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Ketch's 10 Thoughts From the Weekend (Fueling Sam Ehlinger has to give Herman the tingles...)

Early leader for 2019 Sports Photo of the Year...
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Your troll game is solid. Kudos to you.
 
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I had never heard of Billie Eilish until this week and but after listening to her new album, I found myself digging her music
and that's not the best song on the album

i think bury a friend, you should see me in a crown and ilomilo are better.

know who else is a billie eilish fan? @danhorn
 
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Okay, so...
Who exactly are the war daddy recruiters out there that Texas might need to hire, in the event that CTH decides ( in the next year or two) that he needs to make that bold move?
Great question. They don't grow on trees.
 
So, recruiting would be going better if we were playing on an even field? I think we know about the elephant in the room as to recruiting, the real question is how CTH deals with it. Where is David Stanley when you need him?
It's gotta be damn hard to deal with it when the NCAA's agenda has little to do with level playing fields.
You couldn't yank a needle out of their ass with a power wench when it comes to their concern over likenesses, lawsuits, etc. Their attention and resources are elsewhere.
 
It's gotta be damn hard to deal with it when the NCAA's agenda has little to do with level playing fields.
You couldn't yank a needle out of their ass with a power wench when it comes to their concern over likenesses, lawsuits, etc. Their attention and resources are elsewhere.
I'm not even sure they have any full-time investigators left.
 
b. On the other hand, I've completely undersold Haynes King early in the recruiting process and must confess defeat in that discussion to those that opposed me months ago. You were right. I was wrong. That confession will be reflected in the upcoming update of the LSR Top 100, which is nearly complete.
East Texas...particularly, the Tyler, Longview, Marshall corridor gets slept on. Texas does recruit JT every so often but I have no idea how Longview gets forgotten.
 
7. Rachel Nichols is a national treasure.
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Ok, I'll be the idiot. Who is Rachel Nichols?
 
7. Rachel Nichols is a national treasure.
====================================

Ok, I'll be the idiot. Who is Rachel Nichols?
She's the host of ESPN's The Jump. One of the best reporter/broadcasters in the industry.
 
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Let me start out by saying that I'm willing to give Terry Bradshaw the benefit of the doubt.

Suspenders can do strange things to people.

Deep down in my heart of hearts, I have to believe that the former four-time Super Bowl champion was merely cutting some sort of pre-season WWE promo for the local fans at his alma mater and lost his head a little in the process. I don't think he's going senile. I'm not convinced he's a total Richard Cranium. Instead, I think he was playing the P.T. Barnum role and went a little overboard, likely believing that none of the comments would ever see the light of day.

"Damn that blasted Internet thing," I can hear Bradshaw saying while sounding and looking like a combination of Orville Redenbacher and Mama Boucher in the process.

So, let's just forget about ol' crazy uncle Bradshaw for a moment and consider what Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger must have been thinking when he found out about the most recent callout of a player that seems to be bathing in them over the last 9 months or so.

How strange must that have felt to see a Hall of Fame quarterback who Ehlinger has probably watched on television for most of his life making oddly placed slams against a player that has never been arrested or tackled while being arrested or been suspended for being late to meetings. All Ehlinger has done during his two seasons on the 40 Acres is keep his head down, play his guts out and stay out of trouble.

The thing he can't seem to do is keep his name out of his opponent's mouths. First, there was the dust-up with Kyler Murray, which started because Ehlinger had the audacity to attempt to shake Murray's hand after the Longhorns beat the Sooners in October. Then you had the Georgia players taking digs at him before the Sugar Bowl last year, suggesting that his style of play was cute and to be respected to a limit, but he'd never survive against SEC defenses trying to do what he does in the Big 12. Hell, just before I went on vacation last week, Baker Mayfield made sure to keep it classy at a camp for kids when he called out Ehlinger by name in a way that garnered national attention.

Now Bradshaw? Wearing those suspenders?

All I could possibly tell Ehlinger is that this is what being the quarterback of The University of Texas looks like when the program isn't a national laughingstock. This is what it looks when Texas matters even a little bit. Ask Major. Ask Simms. Ask Vince. Ask Colt.

It's been too damn long since a quarterback around these parts mattered enough to seemingly be discussed on Around the Horn on a weekly basis, but this is what comes with the territory when Texas matters, especially when Texas matters because of its quarterback play.

What's fascinating to me about all of this is that Ehlinger has become such a lightning rod of a player before he's even played in his junior year at Texas, which has been historically the moment when almost all previous all-time great players at the quarterback position in Austin flick the light switch completely on. It was in Colt McCoy's fourth season in Austin and third as a player that he truly became Colt McCoy. The same is mostly true of Vince Young, who only became a full-time starter in his third season in Austin and a supernova capable of destroying all of college football in year four. Hell, even Chris Simms didn't truly become a plus-player at the position until his senior season, once the Major Applewhite shadow left town,.

For all of Ehlinger's success on the field a year ago, which included a fairly historical 25 passing touchdowns/15 rushing touchdowns benchmark, a strong case can be made that we haven't yet seen the best version of the former Austin Westlake star.

Barring injuries, we still haven't completely reached the stage of his college career when the game truly slows down for him, especially in the passing game, where he was very good, but not yet consistently great a season ago.

For a guy that plays with the moxie that Tom Herman would drink from a bottle if it could be sold in stores, being slighted at every turn by names that you know and respect must serve as one hell of an internal fuel for Ehlinger to feed off of when the heat of the sun wears his body down in workout after workout after workout. At a time when he's more magazine cover-boy than perky underdog, Ehlinger has been given a license to wear another chip on his shoulder in the middle of his quest to go from being one of the best quarterbacks in the Big 12 to the absolute very best.

One thing you'd have to worry about to a slight degree with this Texas team in the off-season under normal circumstances is that it might read a little too many press-clippings and might fall a little too in love with itself after a season that included the single most important win in the last near-decade of Texas football (with all due respect to beating A&M in College Station to end the rivalry in 2011). Even more than a year ago, this team must arrive in 2019 with the kind of edge that cuts iron and Herman has been given the gift of his best player being dissed and doubted. The trickle down of that truth is worth its weight in gold.

In fact, I've started to wonder if Herman isn't paying the Bradshaws of the world to crap on Ehlinger. Maybe he can get one of his former Ohio State players to remark that he wouldn't make third string on the 2014 Buckeyes? Red McCombs hasn't done a controversial interview in a while, so maybe we can run that up the flag pole?

When I've debated with Anwar Richardson and others about the importance of informal seven-on-seven workouts during the glory years of this program, what really should be underlined about the make-up of those teams that doesn't get stated enough is that those workouts were as critical as they were because they were led and generated by quarterbacks that were more than just the team's best player, as those generational talents also proved to be the program's hardest workers.

Ehlinger has always been regarded as a high character hard worker, but these next two seasons are truly the moments for this program where he'll have the ability to put his thumbprint on what ultimately comes out of them.

Right here... right now... this is when it feels like it's all supposed to truly come together and every time Ehlinger seems to turn around, someone else is providing just a little more incentive for him to sweat, bleed or whatever else it takes in the process to get there.

No. 2 - The lack of in-state momentum in recruiting...

You may or may not have heard about this while I was on vacation, but apparently @Suchomel served as Mr. Debbie Downer in my place as it relates to a number of critical Texas 2019 recruiting targets...

First, it was Bijan Robinson.

Then, it was Vernon Broughton.

Right at the moment you wanted to punch him in the kisser, he drops one more piece of Bryson Washington info in the form of a poop sandwich.

Apparently, all it took was an hour or so in Atlanta around all of those players before some percentages on the Longhorns Recruiting Board needed to change.

So, what gives? What makes it better?

The first question is the easiest to answer because it's a topic I've lamented over for much of the last year - the level of competitiveness we're seeing inside the Texas state borders in recruiting. This is simply what it looks like when Texas and Oklahoma and Texas A&M and LSU and Alabama and Georgia and Clemson are all at or near the top of their games as programs at the same time and are recruiting against each other.

The general thinking about what might make it easier or better for the Longhorns is a couple of wins over LSU and Oklahoma (perhaps two?), but I'll be honest when I tell you that I'm not sure what winning alone will solve a set of issues that are a decade in the making.

It might be that this brave new world that the Texas program finds itself in will linger for a year or two or more. When Mack Brown was at his absolute best in recruiting, it felt like he could snap his fingers and land five of the state's top seven without so much as sweating through an undershirt on a hot July afternoon. Hell, Texas had it going so well and easy for so long that he was able to build a recruiting giant without having an elite set of recruiters on his staff.

When this season is completed and the 2020 recruiting class is put to bed, Herman will need to take stock of what's happened and determine whether he has enough recruiting war daddies on his staff and whether the net gain of adding a few rainmakers is worth the loss of continuity that would take place, which is an atmosphere Herman has worked incredibly hard to create going into his third season.

The truth of the matter is that I believed beating Georgia in the Sugar Bowl would create more in-state momentum for the Longhorns in recruiting than has actually taken place in this recruiting year, which is a way of me confessing I was wrong when I predicted the results would be more emphatic.

Once upon a time, just winning games would have definitely been enough. It's not anymore. Also, it's not that the Texas staff is specifically failing in any kind of way on the recruiting trail. We've simply entered an era of recruiting where it's increasingly hard to fend off both the Sooners and Aggies because of their own momentum, but in the event that the Longhorns pull that off, Herman and Co. typically find themselves having to deal with the likes of out of state giants with fresh national championship game appearances or rings to show off.

In order to take control of the recruiting game taking place in side state borders, the Longhorns will have to do more than win at an elite level. It'll need to do everything at an elite level.

Only Herman can truthfully answer those questions if they remain in February of 2020.

Only Herman can take steps to solve those issues in nine months should steps need to be taken.

In the meantime, everyone would be best-served to understand that we aren't in 2010 any longer, Toto.

No. 3 - You win some, you lose some...



Two quick thoughts on the first three days of the Elite 11 workouts...

a. On one hand, as the guy driving the Hudson Card train as much as anyone else in the recruiting industry, I feel like saying, "I told you so" to a few of his detractors and those who have been skeptical of me calling him a special thrower of the football. There are a lot of reasons to love Card as a player, but right at the top of the list is his ability to sling the football all over the field. It's good to see that my eyes still occasionally work.

b. On the other hand, I've completely undersold Haynes King early in the recruiting process and must confess defeat in that discussion to those that opposed me months ago. You were right. I was wrong. That confession will be reflected in the upcoming update of the LSR Top 100, which is nearly complete.

Yes, I did do some work on vacation... leave me alone.

No. 4 - Funniest OB moment of my vacation ...

With all due respect to Terry Bradshaw, nothing was quite as organically rich in twisted humor as the moment many on the website lost their minds when @Suchomel gave reports on a number of important Texas targets... after talking to them in person and vetting out all of the first-person whispers that existed in the Five-Star Challenge air.

From the shooting the messenger heat that he knew was coming before he posted the updates to the charges of fraudulent reporting from those that seemed to have lost sight of the fact that all of his info was literally coming to them in the form of first-person interaction, it turned into one of those days when all I could do is smirk and think out-loud, "Thank God, I'm off this week."

No. 5 – BUY or SELL …
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(Buy) I'm not sure if Texas will win the Big 12 championship, but they've got the best player in the conference, hands down.



(Sell) Nah. I'd put that down the list behind a number of other issues impacting recruiting.



(Sell/Buy) Jerry is going to live to 100 and that means we've all got a very long wait in front of us. On the bright side, we have the failed Lincoln Riley Era to look forward to.



(Sell) I've come around to the thinking that Orlando isn't going to be a head coach at the high college level, which means that I think he's going to be around for the long-term foreseeable future. In today's college game, you better be a hell of a recruiter if you're going to be a defensive-minded head coach and I don't see those kind of recruiting chops in Orlando. I just can't imagine him taking a head coaching job that requires him to potentially take a pay decrease.



(Sell) Not based on the current intel.



(Sell) I can see why it might look like that on paper, but I'm just not ready to give that complete benefit of the doubt. This is still a program that will need to learn how to play the favorite role, something Herman's teams at Houston struggled to do.



(Buy) Easy one.



(Buy) Now, if you'll excuse me...
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(Buy) I bet we see the apology before the calendar flips to August.



(Sell) You're almost right. I would say that I was able to completely disconnect from the board for most of last week, but Suchomel's reporting and the Bradshaw story sucked me back in.



(Sell) As far as week-long family vacations go, this one was very therapeutic. My five-year old twins were great and incredibly easy to care for, much more so than when we're home.



(Sell) I don't want to suggest that Santa doesn't exist, but perhaps temper the expectation that you're absolutely going to get the G.I. Joe with the Kung-Fu Grip in your stocking. Just saying...
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No. 6 - Checking in with VY ...

For those that might have missed it, Vince Young did an interview with 610AM in Houston on Friday and opened up quite a bit about his recent stint in rehab.

You can listen to the full interview here, but these comments in the interview stood out to me:

"A lot of people don’t know I went to rehab. A lot of people think I went to rehab for drinking. No, I went to rehab to hit the reset button. I’m sick and tired. I’m tired! Sometimes you get tired," Young explained. "If you don’t get better for yourself and you don’t take it one day at a time or you just don’t worry about - today as July 28th, you just worry about today. Everything else you’ve got going on, behind you, in front of you, stop worrying about all that.

"It took me to get some rest. I’ve been moving around since I left my mom’s house. I had an opportunity to get around some people and some mentors who I really love who said, ‘Hey Vince, you might just have to get away for a month and a half or two months and just kind of focus on Vince’. Because one of the things that I do, I’m always about everybody else but Vince. And if you’re not right, then you can’t be that performance to anybody else," said Young.

"Everything happens for a reason, to me. A lot of time, a lot of people don’t want to own up. There’s a lot of people who had to do with the situation I went through as well. But I’m the only guy that’s on the radio or TV saying, ‘Hey that was my fault because I worked with those guys’. I own up to my mistakes, any time. I don’t have a problem with that because there’s no one in this world that’s perfect. But in the same time, I tell these younger guys and people I have the opportunity to be around, ‘Hey man, before you step on that football field, you have to make sure that everything off the field is your liking. If you don’t do that, then that’s when these situations occur.'


Here's to hoping Young, who is four months sober, continues down the path of recovery. It's uplifting to hear him doing better.

No. 7 - An empty feeling to KD going to Brooklyn ...

Perhaps it has everything to do with the injury that will cause him to miss all of the 2019-2020 NBA season, but I found myself feeling strangely indifferent about Kevin Durant's decision to leave Golden State for Brooklyn on Sunday.

Don't get me wrong, it was a massive development with long-lasting implications all over the league and the Nets have the makings of quite a powerhouse if Durant can return to previous form after rehabbing from such an awful injury.

It's just that when Durant left Oklahoma City for Golden State, it felt like the world stopped on its axis for a moment. This had the exact opposite feel, as everyone's attention moved from city to city to city over the course of the most dizzying day of professional sport free agency in history. Maybe it was that… Or the injury. Or the fact that it's hard to have an emotional response about a franchise that has never really been relevant in most of my lifetime.

At the end of the day, is Durant happy for himself about the move? If so, cool. Good for him.

Other than that, I'm just not sure how I'm supposed to feel or what I'm supposed to think.

I suppose I could have summed up this entire section with a single gif.

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No. 8 – Eternal Randomness of the Spotty Sports Mind …

... Let's start out with some NBA Free Agency scattershooting...

a. The vibe on Kawhi Leonard seems to be pointing directly at the Lakers, which would give the team a monster big three, but it's going to take a lot of heavy lifting by the stars because the rest of the roster is made up with minimum salary vets. Count me among the small few that believes the Lakers situation will include a lot of fool’s gold.

b. Sorry, Celtics fans, but Kemba Walker is not an upgrade over Kyrie Irving. One guy was the best player on the floor in an NBA Finals game seven and the other is a guy that has never seen the second round. Let's not pretend that one is the same as the other because one of them is a bit of a drama queen.

c. The Golden State Warriors, as we once knew them, are done. Can the new version of the Warriors, with D'Angelo Russell riding shotgun, still make a dent in a championship run? I don't see it unless the Warriors are able to flip Russell for something more valuable. I have my doubts.

d. Utah is going to be a handful in the West. Same with Portland.

e. I love me some Jimmy Butler, but consider me thrilled that the 76ers were able to avoid giving him a max deal, while getting an incredibly valuable asset in return for him. I don't know if the 76ers have championship chops, but I do like what Elton Brand was able to pull off with the re-make of the starting five. I know this... Philly will be a beast defensively.

... My Phillies are depressing. Good grief.

... Early leader for 2019 Sports Photo of the Year...
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No. 9 - The List: Top 10 random vacation thoughts from the last week ...

10. The only thing that caught my attention on Sunday as all hell broke loose in NBA Free Agency.


9. If you can get out and see Austin comedian L'eah Sampson before the year is over, do yourself a favor and do it.

8. I wish I had taken care of my old football cards better.
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7. Rachel Nichols is a national treasure.

6. Driving in Houston traffic with two five-year olds is an anxiety attack waiting to happen. Just a heads up for any of you thinking of having kids.

5. Barq's Root Beer is the only real root beer. Everything else is just a pretender, especially A&W.

4. Why did it take me 16 years to start watching Deadwood? Yes, I'm going to have so much I want to talk about once I finish seasons two and three.

3. "Leon's World Finest Bar-B-Que" is a damn state of Texas treasure. The people were awesome and the food was even better.

2. Michael McDonald singing "What a Fool Believes" is pretty much the perfect HEB shopping experience song.

1. I had never heard of Billie Eilish until this week and but after listening to her new album, I found myself digging her music, while also wondering if I was a creeper for listening to a 17-year old's music. Is this what it's like to become old? Am I one of these dudes in the video? You just start feeling too old for e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g?



No. 10 – And Finally ...

Just another reason why dogs are not only man's best friend, but also dog's best friends.
Could our Texas struggles be due to Tom Herman's personality vs Jimbo? I spoke to a 2021 recruit's dad and he said that Jimbo's personal involvement in there recruiting was light years better than Texas. There relationships with the position coach helped but Jmbo's personal involvement may swing it to A&M. There HUGE fans of Herb and raved about Yancy's program BUT..
 
How funny is it that Ketch beats most of us over the head weekly with soccer comments we simply don't want. But the week I'm actually looking forward to reading a little bit about the snooze sport because of the USWNT semi-final game, we get nothing but a pic of the girl who despises the "F*cking White House". I was looking forward to reading Ketch's take on this team.

Other than that, I really enjoyed the TTFTW as I normally do.

Welcome back Ketch.
 
We're doing big boy recruiting now. That means we're recruiting the same players that USC, tOSU, AL, Clemson, UGA, LSU, OU are recruiting.

That means NO ONE gets 'em all. We'll get ours and they'll get theirs. Each team mentioned will get the best players available so there's no sense in getting worked up over who we DON'T get. None of the above mentioned will get shut out.

Like Sam E said, "we're back!" And Sam E is making SURE we're back.
 
Could our Texas struggles be due to Tom Herman's personality vs Jimbo? I spoke to a 2021 recruit's dad and he said that Jimbo's personal involvement in there recruiting was light years better than Texas. There relationships with the position coach helped but Jmbo's personal involvement may swing it to A&M. There HUGE fans of Herb and raved about Yancy's program BUT..
Every recruitment is like a snowflake.
 
How funny is it that Ketch beats most of us over the head weekly with soccer comments we simply don't want. But the week I'm actually looking forward to reading a little bit about the snooze sport because of the USWNT semi-final game, we get nothing but a pic of the girl who despises the "F*cking White House". I was looking forward to reading Ketch's take on this team.

Other than that, I really enjoyed the TTFTW as I normally do.

Welcome back Ketch.


Fairly predictable actually. Like someone else noted, Ketch’s troll game is strong.
 
How funny is it that Ketch beats most of us over the head weekly with soccer comments we simply don't want. But the week I'm actually looking forward to reading a little bit about the snooze sport because of the USWNT semi-final game, we get nothing but a pic of the girl who despises the "F*cking White House". I was looking forward to reading Ketch's take on this team.

Other than that, I really enjoyed the TTFTW as I normally do.

Welcome back Ketch.
I mean... she's also carrying the team on her back and the photo is after the game-winner against France.

Thanks for the welcome back.
 
@Ketchum

Barq’s is the best national I agree

Henry winehards is my favorite craft you can get it at total wine
 
4. Why did it take me 16 years to start watching Deadwood? Yes, I'm going to have so much I want to talk about once I finish seasons two and three.
Are you kidding me? I watched season one over saturday and sunday also...SO GOOD!

So much to talk about about but I think what I enjoy the most is the banter, mostly between Swearingen and Farnum.

Really was not excited to see the Breaking Bad wife arrive on that stage coach.
 
HAHA at the idea that a Women's World Cup photo is the sports photo of the year!

That's trying waaaaaayyyy too hard.
I’ve been on here a long time this place is going west coast more and more. I put a patriotic picture on there last night and it got deleted all you have to do is follow the clues. Owners shoving liberal agenda in our faces and you’re not allowed to comment. Sickening
 
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