Daily Archives: October 5, 2006

Runnin’ with the Dogs at Texas-OU Weekend

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Texas-OU.jpgThe greatest annual rivalry game in college football is renewed this Saturday in Dallas as the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners strap it on at the Cotton Bowl, and this year’s game is highlighted by a new book about the game, Mike Shropshire’s Runnin’ with the Big Dogs: The True, Unvarnished Story of the Texas-Oklahoma Football Wars (William Morrow 2006).
Shropshire’s book is rollicking fun, focusing on the classic 1967 game, which is the first game of the series that he covered. However, the author also vividly develops the culture of the game, which involves a blow-out weekend in Dallas each year during which wild-eyed fans of each team continually confront one another. Legendary coaches such as Darrell Royal, Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer are a big part of the book, as are current stellar coaches, OU’s Bob Stoops and UT’s Mack Brown. In this recent Wall Street Journal ($) review of the book, Texas Monthly’s Skip Hollandsworth observes the following about the game’s unique setting:

[T]he atmosphere is so combustible that it really makes no sense to play the game in the hometown of either team. So it’s played at a neutral site: the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. Which means that on the Friday before the game, Interstate 35 coming south from Oklahoma and north from Austin is jammed with frenzied fans, their cars, SUVs and pickups decorated with either red Boomer Sooner or orange Longhorn flags and their back windows covered with semi-obscene slogans decrying their rival’s ineptitude and lack of — how to put it? — manhood and legitimate parentage.
By the time these fans hit the city limits, horns are blowing and beer cans are flying out the windows. The fans either check into hotels (which are booked months in advance) or they barge into the homes of friends and relatives who have ill-advisedly agreed to let them stay. Soon they’re out again on Dallas’s streets, resuming the horn-blowing and can-tossing. I have some Dallas friends who are so determined to avoid the Texas-OU madness that they don’t just leave town; they leave the state.
When the game finally begins, few of these fans have had any sleep. They’re bellowing at the enemy and clutching the flasks of margaritas that they smuggled into the stadium — and those are just the grandparents. As Mr. Shropshire writes in his very entertaining history of the rivalry: “You’ll find audiences more genteel and reserved at cock fights.”

And Hollandsworth passes along one of his favorite anecdotes about the annual rivalry:

In 1976, Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer and Texas coach Darrell Royal were standing with President Gerald Ford right before the pre-game coin toss. An Oklahoma fan, standing nearby, suddenly yelled: “Hey, who are those assholes with Switzer?”

Who can’t love a game that has included players named Wahoo McDaniel (who later became popular on the pro wrestling circuit), the appropriately-named Joe Don Looney (what was the name of that remote island where he ended up?) and the majestically-named Duke Carlisle? Kick-off is at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday.

Getting off cheap

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Les Alexander.jpgThe Houston Rockets are off to Austin for pre-season training camp and, although the basketball team hasn’t achieved much lately, Rockets owner Les Alexander recently joined for the first time fellow Houston professional sports franchise owners Bob McNair (the Texans) and Drayton McLane (the Stros) on the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list. Alexander came in at no. 322 on the list with an estimated net worth of $750 mil.
Thus, some eyebrows were raised recently when this Palm Beach Post article revealed that Alexander had gotten out of his 30-year plus marriage to former wife Nanci in 2003 for a mere $150 million. That information is just now coming to light because Alexander had his attorneys obtain an improper sealing of the court records at the time of the divorce settlement.
Looks as if Alexander has done quite a bit better than the Rockets over the past few years.

The Dunn indictment

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HP logo3.JPGSo, let’s see if I’ve got this straight.
Patricia Dunn, who was probably a bit over her head in her role as chairperson of the Hewlett-Packard board of directors, uses bad judgment in authorizing an investigation into fellow board members over leaks of confidential company information. Although dubious, her judgment to proceed with the investigation is ratified by both in-house and outside counsel of the company, as well as the CEO of the company.
After it is revealed that the investigation went over-the-top in examining phone records of various folks who may have been involved in the leaks, Dunn does the right thing by owning up in public statements and before Congress regarding her role in the matter, apologizes for her lapse in judgment and resigns from the board.
Subsequently, Dunn is indicted on felony charges stemming from the affair by this bird, whose judgment is questionable, to say the least. By the way, Dunn is scheduled to start six months of chemotherapy for recurrent ovarian cancer tomorrow.
Meanwhile, with the exception of a few bloggers, the key corporate issues driving the HP affair — such as preservation of confidential company information in board deliberations and the impact of a dysfunctional board on a company — are largely ignored.
So, a question for you. Based on the foregoing, why should any businessperson in the future, who gets embroiled in a similar lapse in judgment as Dunn here, try to do the right thing or be particularly concerned about the leaking of confidential company information? What policies are the Dunn indictment supposed to encourage? Not having lapses in judgment? Not much chance of that. Perhaps it would be better to encourage people to do the right thing, such as Dunn did. But then, we wouldn’t have a need for an indictment, would we?