Wednesday, September 23, 2015

 

Well, now you done stepped in it, Gary Patterson!


When I lived in Waco (and enjoyed faculty tickets to the football games), Baylor lacked a true rival. Sometimes people acted like Texas was a rival, but that was kind of a Yale/Princeton thing-- only one side thought it was a rivalry.  Texas knew their real rival was A & M. A few times, the Bears played Oklahoma State in the last game, but their real rival was Oklahoma (duh).  We were just kind of adrift at the bottom of the league.

How things have changed! Along with Baylor's ascendancy in football has come a real rivalry, with TCU (which has also produced a great program, currently ranked in the top 5, as is Baylor).

That rivalry just keeps getting more intense and weirder, too-- just the way people like it.  Last year, both schools were shut out of the championship playoff group of four (Ohio State, Oregon, Alabama, and Florida State), and both pretty much blamed the other. They ended with one loss each-- Baylor to West Virginia, and TCU to Baylor.

Ratcheting things up a notch this week, TCU coach Gary Patterson (or "Gary Fatterson" to some Baylor wags) poked the bear. Two of his student-athletes were arrested for a beer robbery, and in response Patterson said that the incident was "not even close to what happened south of here." It was clearly a reference to the case of Sam Ukuachku, a Baylor player recently convicted of the rape of Baylor freshman.

Think that will stir the pot?

I like the rivalry… but I really do not like the fact that both schools are plagued with convicted or accused student-athlete-violent felons.  As I have argued before, Baylor must take firm steps to investigate problems thoroughly. They also must change the culture that too often allows this kind of violence, whether or not it involves an athlete.

Comments:
During SWC days BU alternated TCU and A&M as HC games, and I always thought of them as our chief rivals, but everyone in conference was a rival. Texas /a&M had the best known and most intense, of course. A&M had quite a history with BU, and things reached such a pass due to violence tha in the 20's, or maybe it was in the 30's games were suspended for several years. TCU//BU was a natural because in the early days, before TCU moved to Fort Worth, as Add Rand, the two were crosstown rivals. Before the SWC break up, the series between the two was the5th most played in coollege football, I believe.

College football players always seemed to those of us who were not the "rough cobs" on campus. Not everyone at school in my day, and I think before and after was there for the "education." Football players seem to have been overly represented. Likely still are.

What is new is the exponential growth of hoodlumism among football and basketball players since the seventies..no one should be surprised, because of the hoods many more of these kids come from than in former days.

It never was easy to put aside the suspicion that although disguised in school colored costumrEs the athletes we cheered were somehow representative, but it is impossible now, and not because of the garish trend in uniform colors.

What to do? Finally and forever throw out the baby and the bath water. Start afresh and make college athletics intramural, extracurricular activitiies.

Until then, "Sic'em!"
 
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