I watched the ESPN Films ‘Nixon’s National Champions’ special yesterday which focused on the 1969 Texas vs Arkansas game, which was the 100th anniversary of college football (hence, Game of the Century) and also did a bit of research on my own:
It was hard to enjoy because it seemed like propaganda for ESPN’s involvement with the new college football playoff system, trying to state how good things are now since there’s a playoff system and how much chaos there was when there wasn’t.
Texas and Arkansas usually played each other in October, but both head coaches were persuaded to move the game to the final game of the regular season by ABC Sports executive Roone Arledge, who also promised Arkansas that Nixon would attend the game and ABC would televise Arkansas’ season opener in 1970 against Stanford and their star quarterback, Jim Plunkett.
ABC preferred the game to be played later in the afternoon, but scheduled it for a noon kickoff because Arkansas’ stadium didn’t have lights. My, how times have changed.
I really didn’t know the backstory to the championship, and that Penn State felt shafted after completing their second straight season without a loss. Back then, schools accepted invitations to bowl games with games still left on the schedule. Penn State chose to play in the nice weather in Miami at the Orange Bowl and declined the Cotton Bowl invite, but if they would have chosen the Cotton Bowl, they would have played Texas in the last game of the season for the national championship.
Texas was on an 18 game winning streak and Arkanas was on a 15 game winning streak. The first time I typed that sentence I actually typed “steak” twice, which I guess means I want me some steak.
I knew Nixon attended the game, which was in Arkansas, but I had no idea that he actually sat in the stands like any old spectator. Stadiums back then didn’t really have luxury boxes like they do now, but post JFK, the Secret Service must have been freaked out.
On the way to the game Nixon picked up Heisman Trophy winner Steve Owens in Oklahoma to watch the game. Also on that trip on board Air Force One was future president and recent hospital visitor George H.W. Bush. Now that I think about it, from Washington D.C., picking up someone in Oklahoma on route to Arkansas isn’t exactly “on the way”.
Since LBJ was still alive at the time and his library was being built at UT, I wonder if Nixon was rooting for Arkansas.
I can’t believe Texas actually won that game with five turnovers. It seems like Arkansas lost that game more than Texas won that game.
The game had a television rating of a 52.1 share, so more than half the televisions were tuned in.
Billy Graham gave the pre-game prayer.
Texas won 15-14 and Nixon game Texas a plaque stating the Longhorns were national champs, which ticked off a bunch of Penn State fans, but Nixon gave them a plaque congratulating them on their two undefeated seasons. In the next presidential election, Nixon still won Pennsylvania.
Despite Nixon’s proclamation that Texas was the national champions, oddly, there was still a game left in the season to play for the Longhorns, the Cotton Bowl; which, as I mentioned, Penn State could have chosen to play in earlier in the season. Texas won the Cotton Bowl 21-17 against ninth ranked Notre Dame. Oh, what might have been.
It was the last major American sporting event played between two all-white teams, so the game was also called Dixie’s Last Stand.
Five years ago if you told me the legacies of Joe Paterno and Bill Cosby could be tarnished, I’d say you were nuts.
Yesterday someone left a comment about ‘The Knick’ – BTW, the nurse who was supposedly from West Virginia is actually British and has a very proper English accent when being interviewed. – Dude, that actress is Bono’s daughter and she has an Irish accent.
Indonesia will send divers to retrieve bodies from that doomed AirAsia flight, that’s one job I never would like to have.
I can see David Letterman becoming the “permanent” host of the Kennedy Center Honors like Walter Cronkite was for over 20 years. Though at Letterman’s age, I wouldn’t expect him to do it for more than a decade. I did think he and Colbert had a nice little bit last night. During the broadcast, Letterman narrated Tom Hanks segment and stated that he had three separate step-mothers. Oh, and they brought out Hooch.
I often complain how Hollywood doesn’t come out with any original movies anymore, and someone on Reddit agreed stating that out of the top ten grossing films this year, only Interstellar wasnot a reboot, remake, sequel, or part of a franchise.
I keep seeing a lot of Selma commercials and they way someone yells “Dr. King” makes me think of this scene from Coming to America. The idea that a non-violent MLK would punch a man and hearing someone refer to him as “Martin Luther The King” cracks me up everytime.
The White House – 2014: A Year in Photos – I was a bit surprised at this photo of a woman slipping a note in the president’s shirt pocket, I’m sure the Secret Service doesn’t like that sort of thing.
Instead of saying “cheese” for pictures, say “cheeks”.
I wish I could see all of you mouthing those two words at this moment.
Even though I never pulled the trigger on a smoker, I signed up for a smoke camp at Lockhart Smoke House in Plano. I think it’s a really good deal for a hundred bucks. You spend about 45-minutes learning about prep and another 45 learning about smoking, and you get take home instructions/recipes booklet, a t-shirt or hat, beer, and a meal at the end. You can choose the evening of either Monday Jan 19 or Tuesday Jan 27. If you’d like to attend the class I’ll be in or always wanted the opportunity to kill me but never knew when or where I’d be, I’ll be at the Monday class.
I had vacation time I needed to burn at work, you know, the use it or lose thing. So I only worked on day last week and will only work one day this week, Friday.
I ran across an article on Reddit stating that male birth control would be available by 2017 and someone questioned if religious institutions, businesses, or followers of faith would have an issue with it. I thought it was a good question and off hand I’d think not. Since sperm is actually alive, I always wondered why pro-life folks weren’t more concerned about that part of the process, but I guess they are more concerned with the actual conception and what they consider the start of human life.
If you’d rather not read the above article on male birth control here’s the quick BagOfNothing.com Notes – The company is hoping for FDA approval by 2017 and here’s the description of the procedure compared to a vasectomy – Rather than cutting the vas deferens—as would be done in a vasectomy—a Vasalgel procedure involves the injection of a polymer contraceptive directly into the vas deferens. This polymer will then block any sperm that attempt to pass through the tube. At any point, however, the polymer can be flushed out with a second injection if a man wishes to bring his sperm back up to speed.
The last story on the ‘CBS Evening News’ was about a butler school in China, which is a huge acceptance of capitalism and Western culture and far from the teachings of Chairman Mao. This is what happens when you open relations and trade, give it some time, and eventually you won’t be seeing a communist government – all without a shot being fired. It will be interesting to see what China and Cuba will look like a hundred and a hundred-and-fifty years from now. Putin is a leftover from the old KGB, when the next generation takes over they’ll move further away from their communist past.
The NYPD sure seems pretty thin skinned when it comes to criticism.
I had a negative and then favorable experience with eBay. I ordered WifeGeeding a pair of jeans which listed the size as a 4, but when I got them in the mail the size was actually a size 4-small. Even though the seller stated no refunds, I contacted them for one and never got a reply. eBay gives you the opportunity to have them step in if there isn’t a response after five or so days, which I had to resort to. After having them step in, I got an email from them a few hours later stating that I’d be getting a full refund, postage included.
I’m not sure who’s worst, Rep. Michael Grimm who decided to run for re-election knowing he would certainly be found guilty for 20 counts of tax evasion (who has now decided to resign after pleading guilty) or the voters who put him there. He was the same congressman that threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony and “break him in half” which was caught on tape.
What’s up with those Aggies? They had a player ejected and a student assistant throw cheapshots?
What’s up with those Sooners? Six points? I know they haven’t performed all that well in bowl games under Stoops but man, yesterday was uggggly.
Texas got killed by Arkansas. Neither team should have been in a bowl game, both had 6-6 records, which means you can get in a bowl game without even having a winning record, which means there are too many bowl games.
While watching the game it made me think of former Arkansas and Cowboys first round pick running back, Felix Jones. He’s only 27 and played his last game as a Steeler back in 2013, but had a tryout with the Giants back in October.
@darrenrovell$108,102: Bo Schembechler’s base salary in Jim Harbaugh’s senior season at Michigan (1986) – I plugged that figure into the inflation calculator which comes to $232,923.32 in today’s dollars. Harbaugh is expected to sign a six-year contract worth at least $48 million, but there’s no mention of what he got paid as a player. 😉 My sainted mother, in her Vietnamese/Texan accent use to call him Jim Hardballs, which I’m sure he’s heard many times.
WifeGeeding and I finished the first season of ‘The Knick’ by watching the last two episodes last night. The show is great, though they sped up a few story lines, but I was surprised to see comedian and ‘Daily Show’ correspondent John Hodgman playing a minor but serious role. You may best remember him playing the PC guy in the Mac and PC commercials from Apple a few years ago.
Weird scene in Houston last night when the Wizards/Rockets game was delayed for over a half hour when the rim was off balance and a new goal had to be rolled in.
Last night the ‘Breaking Bad’ episode where Jessie talks to his addiction group about making a wooden box was on AMC. It made me really appreciate that hallucination or flashback scene in the finale. When I watched the finale I recalled Jessie talking about making that box, but it wasn’t until last night and rewatching that scene and hearing the level of detail and emotion that Jessie goes into that made me really appreciate how well he that scene fit into the finale.
One of BoyGeeding’s Christmas gifts was a Batman costume as he’s very fond of the 1960’s Batman television show. He was wearing the costume when he got in trouble and WifeGeeding was talking quite sternly to him using his name often to maintain his attention. Every now and then he’d try to stop her by saying “Mommy…” and she’d reply with a serious face, “BoyGeeding, I am talking, do not interrupt me, wait until I’m finished speaking.” When it was his time to talk he said, “Mommy, I’m not BoyGeeding. I’m Batman.”
I had no problem whatsoever with Jason Garrett leaving his starters in for as long as he did. That club has had an entitlement and country club atmosphere for way too long and he’s trying to break free from it. But I did feel uncomfortable with that onside kick, that’s something you do when you’re the underdog.
JJ Watt is certainly deserving of the MVP but putting him in offense to catch passes makes it a bit gimmicky, as if the Texans are campaigning.
Romo finished the regular season leading the league in quarterback rating, but when your running back makes up 35.5% of your total offense, that takes you out of MVP consideration.
Dez Bryant broke the team record for touchdowns receptions in a season which was held by Terrell Owens. What’s interesting to me is that you have to consider the quarterback for both of those record breaking receivers was Tony Romo.
Ndamukong Suh is one dirty player.
The NFL Network will have ‘A Football Life’ episode on the 2006 Texas/USC national championship game on Friday. That link provides a two-minute clip and looks like it will also focus on the expectations of Matt Leinart and Vince Young and their short NFL careers. As a Texas fan I always felt biased calling it the greatest college football championship of all time, and of course it helped having the game called by the great Keith Jackson. It’s still unbelievable that Texas beat a team with two consecutive national championships and two Heisman winners on it.
For some reason, I think Rex Ryan would be a good fit in Atlanta.
Hey KLUV, you can stop playing Christmas music 24/7.
I drove by a Lexus dealership and noticed they had a bunch of cars with those big red bows on top, just like the commercials. A few days later I was in a conversation with one of their employees and learned those bows cost the customer $500, though in a lot of cases they are just thrown in as part of the purchase.
I guess it was some sort of pricing error, but WifeGeeding had a friend that was able to fill up for $0.86 a gallon in the middle of Collin County.
I have a lot of trouble with being haunted with the past, unable to let many things go, and fretting about the future. For instance, it’s hard for me to watch a movie, workout, or have family time because all I’m thinking about is what I need to do once I finish or how I could have done something differently in the past instead of just being in the moment of whatever I was presently doing. I was talking to a church friend about this one day and he suggested reading a relatively short book called The Power of Now, but warned me “don’t get too into all that New Age bulls—“. Those were his exact words. About a week after that conversation I heard some of the guys on The TICKET talk about it so I picked up the digital copy. Most people seem to be able to finish it in a couple of days, but it was a bit deep for me so I read a snippet at a time, digested it, tried to apply this and that, and repeated the pattern for the whole book. There was about third of it I found very helpful thinking it’s stuff I want to revisit again, a third of it that was a little too out there, and another third that just schlepped through. Overall I’m happy I read the book and found it helpful for the most part, and even though it broadened my perspective on things, I thought it would be more impactful.
While eating at Chick-fil-A I noticed the marquee said “Holiday family night every Tuesday in December”. Out of all businesses, I’d expect to see “Christmas family night” instead of “Holiday family night”.
An interesting picture I found on Reddit – My friend and his brother meeting with obama [sic] after heckling him – Reddit thread – CNN.com Article – I’ll say one thing, and it might just be good PR by his staff (though I doubt it because I’ve seen them screw many things up that look like a cakewalk), but he seems to handle heckling well and open to engage those that disagree with him.
NBC 5 has a new meteorologist (he’s so new he’s not even on their profile website page) who looks like a younger and thinner Sen Ted Cruz named Andy Wallace.
