Over the weekend, as I endured through an abbreviated birthday party for six-year old twins, which included a handful of cousins, aunts and uncles, a number of thoughts ran wild in my head.
a. I'm a bad parent. We should have cancelled the party at my sister-in-law's house and boarded up for the end of the world. Or maybe just the month of March.
b. There was only one confirmed case in Montgomery County, so sneaking in a visit to see family for what might be the final time before the summer seemed justifiable.
c. The birthday party for a five-year old's cousin in two weeks is probably toast.
d. I'm never going to forget the moments of this week in a million years. There are occasional moments in our history where what you were doing and who you were doing it with are forever carved into your memory in ways almost every other day of your life isn't.
In the last 20 years, there's no question that 9/11 ranks as the No. 1 such moment.
I can remember living in an apartment complex behind Slick Willies on Burnet Road and being woken up by mom to tell me about the first plane crashing into the first tower. The rest of the morning plays back in my head like an episode of Breaking Bad. I remember all of these odd details that are exclusive to my own personal way of absorbing that day.
Off the top of my head, the other days that fall into that type of enormous "moment" in the last 20 years include Sandy Hook and the Virginia Tech shootings, a presidential election or two, the Red Sox winning the World Series and the night Vince Young became a verb against USC.
This past Thursday falls into that category.
It was just that jarring of a day in so many ways. All it seemingly took was for one NBA player to test positive for the Coronavirus for the you know what to hit the fan. While we recorded the @TickeyCity Podcast, it felt like the sports world fell to its knees inside of 45 minutes. The rest of the next 24 hours felt like one big "whoa" after another.
What stood out to me on Friday night while thinking about it all was how personal of an experience Orangebloods had created for me inside of this big moment. From worrying about the health of our older subscribers to the impact on site content to following the virus for more than a month in an ongoing thread to so many things in between, there's no question in my mind that a shared experience exists between a lot of us on the site.
Something else occurred to me.
The same is true about 9/11. Before we knew what we were in for that day, I was discussing it in real-time on what was then known as The-University.com (a dig on the Aggies' use of "tu"). It seemed like we all worried about Texas quarterback Chris Simms that day (months before the 2001 Big 12 Championship game). The sports world stopped. Everything stopped. There were so many more questions than answers.
Part of what stands out from that day was sharing that experience with the oldest online family members that I had.
It's crazy to me that nearly two full decades later, I'm still sharing these massive experiences with a number of those same online family members and so many more.
People ask me all the time about what makes Orangebloods such a unique online community model after all of these years and its moments like these where a true power of the modern day community shines brightest. Inside of our often dysfunctional family were testimonials from doctors, nurses, brainiacs, fathers ... you name it ... our OB family.
Like so many other events in the last 20 years, when the moment calls for it, we've always come together. To support in any way. To help in any way. To provide an escape. To provide a brotherhood of conversation. To provide advice. To share in ways that we often don't share.
This place isn't about football as much as it’s where a bunch of football fans wearing burnt orange get together to share life.
It doesn't matter that we sometimes want to strangle each other. My favorite family members are almost always the ones I want to strangle (am I allowed to use that metaphor?). What matters is that when the shit hits the fan in almost any way that the shit can hit the fan, there's not a thing in my life that I can count on more as a bedrock of support than Orangebloods.
There are few things in life I'm more thankful for.
Thank you, Orangebloods (formerly The-University.com)
No. 2 - Let's talk about a few site-related things ...
Obviously, the board has gone Coronavirus heavy in the last week. Personally, I haven't wanted to over-moderate the boards during the last week because this board is at its best when it organically polices itself. Therefore, I've kind of let most stuff go this week on the boards in the name of letting this thing organically handle themselves.
That being said, I also don't want you guys to think we're not giving consideration to the overall user experience, especially for those that want the site to both be a place of information and escape at the same times. Perhaps it's an impossible balance, but it's one we want to aim for at all times.
Therefore, here are a couple of board initiatives I want to introduce.
a. Beginning each day, I'm personally going to start a "Coronavirus Thread of the Day" in an effort to move conversation that is going to take place about the biggest ongoing topic in our world. I'm not going to delete or move threads at this point. If you believe your Coronavirus thread is so worthy of being made separate that you want create a separate post, knock yourself out. However, we would encourage everyone to keep as much of the coronavirus discussion inside of these threads.
By having a daily thread, it seems like a much more easily-used tool for everyone that trying to scan through a thread that has thousands of pages.
b. Given the scope of this story and the complications inside it with regards to being able to talk about it while not involving the politics of it, I considered creating a safe space for political-minded conversation on the 40 Acres, but in the end I simply felt like the risks outweighed the rewards, which means that we're going to try and keep a lid on the political chatter on this board.
As always, we don't want to be heavy-handed. We're simply trying to do what we believe is in the best interests of the site. If anyone needs a specific situation explained, please send me an email.
c. We'll be doing more chats over the course of the next few weeks, both as a staff and as individual staff members. If anything isn't working, you'll be able to discuss it with us there. Think of those moments as virtual town hall meetings.
The bottom line is that we want you to know that we're all together in this thing and that means doing a lot of listening.
No. 3 - One more site-related item ...
When I say we're in this thing together, I mean we're in this thing together.
If any of you are having a tough time on the financial side of things, you need to know we're not going to let you be in a position of choosing between Orangebloods and anything else.
We're family.
If there's an account issue, please send me a direct email (gkketch@gmail.com) and we'll work it out. Orangebloods is going to look out for our family.
No. 4 - Spring football just died ...
Unless Tom Herman gets incredibly cute and decides that he's going to practice in sections of 30 players per practice, it seems like the notion of Texas football still holding out hope of getting in workouts before finals is toast if it wasn't already toast.
I mean ... the University of Texas is going to listen to the CDC and it is going to almost certainly shutdown off-season workouts coming back from spring break. When the CDC makes that announcement, it's not winking at people in a way of letting them know that 49 is ok.
The entire off-season schedule that Herman has ever known just died.
There will be no spring football.
I'm having a hard time imagining the school signing off on him gathering his players together in smaller bunches. You can't stress social distancing on one side of the mouth while your school president is dealing first-hand with quarantine issues and then decide it's ok for groups of 10-12, 20-24 or 30-40 players get together in workout sessions.
It is so unideal that saying that it sucks doesn't do it justice, but the entire football off-season in every known shape, form and fashion is dead.
The sport will have to decide on the fly how it will respond to all of this uncomfortable change. Will football teams get more practices in August? Will the months of June and July have temporary one-year exemptions that allow for schools to make up any of what will be lost?
Or ... is Herman and a brand new staff going to have to force-feed an entire off-season into August? It's not like Herman and Co. will be alone in this off-season collapse, but this is incredibly problematic in a bigger way for a coach that just changed 70 percent of his staff.
So many questions. Almost zero answers at this point.
Stay tuned. This aspect of the story will be fascinating once college coaches will be able to speak out without sounding like they don't understand the seriousness of the moment.
No. 5 - Kind of a crazy question ...
Should the Texas softball team claim the 2020 NCAA national championship?
I know that might sound like crazy talk, but over the course of NCAA history, schools have claimed national championships through a variety of means, often times leaning on an assortment of methods. In the SEC, teams pretty much will count anything as a national championship. You better believe that if Larry, Curley and Moe ranked Alabama as the best team in the country in 1940, the Tide are counting that towards its total.
Hell, the Longhorns claim the 1970 national championship in football, despite the fact that UT finished No. 3 in the AP and lost its bowl game. The fact that the claim is based on the coaches’ poll, which didn't take bowl games into account has never stopped anyone in this town from claiming it.
I've never heard one person say that the 1970 national championship needs an asterisk.
Well, the Texas softball team finished the season No. 1 in one of the three major softball polls.
I'm not saying the answer is automatically a yes, I'm just saying what I believe fans of Alabama football and the 1970 Texas Longhorns would say.
No. 6 - About Shaka ...
I've reached out to a handful of sources this weekend in an effort to get a reading of the room on his job status and I've felt like a complete jackass each time.
The unanimous consensus is that no one is even thinking of Shaka Smart right now.
He's almost certainly coming back next season.
Hell, he might have been coming back next season before the Coronavirus shutdown even occurred, but now that it has ... it's just hard to see him not coming back.
There are just so many unknowns that the entire athletic department is working through right now that I have to believe that this moment in history will probably keep more than a single coach from the firing line. Unless you're Iona and you have Rick Pitino lined up and ready to go, you're probably not going to cause major waves in the middle of a national emergency.
Everything about the landscapes surrounding those types of decisions feels unavoidably tricky at the moment, from the optics of eating the buyout at this time in history to looking for a new coach in the middle of a global pandemic to going through an airport.
With so many unknowns involving every sport on the roster, I can't see Chris Del Conte volunteering to make choppy waves for himself.
p.s. - I think Karen Aston will also be safe. I'm not sure when it happens, but my hunch is that Texas gives Aston a short-term extension of one or two years. Like Smart, you can make a case that keeping her makes sense if you try really hard and in giving her a very short extension, you can lean on stability during an unstable time.
No. 7 – BUY or SELL …
(Buy) I think we're going to see a very quick end to the regular season and the playoffs will start almost as soon as things return. We're going to get an overdrive of the fix we want.
(Sell) The season is six or seven months away, depending on a possible start time. It's going to be a season with some real challenges imbedded in it, but I believe it will absolutely take place.
(Sell) In the best interest of everyone, sports needed to be shut down. I'd rather we be overly cautious than anything else.
(Sell) I believe it will bring us together. Like Orangebloods, this country does big causes really well and I believe eventually we'll band together.
(Sell) Don't put that juju on us!
(Sell) Nah, but we're in for a hell of a lesson about taking things for granted.
(Buy) Moms are going to want their kids close to home like they were in the 60s when they were worried the Russians were going to start World War III.
(Sell) I don't sense that vibe at all. We'll get on top of this.
(Sell) Honestly, I have all kinds of ideas in my head for content.
No. 8 - Eternal Randomness of the Spotty Sports Mind ...
... I'm glad the NFL got its labor situation worked out. The NFL off-season is going to take place in some shape or fashion and I'm all about it from a keeping some normalcy standpoint. It'll be different, but it'll be something.
... Ryan Tannehill got PAID for basically a half-season of good play. What could go wrong?
... What the hell is Dana White thinking in keeping the UFC active and running?
... I might watch some LigaMX tonight. It might be time to find a team.
... Rudy Gobert's name is going to go down in the history books in a way he never would have thought possible.
... Much love for Zion Williamson, Kevin Love and a few other athletes stepping up for the little guys in their organizations getting paid while the season is shut down, but shouldn't the billionaire owners be doing this and not the 19-year old teenager? Just saying ...
... Iona doesn't give a damn.
No. 9 - The List: Top 10 Shows I'm about to Binge ...
I feel like I'm Santa Claus checking his list, but with all of us about to have a lot of home time on our hands, I thought a list this week on the TV shows I'm about to binge watch was a good idea to compile.
I'm taking suggestions.
10. The Witcher - It's not something that I've seen before, but it seems to tick my boxes.
9. Parks and Rec - I need my yearly overdose of Ron Swanson.
8. The Wire - Best show ever created and I haven't watched it in years.
7. Curb Your Enthusiasm - This season has been so good that I'm in for going back through the entire 10-season catalog.
6. The Americans - Never seen it and it's on my to-do-list.
5. ER - Possibly my favorite show of all-time and it feels like it's been a decade since I watched it. Here I come, Hulu.
4. Fleabag - On my to-do-list.
3. The Outsider - See above
2. Mad Men - It's time to cross this one off my list.
1. Hunters - Starting tonight.
No.10 - And finally...
I just thought we could all use a little Swimmy.
