was Williams in this case. The ump called her on something--right or not, it happens. And then she spends the rest of the match antagonizing him. Demanding that he apologize to her. Arguing. On multiple occasions, starting and escalating with him for what appeared to be little more than venting or provoking confrontation.
At some point every patterned confrontation like this becomes a game between the two aggressors. And when humans enter a game, they want to win. It's maybe one of the most common stories in all of human history. The ref got pulled into this as much as Williams did.
The fact that she was antagonistic, and then hid behind gender discrimination, is a bad look. That very well could be this ref's intent with her. I don't know enough about him to hold an opinion either way. But you don't need gender discrimination to explain why Williams got penalized on the court. Just don't go straight after the ref over and over and over and keep doing it even when it passes and it feels like you get out of that without anything big happening.
Was the ref an ass? Yes. Was Serena kinda gunning for it as hard as I've even seen an athlete try? Yep. I've seen people disqualified for less across many different sports.
Typically, I like to think I'm the guy that won't scream "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
On days when I'm especially feeling like a good self-pat-on-the-back, I call myself the voice of reason.
Not today. Today I'm that guy.
Under normal circumstances it would probably be crazy to make judgment calls after 15 games of evidence. I willingly admit that what something looks like with such a small sample size can absolutely be misleading.
Yet, I would contend that the reaction to which I'm confessing is warranted by the sense of urgency of the here and now.
The situation in Austin can't be viewed through a vacuum. There's more going on than the Longhorns simply playing a worse (or at best break-even) brand of football in game No. 15 under Herman that they did when they were playing in game No. 2. In a world where Bob Stoops is leaving recruiting meat on the bone at Oklahoma and Texas A&M is an insignificant gnat on the window of life, you can get away with making special considerations for Tom Herman's current plight, all in the name of keeping alive the idea that Santa Claus is a real thing.
Texas doesn't live in that world anymore. Lincoln Riley absolutely looks like the real deal, the kind of coach Texas thought it was getting when it hired Herman. Meanwhile, Jimbo Fisher has done in two games what Herman is still only dreaming of doing in Austin, which is creating a wave of momentum with a big-time, prime-time performance against one of the big dogs in the sport. From an optics standpoint, the best prospects in the looming 2020 class just saw A&M play a recent national champion off its feet in an amazing atmosphere in the most highly-rated game of the weekend, while Texas held off a non Power-5 conference opponent on a channel most recruits probably can't find on their TVs.
Put your head in the sand all you want, but Texas A&M had a moment this weekend. When Fisher tells the nation's best running back that they're one player like him away from competing for championships, that kid can see it clearly. When Herman tells the same kid the same exact message, I'm not sure that the kid can see it without closing his eyes really, really, really hard.
And that's a big problem.
The world around Texas is evolving quickly and in taking its own sweet time to evolve at a meaningful rate, Herman and Co. have created a situation where a justifiable panic in the streets exists at any early point in his tenure than it did in Charlie Strong's tenure. Someone asked me after the game if Herman had replaced Charlie Strong as the Michael Scott of college football. Hell, no. He's more Robert California than anything else at the moment.
Honestly, it takes a special kind of unspectacular to put me in a position where I'm defending the virtues of Strong's tenure at Texas, yet here we are.
Texas fans are smart. They know the implications of the current situation. Dare I say, they understand the implications of the situation better than their coach.
This thing either starts turning around quickly ... or else.
Or else?
Or else me screaming, "Fire!" won't have been premature. It'll have been right on time.
No. 2 - A truly special moment on Saturday ...
Allow me for a moment to say a few words about what transpired before the game on Saturday at the Orangebloods tailgate scene.
Over the years, we've done a lot of really good things as a community, but I can safely say that I have never been more emotionally moved as the owner of this site than I was about two hours before game-time when we took time to honor the members of Orangebloods that we've lost over the course of the last few months.
After @OBRob gave a moving dedication, tears swelled as we listened to @meroney's friends and parents detail just how much Orangebloods meant to him and how much the outpouring of support since Christian's death had meant to them.
I've said it before, but this is the most amazing dysfunctional family a person could ever hope to be a part of and Saturday was a special little moment. The football might not be good, but the relationships we have on this site with each other have proven to be invaluable. I'm just thankful to be involved with such a special community.
Thanks to everyone that helped remind me on Saturday just how wonderful this group of crazies truly is.
No. 3 - When your best leaders aren't your best players ...
One of the moments of the Tulsa game that stands out in my mind nearly 24 hours after the game ended occurred in the aftermath of Sam Ehlinger's third quarter fumble, which was a total game-changer. After the play was over, senior captain Breckyn Hager ran over to Ehlinger and seemed to scream something that was part encouragement, part motivation and part desperation.
From one Westlake Chap to another, Ehlinger gave virtually no reaction to Hager's motivation, good, bad or indifferent. In that exact moment, it was hard not to look at Hager trying to ignite Ehlinger and think that he needed to ignite himself as much as anything. On a night when he had two tackles and was as disappointing as any player on the field, I wondered if Hager had a right to yell at anyone, captain's badge or not.
Frankly, it's a stark reminder that the Longhorns have five captains on the team right now (Hager, Andrew Beck, Elijah Rodriguez, Chris Nelson and Anthony Wheeler) that would probably struggle to find playing time for a team competing for a national championship. None of them made a single play of significance against Tulsa and that seems rather important.
Just file this truth away for the future ... if you have five captains on your team and none of them are playing at all-conference levels, your team is going to have a limited ceiling. When your captains are performing at all-conference and all-America levels, your team has no ceiling if it has the right quarterback and coaching staff.
No. 4 - I can't believe I'm writing this ...
Tom Herman might have 99 problems, but through two games the offensive line ain't one.
Herb Hand's group has been better than ok, but just being ok represents miles of improvement from a year ago. The pass protection has been perfectly fine and while this team can't line up and overpower anyone, the work in the run game has been ... well ... ok.
Of course, this group still needs to prove it against quality competition, but it's important to acknowledge that the critical areas of needed improvement are improving when the improving is needed. It could all go sideways for this group as early as Saturday, but for now the o-line receives a tip of the cap from yours truly, considering you can make a case that it's been the best position group on the team through 120 minutes of football.
No. 5 - Tweet that deserved its own section ...
No. 6 - Compare and contrast ...
Each week, I'm going to take a look at a player from the Lone Star State that explodes on the scene with a dominant performance and I'll compare him to the players in his recruiting class at the same position.
This week's player of focus is Texas A&M wide receiver Kendrick Rogers after he recorded seven receptions for 120 yards and two touchdowns against Clemson. Rogers was regarded as a high three-star player in the Class of 2016 and ranked as the No. 75 overall player in the state of Texas.
Other than Texas A&M, his next best offers were from TCU and Mississippi State.
Here's a look at his peers in that class from the state of Texas:
No. 4 - Sachse's Devin Duveynay (signed with Texas): Starts for the Longhorns as a junior and has five receptions for 64 yards and a touchdown in two games.
No. 7 - Spring Westfield's Tyrie Cleveland (signed with Florida: Starts for the Gators and has four receptions for 31 yards and a touchdown in two games.
No. 16 Navasota's Tren'Davion Dickson (signed with Baylor): Has already been in and out of two programs. We'll probably never hear from him again.
No. 19 DeSoto's Dee Anderson (signed with LSU): Has two receptions for 10 yards in the first two games of his junior season.
No. 25 Langham Creek's Quartney Smith (signed with Texas A&M): In the A&M receiver rotation, but only a back-up at this point in his career.
No. 27 Houston Bellaire's Courtney Lark (signed with Houston) A starter with the Cougars, Lark has eight receptions for 126 yards and two touchdowns through two games.
No. 42 Wichita Falls Rider's T.J. Vasher (Signed with Texas Tech) A starter with the Red Raiders, Vasher has seven receptions for 117 yards through two games.
No. 7 – Buy or Sell …
BUY or SELL: Herman is head coach in 2020?
(Sell) I'd be lying if I said otherwise based on what we've seen on the field thus far through two games into his second season.
BUY or SELL: You need to revise your prediction for season record?
(Buy) After the loss to Maryland, I dropped my season prediction from 8-4 to 7-5. I'll hold off on going lower than that for a few weeks because I already had Texas losing to USC, TCU and Oklahoma before the season started, as part of my 8-4 record.
BUY or SELL: Ogre's win over the Omega Mu was more compelling than Texas' win last night, but the similarities are striking.
(Buy) The Omega Mu came into the match ranked in the top 10. That was the greatest victory of Ogre's life.
BUY or SELL: The locker room is behind Herman?
(Buy) Yes, I do believe this to be true.
BUY or SELL: Hiring a second-year Conference USA head coach to take the reins at Texas was a much more risky proposition than Orangebloods staff was willing to admit at the time?
(Sell) I'm only speaking for myself, but I was always of the opinion that Herman was a risk. I've been banging on that pot for a while.
BUY or SELL: CDC wont fire Herman this offseason, but he will make him sacrifice his assistants?
(Sell) Del Conte won't have to force Herman to do anything. He'll know without anyone telling him that sacrifices will need to be made, just like Charlie before him.
BUY or SELL: Next week, the game gets out of hand by half time with USC winning big and we see a minimum of three QB’s in action?
(Sell) This will be another four-quarter game and I don't think anyone other than Sam Ehlinger takes a snap at quarterback this week.
BUY or SELL: Herman’s faux bro beard is another example of his immaturity (see rampant gun chewing last year, the dance in the bowl game, etc)?
(Sell) The bro-beard looks good on him. Much better than the goatee look.
BUY or SELL: OB sees a significant dropoff in its subscription base due to longtime fans finally succumbing to apathy?
(Sell) It's not the drop-off in subscribers that is concerning, it's the inability to grow because of the apathy. Our community is such a strength that few really want to leave this family of ours once they get in, even if there is some self-loathing over the football piece to it in the middle of it all.
No. 8 – Eternal Randomness of the Spotty Sports Mind …
... Very quietly, the injury to Oklahoma running back Rodney Anderson was one of the stories of the college football weekend. Potentially losing him for the entire season would be a serious blow to a team with national championship aspirations.
... It's only two games, but Kyler Murray looks like a bad mofo.
... It's unfair that Nick Saban has a guy like Tua Tagovailoa as his quarterback. Someone bring back Greg McElroy.
... What the hell is happening at Florida State under Willie Tagert?
... Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma and Ohio State look different than all the other teams across the country.
... The first time Michael Dickson punted in the NFL, he hit it 60 yards. Later in the day, this happened...
... Not quite caring as much as a fan made Sunday's performance by the Dallas Cowboys much easier to tolerate. That's a bad football team, folks.
... DeShaun Watson looked very mortal on Sunday. Very. Signed, A guy that drafted him in fantasy.
.... I haven't talked to @Suchomel or @DustinMcComas today, but I'm guessing Steelers Nation is on tilt right about now. Probably not as on-tilt as Bills fans, but on-tilt nonetheless.
... My Serena hot-take - I thought she was out of line in losing her mind to the chair umpire, but I'm also not going to pretend that the chair umpire pulled the kind of power play that would never be attempted against a male with the stature of Williams. I don't know what the hell is going on with the tennis world right now, but it these moments of disrespect against Williams seem to be occurring a lot. That being said, Serena has to be better than that because she essentially let that moment define the entire weekend.
... Novak Djokovic might be the most underrated all-time great player in the history of tennis. That dude has 14 career grand slams, which is only one less than Johnny Mac and Andre Aggasi combined.
No. 9 - The List: Top 10 Literary Masterpieces I Hope Tom Herman References This Season ...
10. Pride and Prejudice
9. Charlotte's Web
8. Where the Sidewalk Ends
7. The Hunger Games
6. The Sound and the Fury (Benjy's section)
5. 1984
4. The Scarlet Letter
3. Lord of the Flies
2. The Grapes of Wrath
1. Where the Red Fern Grows
No. 10 – And Finally...
Dear Cub Scouts of America …
Please ditch the popcorn and go find some cookies to sell. It doesn't make any sense at all that you'd have an inferior product and you'd sell it for four to five times the cost of a box of Girl Scout Cookies.
Basically, I'm suggesting that Cub Scouts get in on the cookie market that the girls seem to think they have a monopoly on. I don't understand why the Cub scouts can't make their own cookies and just make sure that the sale of those cookies is months removed from when the Girl Scouts do their thing.
Anything is better than $20 popcorn.
You should have written the same article about CS at the same time in his tenure, but you didn’t.
If Texas actually beats usc this weekend, you should take a break from it all. Be an editor and not a writer.
Most of all...relax. It took guts to write those lines, but please don’t bury the horns yet just because CS imploded at the same time in his tenure and you’re experiencing collateral damage from that.
lol. k.
This is the article I wrote following Charlie's 14th game. Basically, you just talked out of your ass.
*****
Too many times over the course of the last 14 games, Texas head coach Charlie Strong has stood at a podium, seemingly taken aback by a combination of outrage and confusion directly related to his team’s performance.
Drenched in perspiration and with exhausted patience, Strong usually mentions that the type of losses that create panic in the streets of Austin can’t happen again. As a man that has waited his entire life and fought against a number of barriers to get the job of a lifetime, Strong seems to get the magnitude of these moments.
Not one time have I ever listened to Strong and thought to myself that he was giving me a line or a canned response. To look at Strong’s face in the immediate moments following Saturday’s disaster in South Bend, one could see conviction oozing out of every pore of his body.
Whereas Texas fans were once told by John Mackovic that they would have to take the bad with the good in response to losing to Rice, Strong’s seemingly no-tolerance attitude towards embarrassing losses is refreshing.
There’s just one problem … it keeps happening.
Again and again and again. The fact that humiliating losses have occurred in three straight games dating back to last season’s TCU contest means the Longhorns have become the Miley Cyrus’ boobs of college football, as there’s nothing shocking about seeing them exposed on a large stage at this point. Even worse, you can almost set your watch to its inevitable likelihood.
The thing about Texas fans is they’re a pretty knowledgeable bunch. They get that Mack Brown left Strong a mess similar to Chernobyl. They get that the quarterback situation has limitations. They get that Rome wasn’t built in a day.
What Texas fans will never get is how you could have extra time to the tune of nearly two weeks to prepare for TCU and lose by 38 or having a month to get ready for Arkansas, only to lose by three touchdowns in embarrassing fashion. What they’ll get even less is having eight-plus months to talk about the sting of those losses and the motivation it created, only to see a 35-point loss manifest itself in front of their very eyes.
117-20.
That’s the combined score of the last three times Texas fans have seen their football team play. You’re damn right they have every right to be furious. Hell, I’m ready to yell at myself for no other reason than the mind-numbing angst that fills the Austin air.
When it comes to evaluating talent and developing it, few anywhere are better than Strong, but I can’t yet say the same about his ability to stop assaults from taking place on his teams in sudden fashion. In the aftermath of Saturday’s loss, I think it’s safe to say that the thing that Longhorns
everywhere are dreading the most is the reality that more losses like this one await in the coming weeks and months.
A week ago, folks were scoffing at my suggestions that California would be a very tricky contest because of its superiority on the offensive side of the ball (especially at quarterback) and now there’s widespread fear that Rice is going to give the Longhorns a four-quarter fight … or worse.
Strong’s new reality is a Texas fan base that hates losing more than it loves winning and it’s been losing a hell of a late lately. Its patience is Giuliana Rancic thin. The last thing it wants is to be patronized by words or a lack of inaction.
Less than 24 hours ago, Strong's program seemed on the verge of taking off if aided by the kind of signature win the game with the Irish represented and in the blink of a 38-3 eye, it is stranded in the middle of crisis.
Welcome to this job, Charlie. I’m not telling you it’s fair, I’m just telling you where things stand.
Everyone understands that this isn’t a championship-level program, but the beatings feel like the worst Quentin Jerome Tarantino has to offer. What took place on Saturday night has robbed this coaching staff of any benefit of the doubt and without quick dramatic improvement, building momentum that will take the program to greatness (and not just trying to avoid humiliation) will become harder and harder to generate.
Tension exists in abundance and the only thing that will ease the stress in this “don’t tell us, show us” world the Longhorn program finds itself in is honorable results.
One thing I’m certain about with Strong is he won’t need it explained to him what will happen if those results don’t start to occur quickly.
Problem is she had lost before the game was taken away. After the initial incident and a game later between games she decided to start back in on him. He had enough and the "thief" comment was it for him. I'm not defending him but I think she made it easy on him to enforce the penalty. Still don't think he was right but I don't think he was 100% wrong either. They both made asses of themselves yesterday.
She made it easy for him to literally to choose a punishment that has never been handed down in a major final like that in the history of the game?
I find that to be a curious position, even if we both agree that they both acted like ass.
For the record, how many male players have ever publicly called him a thief (and I mean using that exact terminology)?"
We have a history on this subject.
I realize you can pull just about anything to support what a great prognosticator and writer you are but...I still remember. I definitely was off on the timing. My bad.
I guess you’re pulling for a loss this weekend.
Hopefully, Herman won’t give you a reason to give up on the program this weekend.
The umpire was in a no-win situation. He stuck to his guns, and his career as an ump is probably done. Serena was probably correct that he will never work another one of her events.
But good for him. Let's hope the rest of us are that strong when they come for us.
But good for him. Let's hope the rest of us are that strong when they come for us.
Did she use foul language?
The bottom line is that you can't doc her a game in that situation. I don't care what she calls him. It's not about him.
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