2011 Week 7
October 19, 2011
We're coming up on one of my favorite weeks of the year: the final week of baseball season. I'll be cheering for whoever wins game 1 to sweep the series. Now just get the NHL to go on strike along with the NBA and we could have the greatest fall ever!
There really weren't too many great games last weekend. 'Bama stormed into Oxford, ran up the score, stole their women, and fumigated the Grove. Ole Nick Satan sure hates trees.
Elsewhere in the SEC LSU won easily against Coach Dooley's Volunteers. I bet Vince wishes he never left Athens. Auburn won a dull game against Florida, as Charles White's offense struggled again. On the ticker I saw that Miami had beaten "Kent", so I guess the Hurricanes are now in the SEC. You gotta feel sorry for Kentucky, just when they think they can compete the SEC goes out and adds half a dozen powerhouse programs.
Out west the USC Trojans pounded the Fighting Hippies of Berkeley. They also won the football game. BYU beat Oregon State as they opened their PAC-13 schedule. Upon seeing the Clemson 56, Maryland 45 score you'd think the ACC basketball season had opened, but their basketball teams couldn't score that many points.
In the Great Plains there was a real shootout, as Air Force came up short against surprising new powerhouse South Dakota State. SDSU has really upped their schedule this year and the results have been impressive.
The big issue, even in October, once again is conference expansion and all the schools moving around.
The key expansion story this week involved TCU. The Fighting Horny Toads had moved to the Big East last year and now they've announced that they're moving back to the Southwest Conference.
It's really unbelievable how expensive these conference moves can be. Even if TCU rented a closed college out east to hold their classes, they would still have to move all the people, maybe 10,000 students, the 30 or so professors, and the laundry staff that cleans the students' clothes. Moving to the Big East had to have cost millions of dollars. And now they're going to move everybody back to Fort Worth.
There's been a long history of schools moving among conferences. There was a small college, Anchorage Tech, way up north in our 49th state that competed in some sports but usually got its butt beat in basketball by neighboring Yukon. The oil revenue started to dry up and the state couldn't afford to support the Anchorage Tech anymore. So the school, helped greatly by the state's Governor, decided that it needed to move to greener pastures and relocated to another large oil-drenched state, Texas. At that point they, like TCU, joined the fabled Southwest Conference.
In recognition of the Alaska Governor's help, Anchorage Tech offered to let her name the relocated school after one of her personal heroes.
And that's how the Southwest Conference landed the school that is now known as Rice.