It's always nice to see Longhorn student-athletes move on to successful careers, and it appears Nordgren is a highly successful young businessman and strong role model within his community.  I look forward to learning more about his impressive business accomplishments and charitable work through this upcoming reality TV show.  It sounds like Matt is a great young man who will continue to make Longhorn Nation very proud for years to come.

His show bio:

Matt is an all-American, blue-eyed Texan charmer. Formerly a quarterback at the University of Texas, Matt signed to play football professionally, until an injury shifted his path. Today, the ambitious 28-year old is partner in the family energy business, Nordco Inc., and is the founder of Nordco Consulting. Matt also devotes his time to various charities, primarily his own -- The Leadership Foundation and Gala -- which helps underprivileged children develop character and strength through sports and educational programs.

Matt's personal website resume is equally impressive:

BIOGRAPHY – I was the first person in NCAA University of Texas FOOTBALL history by graduating with two degrees in 3-1/2 years while maintaining high honors and Deans List and lettering in football and then perusing a graduate level degree for the remaining years under scholarship.  I was Top 10% of class at Bishop Lynch and received awards from the National Honor Society and various others institutions.

Keep up the great work, and keep making us all so proud of you, Matt.  Hook 'em.

All quotes are from the past week.  Place your guesses in the comments section.  

Good luck and no cheating.  

1) "And they're going to fuel the battle cry of my deadly and dangerous and secret and silent soldiers. Because they're all around you."

2) "Don't believe those misleading dog stations."

3) "I have not yet ordered the use of force, not yet ordered one bullet to be fired. When I do, everything will burn."

4) "I'm a fighter. I'm a struggler."

5) "I will destroy you in the air."

6) "This is the formidable force. The invincible force of youth. Life without dignity is worthless."

7) "If you infiltrate and try to hurt my family, I will murder you violently."

8) "Be patient. Get focused. We are at war and will destroy these clowns."

9) "Remember, these are my people, not yours. We will continue on together."

10) "Shame on you, you gangsters."

11) "Walk with me side-by-side as we march up the steps of justice to right this unconscionable wrong."

12) "I am like the Queen of England."

13) "I am not Thomas Jefferson."

14) "Clearly I have defeated this earthworm with my words."

15) "Defeat is not an option."

Here are the ESPN reports: basketball and football.   

Here is the redacted version of the official letter that UT has released.

Bruce Pearl and his staff repeatedly violated recruiting rules and then lied to investigators, broke confidentiality rules to help derail the investigation, and encouraged Aaron Craft's father to lie to NCAA investigators.

It is yet another complete disgrace to the University of Tennessee, the Southeastern Conference, and its member schools that Bruce Pearl (not to mention Mike Hamilton) is still employed by UT.  

Mark Richt recently said this:

"One of the hardest things for us to do is to evaluate and nail down who you’re going to go after, especially in our own state. A lot of the out of state teams will just come in and just offer like mad. They’ll come in and just offer like candy. Quite frankly I’m not going to name names of schools, but a lot of them will do that just to get in the fight and if the kid commits too soon and they’re not sure they want, they’ll just tell them that’s not a committable offer. Whatever the heck that means? If we offer a kid in our state and he says he’s coming, we want to take him, OK? Sometimes we’re a little bit slower to offer maybe than some out of state schools. Sometimes that might hurt a kid’s feelings. Sometimes that might hurt a coach’s feelings. That’s not our intention. Our intention is to have integrity when we offer a kid and be able to follow through.”

In unrelated news, Alabama now already has 9 commits for 2012, including 2 Georgia RBs that UGA has not offered and that Alabama will almost certainly ask to grayshirt at a later date after they get commitments from better-rated RB recruits: 

Justin Taylor, a junior at Atlanta’s Booker T. Washington High, committed to Alabama on Monday. He is the third Georgia back in a week to make a decision and the second in that span to choose the Crimson Tide.

Hillgrove’s Kenyan Drake committed to Alabama one week ago and Stephenson’s Mike Davis committed to Florida on Saturday. Including the commitment of Matt Jones of Seffner, Fla., to Florida last week, that’s four major 2012 running backs off the board in a week’s time — in February!

SEC football is such a joke right now.

South Carolina was inbounding the ball, down 3, with 12 seconds left, inside of half-court.

Mark Fox chose not to have his team foul.  Fox's explanation after the game:

"I didn’t ask them if they wanted to foul," Fox made clear after the game. "I asked them if they trusted their defense. I thought it was important for them to be vocal about that. We were not going to foul. I needed our team to commit to one another."

That sounds nice, but as we saw against Florida earlier in the year, not fouling can result in painful losses as well.

So which is the correct strategy?

It's a topic that has been heavily debated amongst college basketball writers, statisticians, and fans.   A group of Harvard students last year concluded that intentionally fouling changes little.  On the other hand, this article, written by David Annis of SportsQuant.com and published in 2006 by the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, found that intentionally fouling is clearly the optimal strategy in most cases.  Ken Pomeroy has also concluded that intentionally fouling, when up 3 with less than 10 seconds, is "in most cases" the optimal strategy. 

I have not seen any work showing that intentionally fouling in such situations clearly lowers a teams chances of winning.  The research I've seen all ranges from intentionally fouling clearly being the optimal strategy in most cases to it not making a significant difference either way.

Looking specifically at Georgia and South Carolina, the arguments for Georgia intentionally fouling appear to be even stronger than with the averages.  The average FT% in D1 this year is 68.9%. (It was 68.9% the last 2 seasons as well.) Of the 5 players South Carolina had on the floor to end the game, only Malik Cooke (70.7%) has a career FT% greater than the D1 average.  But Cooke is not a 3-point shooter and thus was unlikely to touch the ball off the inbounds pass.  Of the 4 likeliest 3-point shooters for South Carolina, all have below average career FT%: Brian Richardson (68.2%), Ramon Galloway (68.2%), Sam Muldrow (67.9%), and, SC's most prolific 3-point shooter, and the player who ended up taking the shot, Bruce Ellington (63.6%).

On the other hand, Georgia's career FT percentages on the court: Ware (77.8%), Thompkins (73.0%), Robinson (73.0%), and Leslie (69.6%) are all above average FT shooters, with only Price (67.0%) being slightly below average.

Conclusion: Georgia got away with the win... despite Fox having made the wrong call.  Fox can talk about the team trusting its defense and whatever... but that required making a decision that lowered the team's chances of winning. One might argue that there are times when a coach should lower his team's chances of winning in order to make a motivational point for later in the season (hey, we've all seen Hoosiers), but I'm pretty sure the final seconds of a critical game late in the season is not one of those times.

Ed.: Promoted.

1) "The Texas legislature can block [UT or A&M] if it doesn't take [Baylor, Texas Tech, etc.]."

I'm not sure how this one ever got started (I guess it came from some Texas pols helping Baylor get in the Big 12 over Houston in the early 90s... yawn), but I've seen it widely used across CFB message boards and in the press before and during these latest negotiations. Baylor and Texas Tech cannot do anything to stop either Texas or A&M from making any conference move they want to make, and there's nothing any Texas politician (or group of them) can do to stop that. Any that even tried would see their political careers in Texas end quickly. Texas was never risking any Pac-16 deal for Baylor, and UT's "Tech problem" was nothing more than Bill Powers putting his rejection of the Big 10 on another school. (Additionally, Dan Branch is a completely irrelevant clown who just wanted to get himself some free PR.)

2) "The SEC should add Texas," "Texas would consider the SEC," etc.

The SEC is a non-starter for people that call the shots at UTexas, and it has been for a long time. (Note to Harvey Schiller and Paul Finebaum: DeLoss Dodds does not have the final say on this decision. The people who do are firmly opposed to Texas ever joining the SEC.)

Mike Slive was very smart about this in initially making offers to both Texas and A&M in these latest negotiations. Slive knows UT won't consider the SEC, but it was smart politics to force Texas to reject that offer before the SEC approached its real target in the move: A&M.

3) "Everything Chip Brown said on this was accurate."

Chip Brown was given the scoop on this story by people inside UT that knew what they were doing. Smart move as it set their own Rivals.com affiliate up to be the go-to source for the media on this story, letting UT spin any developments to its advantage. (And a nice little quid pro quo for Brown as he used the scoop to tirelessly shill for subscriptions to his website throughout this story.)

Brown went on to report numerous falsehoods such as:

• Texas fighting for Baylor to join the Pac 10 over Colorado (never happened)
• Cal blocking Baylor out of Cal's religious intolerance (smearing a university with something it never did, just for UT to distance itself from never existent Baylor support, as soon as Nebraska was leaving and the Pac 16 might be happening)
• Brown went on SportsCenter on Thursday (6/10) evening and said that the Pac-16 (including A&M) was basically a done deal; Brown was just parroting the UT party line he was being fed, trying to hurry A&M into a deal A&M was far from signing off on but that UT wanted done in order to keep the SEC out of Texas
• Brown continued to say the other schools would go to the Pa-16 even without A&M.
• Brown said Rick Perry was fighting for A&M to the Pac-10. Obviously UT wanted to create this perception publicly to try to lend political authority to their Pac-16 deal. A&M insiders and Perry's office have repeatedly denied he took a side on the matter.

Decided to look these up out of curiosity, prompted by the insane amount of hatred aimed at Ron Washington by Rangers fans lately.  

Win differentials versus the prediction systems and pythag records obviously leave a lot of room for debate as far as their being indicators of managerial performance goes, but one has to wonder why the team of a supposedly awful and unintelligent manager is currently in its 3rd straight season with more wins than both the preseason prediction systems and pythag records say it should have.

Wins differential vs. PECOTA preseason prediction

Wins differential vs. pythag record

The top lender to the Texas Rangers has told Major League Baseball owners in a letter that the lengthy stalemate over the team’s sale could lead to the team’s bankruptcy or "costly, distracting and messy" litigation.

It would be a bad result for the Texas Rangers, M.L.B. and the banks," Andrew Herenstein, the managing principal of Monarch Alternative Capital, wrote in a letter to M.L.B. owners who met Wednesday and Thursday in Manhattan.

He said that the lenders would not agree to a sale to a group led by Chuck Greenberg, an owner of two minor league teams, and Nolan Ryan, the Hall of Fame pitcher and the Rangers’ president, "at a price below fair market value."

...In his letter, Herenstein said that the Greenberg-Ryan group had rejected "various modifications" in the sale agreement that would increase the proceeds to the lenders. Herenstein also said that the group had turned down different financing structures and a brief auction period to invite higher bids.

In the letter e-mailed to owners, Herenstein said that despite receiving no interest payments on loans to the Rangers and the Stars since early 2009, the lenders "have not taken and do not intend to take any actions that harm the value of the Texas Rangers." He added, "We hope that Major League Baseball exercises similar restraint."

2005 (23.1%)

2006 (40.7%)

2007 (8.7%)

2008 (3.5%)

2009 (38.1%)

2010 (46.6%)

(Source: Coolstandings.com)

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Would you like to see the Rangers remain at TBIA?  

If so, for how long?

If not, where in the Metroplex would you like to see them build a new stadium?

Please explain some of the reasons for your choice.  

(Let's say that the current Rangers' TBIA lease with the City of Arlington could be ended at an expense that would limit payroll by $10M for the first 3 years in any new stadium.)

The Rangers sold more than 92,000 tickets on the first day of the individual ticket sales, an increase of more than three percent from the same day in 2009. 

Only standing room and obstructed view tickets remain for the season opener on Monday, April 5 against Toronto. And those tickets must be purchased in person at the first base ticket office at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. The office is open from noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday and weekdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

Somewhat disappointing.  

-- The stock market is over 50% higher now than at this time last year.
-- Rangers coming off one of their best seasons ever.  Brightest outlook going into a season in over a decade.
-- New ownership team.
-- Average ticket price basically the same as 2009.

Would have thought the increase would be much higher.  Hopefully it picks up from here.

Great article from ESPN.com on Mark Zuckerman.  Raises some interesting questions about the future of sports journalism.  Might not be as bleak and unprofitable as many expect it to be.

Multimillions for a franchise. Thousands for season tickets. Seven dollars and seventy-five cents -- ¡Dios mio! -- for a 12-ounce cup of lukewarm beer. For business tycoons and workaday schlubs alike, the sports world can be prohibitively expensive. Fortunately, there's one athletic indulgence almost anyone can afford.

Your own private sports writer.

Ever wanted to have a say in the makeup of your morning sports report? Or just have someone personally ask Washington Nationals pitcher and New Jersey native Jason Bergmann what he thinks of "Jersey Shore"? Then meet Mark Zuckerman. A 33-year-old baseball writer from suburban D.C., Zuckerman is covering the Nationals during spring training in Viera, Fla. -- coverage made possible by reader donations to his team blog.

As in more than $10,000 in reader donations, collected in less than a month, $20-60 at a time.

"I did not in a million years expect this to happen," Zuckerman says. "At least not this fast."

Read this article when it came out last June but haven't heard anything since.  Anyone know if MLB is going to be rolling this out in 2010?

Sportvision has worked with Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the league’s Internet subsidiary, in the venture that will eventually cost upward of $5 million to install the system in all 30 stadiums, according to executives involved with the project.

Bob Bowman, the subsidiary’s chief executive, said he hoped to have meaningful data flowing by the end of [the 2009 season] from the San Francisco installation, and from all 30 stadiums in 2010.