The magnificent Fightin’ Texas Aggie Marching Band is preparing to invade San Diego for Thursday night’s Holiday Bowl game between the Aggies and the University of California-Berkeley, and this Brent Schrotenboer/San Diego Union Tribune article captures the culture war that will be one of the themes of this particular game. To put it mildly, College Station — the home of Texas A&M — will never be mistaken for Berkeley. A few of the other differences between the two institutions that the article notes:

School bosses:
Texas A&M: The school president, Robert Gates, was recently chosen by President Bush to supervise the war in Iraq as the new Secretary of Defense.
Cal: Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, a native of Toronto, lists on his curriculum vitae an editorial he once wrote for the Toronto Star entitled ìCelebrating Sexual Diversity.î
Food:
Texas A&M: Several places serve well-cooked dead animals in College Station, especially C&J Barbecue, which serves jalapeÒo cheese sausage, pork loin and ribs.
Cal: The Free Speech Movement Cafe at the library boasts that its ìcoffee is Fair Trade and organic, and tea is organic and Fair Trade when possible. The menu is a manifestation of the ideals inherent in the Free Speech Movement … through this philosophy, students become conscious that their choice for food is a political choice as well.î
Campus faces:
Texas A&M: Football games are attended by former President George H.W. Bush, whose presidential library is located on campus.
Cal: A student became known as ìThe Naked Guyî in the 1990s by attending classes nude.
Guns:
Texas A&M: The school boasts of its Metzger-Sanders gun collection, one of the state’s largest, with more than 600 firearms and accessories. ìThe collection is host to thousands of visitors every year and serves as a point of discussion and study to gun enthusiasts,î according to the exhibit’s Web site.
Cal: More than 88 percent of Berkeley freshmen agreed to a 2004 survey question that stated ìthe federal government should do more to control the sale of handguns.î
Girls:
Texas A&M: The school was all-male for several decades. It didn’t open its doors to women students until 1963, on a limited basis. Full admission for women began in 1971, with the Corps of Cadets first allowing women to join in 1974.
Cal: The first female student enrolled in 1870. One its most famous former students is Betty Friedan, co-founder of the National Organization of Women, and author of the 1963 book ìThe Feminist Mystique.î
Curriculum:
Texas A&M: Students can take a class called ìAmphibious Warfare.î
Cal: Students can enroll in ìIntroduction to Nonviolence.î
Military history:
Texas A&M: The school opened in 1876 as the Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) College of Texas, with mandated military training. Its Corps of Cadets remains the largest uniformed body of students in the nation outside the U.S. service academies, according to its Web site.
Cal: Students formed the epicenter of the antiwar movement in the 1960s as the Vietnam War raged on. In 1965, hundreds tried to stop trains of troops by standing on the tracks in West Berkeley. More than 800 students were arrested at the school’s administration building in 1964, ending their massive sit-in protest of the school’s policies concerning academic freedom and free speech.
Politics:
Texas A&M: In Brazos County, home of A&M, Bush, the Republican, won 70 and 69 percent of the vote in the 2000 and 2004 elections, respectively.
Cal: In Alameda County, home of Cal, it was almost the mirror opposite. John Kerry, the Democrat, won 75 percent of the vote in Alameda County in 2004, up from the 69 percent won by Democrat Al Gore in 2000.

Texans 27 Colts 24

There really is a Santa Claus after all.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the Texans (5-10) dug down and showed some pride as they exploited the Colts (11-4) poor run defense to control the clock and pull out a thrilling Christmas Eve victory at Reliant Stadium. After knocking off the Colts for the first time in ten games, the Texans now have an opportunity to fulfill my pre-season prediction of six wins for the team if they can knock off the Browns (4-11) next weekend at Reliant.

Troy 41 Rice 17

The Owls (7-6) storybook season came to a close with a trouncing at the hands of the Troy Trojans in the New Orleans Bowl. The loss was not really a surprise as I did not give the Owls much of a chance without their injured QB, Chase Clement. But the defeat did not take any of the luster off of the Owls great season, which vindicated my early season belief that the Owls were going to cause headaches for most opposing teams this season if they could survive a brutal early-season schedule. Things are definitely looking up on the gridiron over at Rice.

That was the question that one of my sons asked me incredulously yesterday. With the Texans generating no positive buzz in their hometown, not many folks really care much about watching or talking about the Texans. Thus, casual fans such as my son are surprised that the team is still playing.
The game today against the Colts will likely be one of the final chapters of the David Carr saga in Houston. The Texans made a mistake in using the franchise’s first draft choice and the first overall draft pick in the 2002 NFL Draft on Carr at a time in which the team should have been stockpiling draft picks and players to build depth at all positions. The Texans compounded that mistake by not building a competent offensive line to protect Carr, which resulted in Carr being hit more than a punching bag by opposing defenses. As a result, Carr never developed the pocket presence or recognition skills in reading opposing defenses to succeed as an NFL quarterback. With his development in those areas stunted, he is no longer the Texans QB of the future and frankly, needs to go to a team that has a competent offensive line so that he can attempt to salvage his NFL career.
Carr’s defenders often point out that his NFL passing rating is really not all that bad, currently 13th among the 32 starting NFL QB’s. However, as with batting average in baseball, the NFL passing rating is a highly misleading standard to evaluate QB’s. As noted several times earlier, the folks over at the Wages of Wins have developed a far superior statistical model for for evaluating QB’s and, based on that standard, the bottom has really fallen out of Carr’s season. After meandering around 20th among the 32 starting NFL QB’s for most of the season, Carr has slid to 29th among the 32 starting NFL QB’s for the season, including individual week rankings of 31st and 34th (a couple of backups also played that week) over two of the past three weeks.
As noted earlier, Carr is a fine young man, so it’s too bad that it has not worked out for him in Houston. However, Saints QB Drew Brees is one of the top-ranked QB’s in the NFL this season and he is essentially a contemporary of Carr (Brees is in his sixth season, Carr is in his fifth) who was placed in a similarly difficult position with his initial team as Carr was here. The bottom line is that Brees developed while Carr has not. In the dog-eat-dog world of the NFL, that lack of development will be what buys Carr a ticket out of Houston.

It’s been a tough month for Texas Longhorn faithful.
First, there was the demoralizing loss to Kansas State, which knocked the Horns out of any chance for a rematch with Ohio State in the BCS National Championship game. Then, the Horns laid an egg against arch-rival Texas A&M, allowing the Aggies to win their first game in that hallowed series in seven years. That bitter loss has prompted some good natured ribbing of Longhorn fans, who were due to descend a notch or two after last season’s magic national championship run.
However, leave it to ESPN college football commentator Desmond Howard to make things right again in Longhorn country. Seems as if Desmond is a little confused about which team from Texas is playing in the Holiday Bowl this year. So, when in doubt, Howard falls back on the one team from Texas that everyone knows. ;^)

This previous post introduced Navy head football coach Paul Johnson, who is a throwback to an earlier era before media relations reps and banal press releases. Coach Johnson took some questions the other day as he prepares the Midshipman to play Boston College in the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte on Dec. 30:

Q: You seem a little perturbed. Can I ask you why?
Johnson: Yeah, we didn’t practice very well.
Q: You had told me originally that you would only go full pads the first couple of days, but it looks like you are going to do a little more full pad work.
Johnson: Yep. We will probably go full pads every day right up to the game.
Q: Why is that?
Johnson: We haven’t exactly practiced the way I thought we should.
Q: Anything in particular you’re seeing?
Johnson: We are lackadaisical and have no focus. Other than that it’s been OK.
Q: Does hitting wake them up a little bit?
Johnson: I don’t know. It hasn’t yet, but it makes me feel better. I can’t him them, but they can hit each other.[. . .]

A little more entertaining than the typical platitudes emanating from most head football coaches these days, don’t you think? Considering how he has turned the Navy program around, I cannot understand what Alabama is waiting for — Coach Johnson would be an instant hit at Bama.

As noted in this post from earlier in the fall, the University of Texas began the next stage of its master redevelopment plan for D.K. Royal Memorial Stadium immediately after the Horns’ final home game of the season against the Aggies.
This stage involves destroying the “horseshoe,” the part of the stadium that wound around the north side. The horseshoe was built in 1926 for $125,000, but it is a remnant of the days when the stadium also served as a track stadium, so the seats in the horseshoe were far from the field and not a particularly good place to watch a football game. Thus, the horseshoe will be replaced with a new end zone facility that will be much closer to the field of play and, of course, include the ubiquitous ring of club boxes. The end zone seats will be finished in time for next season and the club boxes will be completed in time for the 2008 season.
By the way, once UT got crackin’, it didn’t take long to knock out the old horseshoe, as the time-lapse photo sequence below reflects:

As this Brent Zwerneman/San Antonio Express-News article reports,Texas Aggie non-scholarship football player Ben Bitner walks to the beat of a different drummer:

Texas A&M football player Ben Bitner’s long hair and serene manner earned him the nickname “Baby Jesus” from a teammate.
And in a tale of biblical proportions, two years ago Bitner found himself with no room at the inn.
After a dispute with a roommate over bills, Bitner, a nonscholarship junior defensive back for A&M, moved out of a house in College Station following the Aggies’ appearance in the Jan. 1, 2005 Cotton Bowl.
For a year and a half, Bitner didn’t have a place to stay. He lived under creek bridges on the A&M campus, in a fort he built in the woods near the school’s golf driving range and anywhere he could stretch his hammock or lay his sleeping bag around Aggieland.
When he wasn’t finding shadowy crannies to catch some shuteye ó “Out of sight, out of mind,” he said ó Bitner was attending classes as a history major and excelling on the Aggies’ scout team. The 5-foot-3, 160-pounder from Round Rock has played in two games this year as a member of the kickoff squad.
“I guess I’m not that smart of a guy,” said Bitner, who’s finally living in a house again. “But it was enjoyable. I slept better then than I sleep now. I didn’t have to worry about cleaning up after myself or paying bills. It suited me just fine.” [. . .]
Bitner owned a couple sets of clothes ó “I’m not one of those guys who needs 10 different shirts,” he said ó and occasionally he simply would throw his duds in his laundry bag in the team’s locker room by Kyle Field.
He would shower and clean up in the locker room or at the school’s recreation center. At night, wherever he was curled up, campus security occasionally approached him and wondered what he was doing.
“I never tried to sleep in the same place on consecutive nights,” Bitner said. “If they ran into me, they’d ask if I was student while I’d start packing my stuff. I’d tell them, ‘Yeah, sorry, I’ll get going,’ and I’d just walk off.”
Bitner said he never minded the cold days, because his parents kept their house cold when he was growing up.
“In December, January and February, that’s when it was easiest for me to sleep outside,” Bitner said. “It was hard to sleep in the summer.” [. . .]
Starter Melvin Bullitt always drilled Bitner with one question, too, during his nomadic days.
“If you take a girl out,” Bullitt would inquire, “do you ask her, ‘Hey, want to come back to my place?'”
Explained Bitner: “Hopefully, the girl would invite me back to her place. If not, I needed to get to know her a little better before I broke the news that I was homeless. . .”

Patriots 40 Texans 7
Just when you thought it was impossible for the Texans (4-10) to stoop any lower, the Texans’ offense rolled over and played dead against the Patriots.
This one was over by Sunday morning brunch as the Texans were down 17-zip after the first quarter and 27-zip at half. Actually, the Texans’ defense did not play badly, but the Texans offense continually placed the defense in untenable positions. QB David Carr continues to look like a basket case, going 16-28 for a net 93 yards with 4 interceptions, 4 sacks and, as usual, no TD passes. I have long had doubts about Carr, but it’s becoming more certain with each passing game that Carr will not be an effective QB for the Texans. Whether it’s the constant pounding that he has taken as a result of the lack of protection from the Texans’ deficient offensive line, his poor recognition skills or his dubious leadership qualities, Carr has regressed to a point in Houston that Coach Gary Kubiak’s sideline vibes decisively indicate that he has given up on Carr.
However, as bad as Carr has been, certainly Kubiak and Texans’ owner Bob McNair have to share in the blame for the woeful state of this team. As noted earlier here, after giving up on the Casserly-Capers regime, McNair changed the management model of the Texans football operation from a strong GM model to a strong head coach model. There is nothing wrong with that, but rather than hiring an experienced head coach, McNair opted for local boy-made-good Kubiak, who had never been more than a top offensive assistant in a strong head coach model that was run by an offensive coach (Denver’s Mike Shanahan). The transition from assistant to head coach has been anything but smooth for Kubiak — the Texans’ defense has improved somewhat from last season’s disastrous unit, but the Texans’ offense is actually worse than last season’s, which was almost unimaginable before this season began. Add in the fact that Carr and the Texans’ offense have actually regressed in development under Kubiak’s tutelage, the luster of Kubiak’s reputation as an up-and-coming offensive coach has certainly been dulled.
At any rate, the Texans have two home games left to end the season, against the Colts (10-3, playing tonight) and the Browns (4-10). It looks as if the Texans’ offense has packed it in, so it’s hard to imagine that the team could beat anyone these days. But stranger things have happened. Let’s just hope that another win or two doesn’t result in a dramatic downward change in the Texans’ draft position for the 2007 NFL Draft. The Texans need all the help they can get.