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Saturday January 21st, 2006
9:39amOff-Season Ag Football Notes
Yesterday Coach Fran announced that RB/WR Jay Lucas would be transferring to Southeastern Louisiana. Lucas had 7 carries as a RS-F last season for 87 yards with a long of 54 yards against Oklahoma State. It is unfortunate but the depth chart at RB is getting kind of deep and rumors were swirling that someone was going to leave....most people thought it was going to be Courtney Lewis, which would have been a much bigger hit to the program. I wish Lucas the best of luck in Louisiana.
I haven't had an opportunity to list the Sporting News Freshman All-American team like I said I would. Both TE Martellus Bennett and OT Yemi Babaloa were given 1st team honors and my boy, Justin Brantly, was named to the 2nd team at the punter position.
2005 Aggie Freshmen All-Americans 1st Team 2nd Team ============================================================== Rivals.com Yemi Babaloa-OL Martellus Bennett-TE Justin Brantly-P Sporting News Yemi Babaloa-OL Justin Brantly-P Martellus Bennett-TEThe Astros better make sure that they've copyrighted their "Killer B's" promo stuff.
Also, I would be amiss not mention that 5 Aggies will be playing in their final collegiate football game this afternoon in the East West Shrine Game at the AlamoDome. Coach Fran is the head coach for the West squad along with our offensive coordinator Les Koenning and Fran's son (and Blinn JC HC) Brad as the defensive coordinator. The five Ags that will be playing are QB Reggie (#1), WR Jason Carter (#12), S Jaxson Appel (#11), TE Boone Stutz (#88), & DT Johnny Jolly (#97). I stuck their jersey numbers in there so you wouldn't be looking for them in their Aggie numbers. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2 and kicks off at 3pm. Good luck boys!
Finally, I wanted to mention that the Men's BBall team tips off this afternoon against Iowa State at 12:45pm up in Aimes, Iowa. The game is supposed to be televised on ESPN+ for those who have it....the audio broadcast will be on Aggie96.com for those who don't. Gig'em Ags!
Wednesday January 18th, 2006
12:04pm updated 5:07pmIt is Here!
According to the friendly lady at my local Walmart that I spoke with yesterday on the phone, the Playstation 2 version of MVP 06 NCAA Baseball will be available for me to purchase this afternoon when I get home from school.
I've been unhealthily exicted about the release of this game since I first heard (and reported) it's existance back in September.
From what I've read it's basically a cross between EA Sports previous Major League versions of MVP Baseball and their collegiate hit NCAA Football. Some of the gameplay has changed from the MLB MVP games but it will include a dynasty mode which will feature recruiting, program prestige, etc.
Amazingly, and I don't know the exact reasons, neither Olsen Field or Mississippi State's Dudy Noble Field, were in this year's game (although I have heard that they will be in the '07 version). Luckily, you can create Olsen Field on your own. This was a saving grace for EA Sports regarding sales in College Station & in Starkville.
Here are some photos of the stadiums that will be featured in this year's edition....texas's Disch-Falk (which looks a heckuva lot nicer than the current real thing), ASU's Packard Stadium, Baylor Ballpark, CSF's Goodwin Field, Clemson's Doug Kingsmore Field, FSU's Dick Howser Stadium, Georgia Tech's Chandler Stadium, "The Box" in Baton Rouge, Miami's A-Rod Stadium, Ole Miss's Swayze Field, Notre Dame's Eck Stadium, Rice's Reckling Park, Stanford's Sunken Diamond, Tennessee's Lindsey Nelson Stadium, USC's Dedeaux Field, The Ballpark at St. John's University, Nebraska's Hawks Field at Haymaker Stadium, Arizona's Frank Sancet Field, and of course, Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha.
Here is a list of all 128 teams available.
Here are instructions on how the new fielding system will work. and here are instructions on how the new "Load and Fire" hitting system will work.
With texas's David Maroul gracing the cover, it will be the lone orange belonging I own, but I think I'll be able to get by.
Enjoy!
Update:
The friendly lady from Walmart is an idiot. I spent 40 minutes of my life driving there (and back) only to find out that it will be released, with the XBox version, on Friday.
The fact that I continue to shop at Walmart amazes me and I think this might have been the last straw. I can't remember the last time that one of the famous "greeters" actually greeted me, the last time an employee was able to correctly point me in the right direction of a product that I was unable to locate, or the last time a checkout person even spoke to me let alone asked how I was doing or told me to have a nice day.
Idiots....and they wonder why the country is going to crap....
I will be going to Best Buy on Friday to make my purchase when the game comes out.
Anyways, I was watching some trailers and apparently the game will feature an actual SportCenter ticker with realtime updates on it (for those who have their PS2 hooked up online). How nuts is that? Eeerily, ESPN is turning into the next Walmart of our generation so I should probably be mad about this as well....it's still pretty cool though.
Again, I'm still not happy about having to wait even longer but there's not too much I can do about it.
Monday January 16th, 2006
4:49pmHow Weak was the SWC?
Jackie Sherrill & RC Slocum celebrating a defeat of Auburn in the '86 Cotton BowlIn the mid-80's the Texas A&M football team started a stretch of dominance in the Southwest Conference that lasted until the conference's endings in 1995. It was all started by head coach Jackie Sherrill who took over the squad in 1982 and by 1985 won the first of 3 consecutive SWC Championships. When Jackie left following the 1988 season his defensive mastermind, R.C. Slocum, took the reigns and picked up right where Jackie left off. R.C. never had a losing season in his 14 years as the head coach of the Aggies and through the 1995 season, the last of the SWC, he never finished lower than 2nd place in conference play, including another 3 consecutive crowns.
Once the SWC was dissolved in prior to the 1996 season things continued well for the Aggies winning the Big XII South twice in the first three seasons of existence including an improbable Big XII Conference Championship in 1998. Following 1998, however, things slowly starting to spiral down as each season the Ags finished lower than the one before. It came to a head in 2002 when the Ags finished the season 6-6 in 5th place in the Big XII South. It was then that R.C. was replaced by Coach Fran.
Ever since the Aggies decline there was always a debate regarding how good our teams actually were against the SWC. Were we the big bully on the corner who just beat up all the small dorks or were we a legitimate college powerhouse program? I certainly had no clue, nor did I feel I had the right to contribute to the conversation because I was in 8th grade when the SWC came to an end and I certainly didn't follow college football, let alone A&M football, at that point in my life.
As a result, I have taken the liberty of doing the legwork so we can analyze the strength of the SWC and discuss this topic with some credibility....or at least some factual basis.
Without my copy of ESPN College Football Encyclopedia this would have been a task that I probably would have passed on because of the sheer amount of work it would have taken. It still took a lot of time but I was able to pull about 95% of the information out of that one source. 4.9% of the remaining information came from CFBDataWarehouse.com (I used that for the Southland Conference teams) and the remaining 0.1% came from Michigan-football.com because they were the only source I could find that included any information on Lamar's football team (which is no longer in existence).
I should probably explain a couple of things to keep confusion to a minimum (there is a lot of information crammed into a relatively small amount of space). The first thing I did was put the SWC teams in order based on that year's standings (overall record and conference record) and along the side of each team I listed their non-conference opponents, if they won or lost and the differential in the score. Then I took each opponent that played against the SWC and listed their season record, listed their conference, & showed the SWC's record against them that season. From there I went ahead and calculated the splits that you'll see.
I'm not going to include all of that stuff I just talked about here simply because it is so much information that no one will read it. Here's a link to the complete information....feel free to peruse it for more depth of what I'm talking about.
Let's dive in....
1985
I chose to start this analysis in 1985 for two reasons. One is that it allows us to cover the last 10 years (11 seasons) of the conference and the second is because it was the first year of the A&M dominance which is the main topic of discussion for Aggie fans.
SWC Standings Vs. Non-Conference ================ ============================= TAMU 10-2 (7-1) Ark 10-2 (6-2) Vs. >.500 Teams: 6-11 Bay 9-3 (5-3) Vs. .500 Teams: 1-0 tu 8-4 (6-2) Vs. <.500 Teams: 12-1 SMU* 6-5 (5-3) Hou 4-7 (3-5) Non-Conf Totals: 19-12 Rice 3-8 (2-6) tt 4-7 (1-7) TCU 3-8 (0-8) SWC in Final Poll: #6 TAMU, #12 Arkansas, #17 BaylorThere isn't really too much to say about '85 other than this was one of the more top heavy conference seasons the SWC had during the time I looked at. Also, 3 games v. the National Champion, OU is never good for the W-L records. Twelve of our 19 non-conference victories were against teams that finished below .500 which certainly doesn't seem to great.
Click Here to see 1985 in more depth.
1986
SWC Standings Vs. Non-Conference ================ ============================== TAMU 9-3 (7-1) Ark 9-3 (6-2) Vs. >.500 Teams: 7-13 Bay 9-3 (6-2) Vs. .500 Teams: 2-0 tt 7-5 (5-3) Vs. <.500 Teams: 7-2 SMU* 6-5 (5-3) tu 5-6 (4-4) Non-Conf Totals: 16-15 Rice 4-7 (2-6) TCU* 3-8 (1-7) Hou 1-10 (0-8) SWC in Final Poll: #12 Baylor, #13 TAMU, #15 ArkansasThis was a weaker season in terms of the top teams but from the overall standpoint we played more teams over .500 than we did in '85 and we had a higher percentage of our overall victories against those teams (7 of our 16 wins or 44%).
Click Here to see 1986 in more depth.
1987
SWC Standings Vs. Non-Conference =================== ============================== TAMU 10-2-0 (6-1-0) tu 7-5-0 (5-2-0) Vs. >.500 Teams: 7-12 Ark 9-4-0 (5-2-0) Vs. .500 Teams: 0-0 tt 6-4-1 (3-3-1) Vs. <.500 Teams: 15-2 TCU 5-6-0 (3-4-0) Bay 6-5-0 (3-4-0) Non-Conf Totals: 22-14 Hou 4-6-1 (2-4-1) Rice 2-9-0 (0-7-0) SMU* DNP SWC in Final Poll: #10 TAMU5 of our losses came to four of the teams that finished ranked in the top 5. The overall non-conference record improved but again we played very well against the poor teams and not so great against good opponents. We won 1 of 9 games against teams that finished in the top 20.
Click Here to see 1987 in more depth.
1988
SWC Standings Vs. Non-Conference ================ ============================= Ark 10-2 (7-0) Vs. >.500 Teams: 2-18 TAMU* 7-5 (6-1) Vs. .500 Teams: 0-0 Hou 9-3 (5-2) Vs. <.500 Teams: 15-0 tt 5-6 (4-3) Bay 6-5 (2-5) Non-Conf Totals: 17-18 tu 4-7 (2-5) TCU 5-6 (3-4) Rice 0-11 (0-7) SMU* DNP SWC in Final Poll: #12 Arkansas, #18 HoustonWe went 0-11 against teams that finished in the Top 20 and we only played 2 of those games against top 5 teams. Even against teams that were above .500 but not Top 20 we only went 2-7. We were perfect against the sub-.500s though. This was a rough season for the conference topped off with SMU sitting out its second season as a result of the Death Penalty.
On a quasi-unrelated note....Barry Sanders was flat out sickening in 1988. The man averaged 21.3 points per game, 238.9 yards rushing/game, 7.6 yards/carry, 295.5 all-purpose yards/game (which was 112 more/game than the guy who finished 2nd; it's also 73.19 yards/game more than Bush had in '05), & he ran for more than 2000 yards more in '88 than he did in '87. Suprisingly, there were 4 other teams that still finished ahead of Oklahoma State in rushing yards per game that season. Following Barry's departure Okie State completely fell apart going 4-7 in '89, 4-7 in '90, and 0-10-1 in '91.
Click Here to see 1988 in more depth.
1989
SWC Standings Vs. Non-Conference ================== ================================= Ark 10-2-0 (7-1) Vs. >.500 Teams: 6-9 TAMU 8-4-0 (6-2) Vs. .500 Teams: 1-1 Hou* 9-2-0 (6-2) Vs. <.500 Teams: 10-2-1 tt 9-3-0 (5-3) Bay 5-6-0 (4-4) Non-Conf Totals: 17-12-1 tu 5-6-0 (4-4) TCU 4-7-0 (2-6) Rice 2-8-1 (2-6) SMU 2-9-0 (0-8) SWC in Final Poll: #13 Arkansas, #14 Houston, #19 texas tech, #20 TAMUHey, we won the Heisman (Houston QB, Andre Ware). We played better against better opponents winning 6 of our 15 games against them but that still just barely over 1/3 of our non-conf victories. It was kind of a bleh year for the conference....good teams at the top but not great teams.
Click Here to see 1989 in more depth.
1990
SWC Standings Vs. Non-Conference ==================== ============================== tu 10-2-0 (8-0-0) Hou* 10-1-0 (7-1-0) Vs. >.500 Teams: 6-7 TAMU 9-3-1 (5-2-1) Vs. .500 Teams: 0-0 Bay 6-4-1 (5-2-1) Vs. <.500 Teams: 12-5 Rice 5-6-0 (3-5-0) TCU 5-6-0 (3-5-0) Non-Conf Totals: 18-12 tt 4-7-0 (3-5-0) Ark 1-7-0 (3-8-0) SMU 1-10-0 (1-8-0) SWC in Final Poll: #10 Houston, #12 texas, #15 TAMU,I don't know how to interpret 1990. We lost three games to Colorado and Miami who finished 1 & 2 in the polls and outside of that we played better than .500 against winning teams. Still 5 losses to teams under .500 isn't great. We were very top heavy and the bottom of the conference was simply terrible.
Click Here to see 1990 in more depth.
1991
SWC Standings Vs. Non-Conference ================ =================================== TAMU 10-2 (8-0) Bay 8-4 (5-3) Vs. >.500 Teams: 4-8 tt 6-5 (5-3) Vs. .500 Teams: 0-1 Ark 6-6 (5-3) Vs. <.500 Teams: 11-6 tu 5-6 (4-4) TCU 7-4 (4-4) Non-Conf Totals: 15-15 Hou 4-7 (3-5) Rice 4-7 (2-6) SMU 1-10 (0-8) SWC in Final Poll: #12 TAMUNot a very good year at all with A&M being in a class all by itself. The conference continued to be very poor against winning teams (4 of our 15 wins or 27%). 15-15 just isn't very great.
Click Here to see 1991 in more depth.
1992
SWC Standings Vs. Non-Conference ================== =========================================== TAMU* 12-1-0 (7-0) Bay 7-5-0 (4-3) Vs. >.500 Teams: 5-9-1 Rice 6-5-0 (4-3) Vs. .500 Teams: 0-1 tu 6-5-0 (4-3) Vs. <.500 Teams: 13-6 tt 5-6-0 (4-3) SMU 5-6-0 (2-5) Non-Conf Totals: 18-15-2 Hou 4-7-0 (2-5) TCU 2-8-1 (1-6) SWC in Final Poll: #7 TAMUSame results, different season. One team is clearly better than the rest and everyone else is kind of huddled around each other in the middle. The biggest difference? One less team....Arkansas left for the newly alligned SEC.
I thought I should point out that at this point (from 1985-1992) we are 10-57 against non-conference opponents who have finished the season ranked. That isn't just the bad teams in our conference, that's everyone.
Click Here to see 1992 in more depth.
1993
SWC Standings Vs. Non-Conference ==================== =========================================== TAMU 10-2-0 (7-0-0) tt 6-6-0 (5-2-0) Vs. >.500 Teams: 4-14-1 tu 5-5-1 (5-2-0) Vs. .500 Teams: 0-1-0 Rice 6-5-0 (3-4-0) Vs. <.500 Teams: 9-4-1 Bay 5-6-0 (3-4-0) TCU 4-7-0 (2-5-0) Non-Conf Totals: 13-19-2 SMU 2-7-2 (1-5-1) Hou 1-9-1 (1-5-1) SWC in Final Poll: #9 TAMUSee 1992.....and now we're 11-68 againt non-conference opponents who finished in the season ranked.
Click Here to see 1993 in more depth.
1994
SWC Standings Vs. Non-Conference ==================== ================================== TAMU* 10-0-1 (6-0-1) tt 6-6-0 (4-3-0) Vs. >.500 Teams: 6-11 Bay 7-5-0 (4-3-0) Vs. .500 Teams: 2-1 Rice 5-6-0 (4-3-0) Vs. <.500 Teams: 8-8 tu 8-4-0 (4-3-0) TCU 7-5-0 (4-3-0) Non-Conf Totals: 16-20 Hou 1-10-0 (1-6-0) SMU 1-9-1 (0-6-1) SWC in Final Poll: #8 TAMU, #25 texasSee 1993 or 1992. One team clearly ahead of the rest. We're really not winning any more games against teams with winning records but we are losing more games against teams with losing records. Sadly, 5 of the SWC's 6 wins against teams with a winning record were against teams only 1 game over .500. It seems that the league has become less and less competitive since around 1990.
Click Here to see 1994 in more depth.
1995
SWC Standings Vs. Non-Conference ================== ================================== tu 10-2-1 (7-0) TAMU 9-3-0 (5-2) Vs. >.500 Teams: 6-10-0 tt 9-3-0 (5-2) Vs. .500 Teams: 0-1-2 Bay 7-4-0 (5-2) Vs. <.500 Teams: 10-6-0 TCU 6-5-0 (3-4) Hou 2-9-0 (2-5) Non-Conf Totals: 16-17-2 Rice 2-8-1 (1-6) SMU 1-10-0 (0-7) SWC in Final Poll: #14 texas, #15 TAMU, #23 texas techThings improved slightly from a record standpoint and the fact that there were a couple more competitive teams, however, there was a big split in the middle leaving the "middle class" a much smaller population as you kind of see which way the teams are going to go when the conference is dissolved.....top 4 go to the Big XII and the bottom 4 go elsewhere.
Click Here to see 1995 in more depth.
Overview
Like I mentioned, the conference became much, much weaker once the 1990 started. I have a feeling that had something to do with the recruiting scandals of the 80's and the smaller schools not being able to keep up with the big state schools now....but that's for another day. I think that it was unfortunate that some of the better teams were not able to participate in Bowl games during the early 90s due to penalties and restrictions from the recruiting problems. I think it would have given us a few more games with our top teams to measure ourselves against other quality opponents. Then again, maybe we wouldn't have played in those bowl games in the mid-to-late 80s if we had played by the rules in the first place.Here's a final look at some of the numbers (the "Bad" are teams with 2 wins or less):
The SWC Vs. Non-Conference Opponents >.500 .500 <.500 Vs.Rnk Vs."Bad" Overall ============================================================ 1985 6-11-0 1-0-0 12-1-0 1-7-0 5-1-0 19-12-0 1986 7-13-0 2-0-0 7-2-0 1-7-0 4-0-0 16-15-0 1987 7-12-0 0-0-0 15-2-0 1-8-0 3-0-0 22-14-0 1988 2-18-0 0-0-0 15-0-0 0-11-0 4-0-0 17-18-0 1989 6-9-0 1-1-0 10-2-1 1-6-0 3-1-1 17-12-1 1990 6-7-0 0-0-0 12-5-0 3-4-0 4-0-0 18-12-0 1991 4-8-0 0-1-0 11-6-0 2-6-0 6-0-0 15-15-0 1992 5-9-1 0-1-0 13-6-0 1-7-0 3-2-0 18-15-2 1993 4-14-1 0-1-0 9-4-1 1-11-0 0-0-0 13-19-2 1994 6-11-0 2-1-0 8-8-0 0-8-0 2-1-0 16-20-0 1995 6-10-0 0-1-2 10-6-0 1-8-0 3-2-0 16-17-2 ============================================================ TOT 59-122-2 6-6-2 122-42-2 12-84-0 37-7-1 187-169-7 ============================================================ W% .328 .500 .741 .125 .833 .525Twelve and eighty four against non-conference teams that finished the season ranked. Wow.
In the end, I have to agree that the Southwest Conference was a weak conference. Finding a contemporary comparison, I think that the Big East would be a good fit. They typically have a team in the Top 10 and another in the Top 25 with a third team sprinkled in there every few years.
You would think that since A&M finished at or right at the top of the conference in just about every one of those seasons that the numbers above would be padded by our records. I would think so.
Texas A&M Vs. Non-Conference Opponents >.500 .500 <.500 Vs.Rnk Vs."Bad" Overall ============================================================ 1985 3-1 0-0 0-0 0-1 0-0 3-1 1986 2-2 0-0 0-0 0-2 0-0 2-2 1987 3-1 0-0 1-0 1-1 0-0 4-1 1988 0-4 0-0 1-0 0-4 0-0 1-4 1989 0-2 0-0 2-0 0-2 0-0 2-2 1990 3-0 0-0 1-1 1-0 0-0 4-1 1991 0-2 0-0 2-0 0-2 1-0 2-2 1992 1-1 0-0 4-0 1-1 1-0 5-1 1993 1-2 0-0 2-0 1-2 0-0 3-2 1994 2-0 1-0 1-0 0-0 0-0 4-0 1995 3-1 0-0 1-0 1-1 0-0 4-1 ============================================================ TOT 18-16 1-0 15-1 5-16 2-0 34-17 ============================================================ W% .529 1.00 .938 .238 1.00 .666Well, I was correct....we did pad those numbers. At the same time however, you can see why there is question about how much playing in the SWC helped our record.
From 1985-1995 against non-conference opponents that finished the season in the rankings we were 5-16. Against every other non-conference opponent we were 29-1.
Read that sentence again.
So yeah, I think that A&M's late-80s and early-90s (more so the early 90s) should be looked at with a grain of salt.
Currently Jeff Bagwell is in a pretty tight spot. As just about everyone knows, Bags has chronic arthritis in his throwing shoulder and had surgery during last season to try and relieve some of the pain. He was able to come back at the end of the season and play in a PH role during the last month of the season....
Bagwell Post-Surgery AB R H RBI HR XBH SO/BB BA OBP SLG 12 0 3 4 0 0 3/1 .250 .333 .250His postseason numbers weren't too much better....
AB R H RBI HR XBH SO/BB BA OBP SLG 11 2 2 1 0 0 1/0 .182 .308 .182Obviously, with an entire off-season to continue to work out I would imagine there would be some improvement made offensively.
The problem, however, is defensively. He still can't throw with that shoulder and in the National League that poses a very big problem. The Astros owe him $17M in 2006 with a team option of $18M in 2007 (or a $7M buyout). If Bagwell physically can't play defense then he would be forced into a PH role....one that would have to be replaced before the start of the next half inning.
Up until this point I've had the stance that the Astros are just going to have to live with it....they should have realized the problems with 5 year contracts (something the Yankees are living with right now and the Blue Jays will be dealing with in a big way in a few years).
What changed my perspective?
Well, Richard Justice, of the Houston Chronicle, wrote about this topic a few days ago and let it be known that if Bagwell is deemed unable to play that the insurance company will pick up $15.6M of his contract for this season (ht didn't mention anything about the 2007 buyout). Now it basically comes down to Bagwell's decision. Either way he is going to get paid, which was the big issue for me in the past....he has earned the money. The problem is that the deadline for the insurance claim is January 31st, which is before Spring Training even starts. This means that Bags has to make his decision without having played in any real competition.
To top off the entire situation, the Astros signed OFer Preston Wilson last week to play the third OF position, allowing Lance Berkman to move to his natural position at 1st base. If Bagwell was to come back that would cause a logjam in the OF because Berkman's bat has to be in the lineup, as does Wilson's. This leaves one spot open for Willy Taveras, Chris Burke or Jason Lane (in which case, Lane would be my man).
The way I see it (and understand it) there are 4 possible outcomes in this situation:
I think that options B & C would cause him some more damage in the public's eye. Option D would probably give him the most positive publicity although it would cost him a ton of money. Option A would be sad, because he would be forced into a decision, but I think the fans would recognize the situation.a.) Bagwell decides he cannot play before the insurance claim deadline and collects the majority of his paycheck from them and watches the Astros on Fox Southwest or in a suite at Minute Maid Park
b.) Bagwell decides to play and the Astros own the most expensive PHer in the history of MLB
c.) Bagwell decides to play and it turns out that his shoulder heals enough that he can play 1st base. This causes problems elsewhere on the field and forces players who should be playing to be on the bench....or still forces him to a PH role because the Astros put their best 9 guys out there
d.) Bagwell decides to play and goes to Spring Training and after realizing he won't be able to play, retires and leaves the money on the table
Reading Justice's article gives me the impression that Bagwell is going to try and play, regardless of what the doctors tell him. I just hope he makes the right decision for the team because he's getting paid either way and all he's doing is setting the team back because there is very little chance he would play up to even his 2004 season.
This whole thing is a mess.