Today's College Football Tailgate Thread (Red River Rivalry Edition)

[fishwax]

So there are several great games today, including five between ranked teams, but the highlight (for me) is the afternoon match between #8 Oklahoma and #21 Texas. The Red River Rivalry is the greatest rivalry game in college football, always played at the Cotton Bowl in the center of the Texas State Fair; it’s almost equidistant between the two schools, and they split the stadium down the middle--Texas fans north of the 50-yard line and Oklahoma fans south of it. Because the State Fair is right outside the stadium, there are thousands and thousands more fans at the site than are actually at the game, so there is plenty of party before and (if your team wins) after the game. It’s a fantastic environment for a football game.

The other games between ranked teams today:

#11 Wisconsin at #24 Michigan State
#7 Florida at #1 Alabama
#9 Stanford at #4 Oregon
#22 Penn State at #17 Iowa

There are other good games on the schedule, too, like Notre Dame at Boston College, Arizona State at Oregon State, and Miami at Clemson.

So who is your team playing today? What games are you looking forward to?

Red River Rivalry:

[Texasgal]

1. It's 10:30 A.M and OU STILL SUCKS!!!

HOOK EM!!!

TEXAS FIGHT! BEAT THE HELL OUTTA OU!

[fishwax]

5. BOOMER SOONER!!!

Doesn't seem right to not have both teams in the top 10 coming into this game ...

[RoyGBiv]

44. 11:23 PM

OU 28 - TX 20

;)

[blueamy66]

2. I'm gonna be watching the

ASU/OSU game and the Tide against the Gators.

I am torn on the second game, as a good friend of mine is a HUGE Tide fan, but my soon to be step-son is a Freshman at Florida.

GO DEVILS!!!!!

[pinstikfartherin]

6. As an Auburn fan... Go Gators!

[ProdigalJunkMail]

42. no true auburn fan

would pull for UF against another team from the great state of Alabama...and sorry to let you down. Bama beat the living shit out of UF.

sP

[fishwax]

8. I'm looking forward to that game to see how both teams recover from last week

I didn't get to see ASU's game last week, but it seemed like (based on the score updates I saw/heard) that they played Oregon really tough.

[Lisa D]

3. Can't wait for the Oklahoma/Texas game!

I'm rooting for the Sooners, even though I find their "Boomer Sooner" song AFTER EVERY FREAKING DOWN incredibly annoying. :toast:

[blueamy66]

4. I think that I will be too.

It's hard to route for a team in orange. :-)

[blueamy66]

14. It should have been root

correct?

duh

[fishwax]

9. lol

"... even though I find their "Boomer Sooner" song AFTER EVERY FREAKING DOWN incredibly annoying."

I can understand that, although it is music to my ears :) :toast:

[KamaAina]

21. Not to mention that they, um, sampled it from Yale's "Boola Boola"

K-A, Y'85, cum laude

[Writer]

7. All I have to say about this season is... moo.

Oh - and one other item: I know when we're playing Oklahoma when I hear farting tubas on the tele.

[fishwax]

10. yeah, this game loses something when one of the teams comes in with a loss

It's a whole different level when both teams are undefeated and in the top 10 for this game. Still a great game, though :)

[fishwax]

11. Illini and Ohio State in a pretty close game

tOSU is ahead 14-10 with just about eight minutes left in the 3rd quarter. The Illinois defense has played very well overall, but Terrell Pryor did have a couple of big runs.

Pryor got injured on the 1st Buckeye drive of the 3rd quarter, though ...

[fishwax]

12. about to kickoff in the Cotton Bowl

:woohoo:

[fishwax]

13. 14-7 Oklahoma after the first quarter

Pretty exciting 1st quarter, all in all.

[fishwax]

15. 21-7 at the half

:woohoo:

[fishwax]

16. 28-10 OU in the 4th quarter

:woohoo:

[fishwax]

17. 28-20 -- Sooners win!

[RoyGBiv]

39. Winchester is my favorite human today ...

OU still sucks in the 4th quarter.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeV1krI2Xhk

Oh, and I have to say that one of my favorite memories is that I was there for The Play.

[fishwax]

40. dude -- one of my favorite memories too

There were a lot of great memories in that video :toast: I was lucky enough to have seen a few of them in person, like the Renaldo Works run against Alabama and the Woolfolk catch against nebraska. But the Superman play tops them all. (I assume that's The Play you're referring to?)

Maybe I'm just being forgetful, Roy, but I don't recall us exchanging memories about The Play. So I'll start :) We were stuck back in the the end zone--right on the goal line, in fact, on the OU half of the field. So all the action on the play in question was rather far away from us. And our seats were in about the third row, so we had a great view of the action on our side of the field, but absolutely no angle for viewing what was happening down field. Before the snap we were all making noise and trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening 98 yards away. Then the snap, and everything happened so quickly--none of the fans in our section could actually see what happened, but we knew it was good because our half of the Cotton Bowl erupted and you could feel all the air getting sucked out on the other end of the stadium. I had seen the ref raise his hands, but didn't know if it was a safety or a touchdown, so everyone was jumping up and down and yelling and saying what happened and I just kept screaming "we scored! we scored!"--then looked up at the replay screen (which was pretty small back then, not like they have now) and when they showed the replay the whole Sooner nation erupted again. The shot of RW flying over that blocker is forever etched in my memory. They showed a replay of that game on ESPN Classic this week, and even though it was nine years ago and I knew exactly what was coming I still got chills. :toast:

We're not great in the 4th quarter, it's true. We're a young team, and we've got to learn to finish games, or somebody down the line is going to jump up and bite us. But a win is a win, and when we beat Texas it's a good day in my book :bounce:

[RoyGBiv]

43. Yes, Superman ...

I didn't see it. I felt it.

I was sitting there in my seat, about 30 rows up in the OU end zone, squeezed in between Vaughn, my friend who is a former linebacker with bad knees and a huge waistline, and Knouse, my other friend with an enormous everything line, and just praying. (Lordy those seats are small.) My head was in my hands. I was praying to the god of football. "C'mon, D'. C'mon 'D." My pessimistic mind, having lived through the Gibbs and Blake years in that stadium, was seeing a 90+ yard Texas drive in half a dozen plays and walking out of there again with that familiar feeling of emptiness. But I still had the year before in my mind, the year I hadn't been able to see in person. I was thinking, "It's me. When I'm here, they screw up. When I'm not here, they hang half a hundred on 'em."

My memory today tells me I heard the ball snap, but I know that's not possible. Regardless, there was a moment of silence. Everything was still, and then this 300 pound former linebacker sitting next to me picked my ass up, hugged me, tossed me around, and screamed, "TOUCHDOWN! TOUCHDOWN!" I thought he'd lost his damn mind. He was tossing me up and down in the air, and the other massive human on the other side was smacking me in the back. During the few seconds between then and when I realized what had actually happened, I saw in my head a long pass against a prevent defense in which the receiver broke free after the catch and waltzed in to the end zone uncontested. Touchdown? Really? FUCK!!! But, no ... it wasn't THAT kind of touchdown, and it quickly came to me that this enormous man with homophobic issues wouldn't be hugging me and damn near crying had it happened that way. I looked up finally and saw a sea of crimson and cream boiling, a roar all around me like none I have ever witnessed in that stadium. And then I added to it.

I saw the replay, just as you did, thought it was probably the second or third time they showed it by the time I had the courage to open my eyes.

Vaughn and I went out that night and looked for some deserving Texas fans and bought them a steak dinner, just as some Texas fans had done for us years back, the first time he and I had attended the game together and witnessed an OU loss.

Damn, it was awesome.

P.S. Did you notice that the first play in that video montage was very similar to the play OU tried to run today and failed at disastrously?

OU was charmed in that way the first couple years of Stoops' reign, 2000 especially. There were better teams that year, but something happened to them. All the breaks went their way, against Nebraska and A&M and then Florida State. Hell, they destroyed Texas, which they hadn't done in a decade or more.

Nostalgia ...

[fishwax]

48. "I didn't see it. I felt it."

:thumbsup:

Great story. Great game. Great memories. Freakin' awesome. And I, like you, had bad memories of the stadium before that day. I didn't get to go to 63-14--to be honest, I missed most of that game because of a time zone glitch while visiting my grandparents--got home and flipped on the TV to see OU up 42-14 and just couldn't freaking believe it. My only RRS experience prior to Roy Williams day was watching an embarrassing John Blake squad lose 34-3--gave up a 99-yard TD pass to Major Applewhite and nearly fumbled away a kickoff on a pathetic attempt at a backwards pass. Sheee-yit. Ugly stuff. But that play. Good god, what a moment.

OU-Texas is always a mystery. 2000 was lightning in a bottle--we weren't really, on most given weeks, seven touchdowns better than the Longhorns. But we stomped them that day. Last year, when we were 2-2 coming into the game and Texas was undefeated and on their way to the BCS National Championship game--we weren't quite good enough to come within a Colt McCoy tackle-while-falling-backwards after throwing an interception of beating them, but we did.

Today? I don't know. The fake kick--that was ugly with a capital UGH. I saw us have great success mixing in the fullback and a couple of tight ends in the first half, and then get completely familiar and predictable in the second half with the lead. I sure would have liked to see us keep mixing it up. Seems like we went into a very tight shell with our play calling in the second half. And the defense, despite generally playing well, seems to insist on giving up a few big plays per half. But at least we held on.

[RoyGBiv]

49. That Game ...

I saw the 63-14 game at work. It was the first OU-TX game I hadn't been to in person in 11 years, which is where the "It's not them, it's me" paranoia game from. I was talking to my cousin-in-law about this earlier while watching today's game. I was managing a liquor store at the time and had actually volunteered to work that day. For some reason I didn't feel like staying at home during the game or going anywhere else. I'd been to the game 11 years in a row, and I felt out of place. We had a television in the booze shack, so I had it tuned into the game. About the time it started, traffic in the store DIED. I mean ... none one, until halftime except a few clueless people who didn't like sports. By the end of halftime I had six people hanging out with me, just talking. By the end of the game, there were 20 people in that store yelling with me while watching the game on this 13 inch screen that pretended to be color but was black and white a lot of the time.

And so then I vowed I'd be there the next year, and that's when that drama happened.

Major Applewhite ... he had OU's number. Why Brown put in Simms instead of Applewhite I cannot say, but I will suggest even as an OU fan that it had something to do with the Simms family reputation. Despite my loyalties, I've always thought had he been the starter in 2001 that Texas probably would have won.

As for today, this season, and getting away from the nostalgia, yeah, I don't know either. In some ways, OU is coming off a lot like that 2000 year. Everything is close. Remember A&M and OSU in 2000? It was a close run thing. I'm encouraged that they are *winning* the close games rather than losing them as they did last year, but some of these games shouldn't have been this close. Air Force I can forgive. OU's defense isn't built to deal with an option offense like that. But Cinci and Utah State? No. Those should have been blowouts. The only reason Cinci wasn't is that OU fell apart in the second half, and they came close to it today in the second half against Texas. They were fortunate they had total control of the game early.

It's weird because they *do* control the game, on both sides of the ball, early, but something odd happens after halftime. I really don't get the 4th quarter problem. Even in years past when they weren't all that good, they tended to be really good in the last quarter, even if they didn't make it all up.

I'm worried about A&M. Unless they get complacent, they shouldn't have a lot of problems, but A&M is a wildcard. Of course, so is OSU, which seems to have a special place in its black heart for OU, but that's a luck thing rather than a talent thing. So, I'll be curious what happens if OU does win out and goes into the championship game against a MUCH improved Nebraska. What a time for that rivalry to take on new meaning.

[JTG of the PRB]

18. The CU-Georgia game just kicked off.

I'm just hoping the Buffs don't embarrass themselves tonight.

LET'S GO BUFFALOES!!!

[fishwax]

25. um, surprising 1st quarter

:toast:

[JTG of the PRB]

27. Unsurprising 2nd quarter though.

:banghead:

[fishwax]

37. colorado back on top to start the 4th, though ...

[recoveringdittohed]

19. My Tennessee Volunteers didn't have 12 men on the field

We had 13 men on the field. Must not be any math majors on the team. Turned a 14-10 upset victory into a 16-14 loss. Aaargh!

[Lisa D]

20. That was a great game

Tennessee deserved the win, they played a heck of a game. Not sure about that pass interference call in the end zone either.

[jobycom]

22. Lots of liberal arts majors. They have an abstract concept of 11. nt

[fishwax]

23. or perhaps just math majors thinking in base 12

:)

[fishwax]

24. yeesh -- i saw them run that highlight over and over, but couldn't tell for sure what was going on

because I was wrapped up in the ending of the Oklahoma game. My sympathies, recoveringdittohed--that's a tough way to see your team lose a game :beer:

[fishwax]

26. several good games just now getting started

Alabama-Florida, ND-BC, Stanford-Oregon, Penn State-Iowa ...

[fishwax]

28. wow, Stanford dominated the 1st quarter -- 21-3

Oregon turned the ball over twice on their own half of the field, and Stanford turned both into touchdowns.

[Ptah]

31. I'm looking at the ESPN Game tracker

Stanford 28 Oregon 24

Total yards:

Stan 216
ORE 357

[fishwax]

32. it's been weird -- Oregon keeps turning the ball over. They just did it again, in fact

[Ptah]

33. OK, that helps.

I see three turnovers

Why isn't this on free TV?
:grr:

[fishwax]

36. what game is ABC showing there?

I'm getting Notre Dame vs. Boston College on ABC here, but I assumed that was a regional thing and that other parts of the country would get the UO-Stanford game. It's pretty ridiculous that they aren't showing it in Pac-10 country, at least.

[Ptah]

38. OK, I am officially stupid.

Oregon vs Stanford.

Thanks for the clue.

:blush:

[tigereye]

29. my son watched that game, Fishwax...

did it work out ok? (I wasn't really paying attention...)


just checked your last thread- congratulations!

[fishwax]

30. little more tense at the end than it should have been, but

a win is a win :bounce:

Looks like a big game for you next week with Pitt at Notre Dame! :hi:

[tigereye]

50. yeah I wish it was here, I would probably try to get tickets! (if I could)

My son and i did go to the WVU-Pitt game here a few years back - it was packed and pretty wild. Whew- those WVU folks are intense! (Pitt folks seemed like they were at a British tea by comparison!) ;)

[Initech]

34. Stanford - Oregon - OMFG!!!!

The second quarter is fucking crazy!

[Ptah]

35. Looks like the Hawkeyes are in charge!

:woohoo:

PSU 3
IOWA 17

[fishwax]

41. Washington beats USC, 32-31

[grasswire]

45. Go DUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow. I think that was the most exciting college game I've seen on TV in many years. Of course the fact that a family member is a freshman there and this was his first time attending a college game helped to make it fun to watch.

WOTTA GAME!

[SeattleGirl]

46. It really was, grasswire!

The Ducks were looking mighty poorly in the first quarter, but shazzam! They sure came back and then some!

And that's pretty cool that you have a family member on the team!

[grasswire]

47. not on the team -- just an excited freshman student. :-) n/t