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All right, enough is enough. I’ve sat back and watched my sports section become a huge advertisement for the Texas department of tourism, and this is where it stops. Benjamin Young and I may share like minds about many issues, but when this outsider comes into my fair state and badmouths our football teams with such retarded abandon, well that’s where I draw the line.
First off, high school football is just as good here (if not better) as it is in that gigantic waste bucket we call the Panhandle State. If you look up USA Today’s high school football national rankings at this moment, you’ll notice two California teams rank ahead of the best team from Texas.
There are four teams from California in the top 25 to Texas’ two. If you extrapolate the data (that’s a research term, something Ben apparently knows nothing about), California appears to be twice as good as Texas. Not just in football, but life in general.
Not only does California boast the greatest high school football program in the world- Concord De La Salle, who had their infinity-game win streak snapped last season- but the Golden State consistently churns out better people than Texas. Case in point: Four people were shot during a Texas high school football game.
Ben tells the story of a high school football rivalry gone wrong. I was going to top his tale by making up something about the time somebody carried out an anthrax attack on my school’s junior varsity team because the game meant THAT MUCH, but I’ll refrain. Shootings over football may seem normal to Mr. Young, but being obsessed with mediocre football is definitely not. As you can see, the gloves have come off.
Now that we’ve taken care of the kids, it’s time to get to the most important part of Ben’s misguided diatribe: his hair-brained idea that University of Texas Longhorns could beat the mighty University of Southern California Trojans.
This really got my dander up, so much so that I just used the word “dander.” Apparently Ben hasn’t watched television in the past two years. Otherwise he would have never said anything that blasphemous.
I’ll take you back less than a year ago, to January. If you remember, that was the night USC trampled the school Ben loves to hate, University of Oklahoma, 55-14 in front of several thousand slack-jawed yokels who said Big XII football is the cream of the crop.
Now, I could do some association and talk about how Oklahoma laid that ugly 12-0 beatdown on the Longhorns, meaning USC would have beaten Texas 55 to 12, but I won’t.
Ben would say it’s a new year and things have changed for both teams, and he’d be partly right.
Some things do change, but not necessarily in the Land of Troy. Matt Leinart is back. Reggie Bush is back. LenDale White is back. Dwayne Jarrett is back. Darnell Bing is back. I think you get my drift.
USC has so many NFL-caliber players on the roster that one could make a decent argument that USC could take down a couple pro teams. In fact, the Chicago Bears look like a team that the Trojans would manhandle, especially because the Bears went brain dead in the draft and took UT grad Cedric Benson as its fourth overall pick. That has obviously turned out great for both parties.
Texas simply doesn’t match up well with the Trojans. UT quarterback Vince Young is so inaccurate that it would be difficult for him to (cliché alert) throw a penny into the ocean. Texas has no go-to running back, and their wide receivers can’t catch. What exactly makes them a great team again? Oh, that’s right, defense. That same defense gave up 22 points to an Ohio State team with quarterbacks so bad that head coach Jim Tressel would bench them both in favor of himself if he were eligible.
The verdict? USC would crush Texas in any stadium on any day. If they met in the Rose Bowl in January, UT would learn the valuable less on that if you mess with a Trojan, you’re going to get creamed. Unfortunately for the Longhorns, OU coach Bob Stoops will once again find a way to send Texas to a one-loss season, dashing any Rose Bowl hopes Texas had.
OK, I’m done. Ben and I will mend our relationship and continue to be hetero life partners. Unfortunately a week from now I will be hunted down by some criminally insane cowboy who will shout something about “messing with Texas” right before he thrashes me. Such is my fate for telling the truth.
Submitted 09-15-2005
MALIBU, CA
