Monthly Archives: December 2005

Get ready for the inevitable public money request for the Astrodome redevelopment project

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TexanAtriumNight_large.jpgFollowing on this post from earlier this year, this Bill Murphy/Chronicle story updates developments in regard to the seemingly delusional plan to convert the Astrodome into a Gaylord Texan-type one-stop destination hotel for conventioneers and their families.
Astrodome Redevelopment Co., the developer of the project, envisions a 1,200-room hotel, a winding indoor waterway with small tour boats, mill wheels, walkways and lush landscaping. The developer is currently finalizing its redevelopment plan and a letter-of-intent to be delivered to the Harris County Sports & Convention Corp. next month. If Harris County signs off on the letter of intent, then the developer would attempt to secure financing for the half-billion dollar project, not an easy task in Houston’s already soft hotel market that includes a relatively new 1,200 room downtown convention center hotel that has had anything but robust occupancy. At the same time, the developer will probably look to obtain a substantial financing subsidy from Harris County in the form of a long-term lease on the facility.

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Why didn’t Bob McNair consider Ditka?

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ditka-m.jpgI wonder if this is the reason why Texans owner Bob McNair didn’t consider former Bears and Saints coach Mike Ditka before hiring Dan Reeves as a consultant to evaluate the state of the Texans?
Ah, the indiscretions of our youth. Hat tip to Eric McErlain for the Ditka link.

The Onion’s top sports stories of 2005

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onionsports_team.article.jpgThe Onion includes several Texas-related entries in its satirical end-of-the-year list of the top sports stories of 2005:

Apr. 5óThe Baylor women’s basketball team defeats Michigan State to win the NCAA women’s championship, showing the nation and their own university what a Baylor team can do when it works hard, plays as a team, and does not conspire to murder one another.
Dec. 11óThe Houston Texans, searching desperately for a way to improve and threatened by the potential for awfulness displayed by the Green Bay Packers, voluntarily forfeit the remainder of the 2005 season in order to draft Heisman Trophy-winning running back Reggie Bush of USC.
Dec. 12óUSC Trojans running back Reggie Bush announces that he has done much soul-searching and has decided to stay in school in order to complete his college degree, lead the Trojans to another national championship, and avoid playing for the Houston Texans.

Ouch! And while on the subject of tough football seasons, this Ebay seller’s idea — if successful — could generate a flood of similar offers from Houston Texan fans. 12/28/05 Update: And here is the rest of the story.

Well, “Lonesome Dove” was kind of a love story between two cowboys, too

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brokeback.jpgYou’ve probably heard by now about Brokeback Mountain, the new movie based on the Annie Proulx book about how a secret homosexual relationship between two cowboys plays out over the years. Inasmuch as Larry McMurtry — author of the incomparable Lonesome Dove novel and later mini-series — helped write the screenplay for Brokeback, that fact and the generally strong initial reviews are good enough to prompt me to include the film in my holiday movie-going.
But even if Brokeback does not sound like your cup of tea, don’t miss this clever review of the film by a gay man trying to reassure heterosexual males about the film’s merit, which leads me to believe that this recent overheard conversation is taking place in many other places around the country in addition to New York City.

What Starts Here Changes the World

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UT Tower_beacon.jpgThe University of Texas is on quite a roll these days, and in more ways that simply its national championship-caliber football team.
UT just rolled out its innovative new advertising campaign, a series of nine 30 second commercials with the theme ìWhat Starts Here Changes the Worldî narrated by former CBS anchoman and UT alum Walter Cronkite. The ads — which were developed by UT’s Office of Public Affairs and the Center for Brand Research in concert with GSD&M Advertising — emphasize how the UT and Austin communities “together forge a dynamic, creative and diverse community that few American cities can match.” UT will use the ads primarily during televised NCAA sporting events, where the networks provide the participating universities some free air time in each such telecast.
My favorite: “Breakfast Tacos.”

What does “Franchione” mean?

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darnell.jpgIt’s no secret in these parts that Texas A&M head football coach Dennis Franchione had a bad season, not something to take lightly in terms of job security in the football-dominated culture of College Station, Texas. So, after Franchione fired his defensive coordinator at the end of the season, the conventional wisdom was that Franchione would hire a big name coach as the new A&M defensive coordinator, particularly given A&M’s willingness to pay top dollar for an assistant coach who would revive the long-dormant Wrecking Crew defense.
Well, suffice it to say that Franchione’s hire — his old friend and oft-fired coach Gary Darnell — is not exactly what most Aggie fans had in mind as the solution to revive the flagging A&M program. Darnell has been out of football entirely the past year after being fired as head coach at Western Michigan. Moreover, Darnell was previously the source of much angst among Texas Longhorn fans when his unaggressive “read and react” defense that he instituted while serving as Longhorn defensive coordinator from 1994-96 was one of the primary reasons that former Longhorn coach John Mackovic was fired after the 1997 season and remains one of the most unpopular Texas football coaches in history. Darnell’s tenure as Texas defensive coordinator included the Horns’ defense giving up over 30 points five times in 1994, as well as such embarrassments as the 55-27 pasting that Notre Dame laid on the Horns in 1995 and the lopsided 38-15 Longhorn defeat to Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl after the 1996 season. Just to put the icing on the cake, Darnell was also the college coach of currently underachieving Houston Texans linebacker Jason Babin, on whom the team wasted a first round draft choice.
Thus, with that backdrop, it was not particularly surprising that I received a phone call yesterday from a friend who is an ardent Longhorn fan. While chortling about Franchione’s hiring of Darnell, he passed along the following :

Q: “What does ‘Franchione’ mean in English?”
A: “Mackovic.”

Early betting on the ConocoPhillips-Burlington Resources deal

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ConocoPhillips2.jpgWell, there has been almost a week’s worth of bets on the proposed ConocoPhillips – Burlington Resources merger, and those bets have been decidedly against ConocoPhillips.
Since Monday, ConocoPhillips shares have been hammered, closing yesterday at $58.77, which is down almost 7% since the proposed merger was announced. Moreover, Houston-based investment bank Sanders Morris Harris and A. G. Edwards both downgraded ConocoPhillips stock to a “hold” from their pre-merger announcement “buy” recommendation. As noted in this earlier post, the ConocoPhillips play for Burlington runs contrary to traditional big energy company policy toward such mergers during times of high energy prices.
Responding to this market skepticism, ConocoPhillips chairman and CEO James Mulva conceded yesterday in public comments that the company is paying “a full price” for Burlington, but that “access to quality long-term resources has become much more difficult and expensive. We are in an extremely competitive environment and a portfolio of assets of Burlington’s quality cannot be replicated.” Mr. Mulva also noted that ConocoPhillips is analyzing whether to use hedges to “either lock in prices or mitigate the potential downside of a reduction in gas prices.” Finally, Mr. Mulva predicted excess cash flow would allow ConocoPhillips to reduce the relatively high debt-to-capital ratio that it is taking on to make the deal to between 18% to 23% by the end of 2006.

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We’re number one!

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We're no 1.gifUnfortunately, I’m not talking about Texas winning the BCS National Football Championship.
Rather, the American Tort Reform Association has named the Texas Rio Grande Valley and Gulf Coast region as the number one “judicial hell-hole” for 2005. The ATRA describes a judicial hell-hole in the following manner:

Judicial Hellholes are places that have a disproportionately harmful impact on civil litigation. Litigation tourists, guided by their personal injury lawyers, seek out these places because they know they will produce a positive outcome – an excessive verdict or settlement, a favorable precedent, or both.

Hat tip to Walter Olson for the link.

We don’t really want true health insurance

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medical tools.jpgClear Thinkers favorite Arnold Kling has been doing extensive research on health care finance issues over the past couple of years and, as noted in this insightful TCS Daily op-ed, he is coming to the conclusion that one of the main problems with the U.S. health care finance system is that most Americans simply do not want to pay for true health insurance:

What we are left with, then, is that people do not want real health insurance. I would gladly take a health insurance policy with a $10,000 deductible per individual, and I suspect that many of my wise, risk-averse TCS readers would, too. But we are in a tiny minority! Most people do not want to be responsible for the first $10,000 in medical expenses, and most people believe that an insurance policy that is expected to pay no claims 95 percent of the time is a bad deal.

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The extinction of the one-iron

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oneiron_275.jpgI’ve been looking at hybrid golf clubs this holiday season as a possible gift for one of my relatives, so I enjoyed this this Jason Sobol article on the demise of the one-iron, which is one of the most difficult golf clubs to hit well and the reason why the easier-to-hit hybrid clubs are replacing the one-iron in most golfers bags. Sobol notes the late Pulitzer Prize-winning LA Times sportswriter Jim Murray‘s classic lament about the futility of hitting a one-iron:

“The only time I ever took out a 1-iron was to kill a tarantula, and I took a 7 to do that.”