The Golden Rule of Trash Talk

Thou shalt not speaketh it, if thou canst not taketh it.  -Me

I attended Texas' dismantling of the paper tigers this past weekend and thought I share some of my experiences, one in particular, with y'all.

My wife and I made it to Columbia around noon and ate with friends who were also there to cheer on UT.  Afterward we toured the Quad and then headed over to the game to line up for general admission.  We were hardly heckled at all during this time and most Mizzou fans were friendly.  The heckling we did receive was very poorly thought out like a frat boy who as a taunt just called out, "Hook 'em horns, make 'em eat ****" in a sing song voice.  The best taunt we heard all day was, "Look Texas fans, go die".  Maybe she was strangely slurring her words as she was obviously inebriated, but it very clearly sounded like, "go die."

The next part of my story needs a little bit of background on me.  Before attending Texas, I spent about 13 of my first 18 years in Lawrence, Kansas the city that was burned to the ground by Missourians trying to make Kansas a slave state (here's the other side on that).  Hatred for Missouri runs deep in Lawrence and I was brought up in the midst of that.  I now hate OU far more than Mizzou and even hoped (mostly) that MU would beat KU to help UT make it to the Big XII championship.

When we get to the game we stake out our spot on the North End Zone hill where we'll have a good view of the field and won't have to turn around too far for replays on the jumbotron.  We wait an hour and a half for game time an the crowd fills in around us.  At kickoff I have two boys, between 8 and 13 years old, sitting behind me on either side.  For the entire first half they are screaming into my ears* the most stupid trash talk you've ever heard.  Stuff along the lines of, "the Horns suck, we'll beat them easily.  [Local High School's] freshman team could beat them."  The horns sucking most definitely their motif.  All the while UT is holding MU to 3 and outs, marching down the field and scoring.  They also made comments about my 2005 NC shirt about how much better USC is than UT and so on.  Since they couldn't get a rise out of me, they continued and even started tapping the back of my hat.  Still I gave no response.

Shortly before half time the MU kick returner only manages a 10 yard return.  My excitement builds as we hold them to consecutive negative yardage plays and a near safety incompletion.  As someone who often prefers to watch a good defense and special teams over an offense not led by VY I start yelling, begging for a blocked punt.  When Curtis Brown blocks the kick I jump to my feet and cheer ecstatically as Malcolm Willams grabs the ball for a TD.  Then with no premeditation, in the heat of the moment I turn to the two boys and yell, "WHO SUCKS NOW?"

Their reaction. via www.buddyhead.com

My wife hangs her head in shame.  A tiger fan sitting 10 yards further back in his camp chair, very likely mostly upset at watching his team get exposed and blown out 35-7 in the first half, is very upset by this.  "Hey 205 [remember I'm wearing a 2005 NC shirt, he just can't read] if you talk to those kids again, I'll throw you down the hill."  I know my wife hates it when I get confrontational and my attitude towards fighting is a tenuous relationship between knowing that Jesus wants me to turn the other cheek and having played rugby because I enjoy hitting people so much. 

via i10.photobucket.com

I'm not quite as physically intimidating as Todd Reesing though. So I'm not scaring anyone off but I'm not easily scared either.  They don't call 'em paper tigers for nothing.  So I'm standing here, wishing I had the wit of 54b or Tbone Stallone, trying to tell this guy to mind his own business and that he has no idea of the situation without embarrassing my wife any further.  The situation is diffused and my wife explains to the kids that I wasn't trying to scare them, but was more excited for my team and one of them, near tears, apologizes.  My wife's explanation was entirely true, but I enjoyed the side benefit of having them stay silent and then choose to sit elsewhere.

So BON based on this recounting, 100% true from my point of view, what say you?

* If you're wondering how I know they were screaming it into my ears and not just at the game, it's because one of my fellow UT fans surreptitiously recorded them doing so with her cell phone and they clearly looked at me and leaned forward to yell at me.  She had shown this to me before the incident.

I've been hearing and reading a lot about OU's inexperienced O-line this off-season.  Most recently in The Elusive Shadow's post.  I started to wonder, considering how much Stoops loved to hammer opponents all the way to the final whistle, how many minutes these guys had played the last couple of years.

I blame growing up as more of a basketball fan than football fan on my interest in the minutes played statistic.

Well, since the minuscule amount of effort I was willing to put into this research failed to turn up anything, here's some info on OU's projected starting line experience:

Trent Williams - Fairly Experienced.  Not going to say anything else.

Brian Simmons - He played in every game in '08 for a total of 421 plays.  That's an average of about 30 snaps a game, not too shabby.  It would appear that while he hasn't been chosen as a starter for his previous few years (he's a Senior) they trusted him enough to contribute.

As The Elusive Shadow said, after those two the experience falls off sharply.

Ben Habern - Played in a total of 3 games in '08.  His efficiency was impressive against Baylor.  He had 9 knockdowns in 9 plays.  Essentially from what I can tell, he's barely played any college football.

Stephen Good - Played in half (7) the games in '08.  Not much else about 2008.

Cory Brandon - Played for a total of 148 snaps in 9 games.  That's an average of 16 snaps in each of the games he saw action in.

As far as size goes, according to Soonersports their respective weights are:

318

318

288

291

310

for a total of 1525 (305 avg.)

This compares with 1555 (311 avg) in '08 and 1612 (322.4 avg) in '07.

Texas' O-line totaled 1550 (310 avg [pdf link]) before Spring started.

I read the FSU SBN blogs post about D-line size (weight) correllating to effectiveness against the defending the run and was wondering if O-line size has any similar correlation.

How will the lack of experience and smaller size change OU's sucess this season?  Most of the commenters over at CC Machine seem to think it won't matter.  What do y'all think?  Anyone care to enlighten me in regards to the importance of size on the O-line rather than D-line?

I was watching the Olympics, and I just saw a commercial for "The Express: The Ernie Davis Story" and Texas featured heavily in the ad.  It apparently includes the 1960 Cotton Bowl game as a major part of the movie, if that can be judged from the trailer. 

Anyone else see that?  Are they playing a different trailer in Texas?  I imagine it's yes and no respectively, but I'm in Kansas City so I'm curious.