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.

It’s the lull before the onslaught of the college football bowl games, but football still permeates the culture of Texas as the high school playoffs move toward conclusion, the Cowboys contend for an NFL playoff berth and the Texans prepare for the 2007 NFL draft. The following are a few interesting football-related items that I noticed over the past week:
Dallas native and longtime Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt died after a long bout with cancer. Chronicle NFL columnist John McClain recalls a funny story about a meeting between Hunt, Bud Adams and legendarily crusty Chicago Bears owner George Halas at the time that Hunt and Adams were starting the old American Football League in the early 1960’s.
Despite the Texans’ problems, it’s reassuring to know that owner Bob McNair does not panic.
Chronicle sportswriter Dale Robertson reports on the remarkable success story that is the Southlake Carroll Dragons football program (the cheerleading team is another matter, though).
In this interesting column ($), the Wall Street Journal’s resident stathead, Allen St. John, makes a stab at objectively evaluating the pass protection of NFL teams. In so doing, he comes up with a stat that he calls the Sack Factor, which takes the sack yardage a team allows and divides it by the number of pass attempts. The lower the number, the better the protection. Although he finds a correlation between good teams and a low Sack Factor, the statistic needs some refinement — the Texans pass protection, which is hideous, does not rate as one of the worst in the NFL, probably because the Texans’ passing game is based on short, ineffectual pass routes that limit sacks as much as possible.
The lovable Ida Mae Crimpton pens her latest column from her porch in Elgin on her beloved Texas Longhorns’ preparations for the Alamo Bowl against the Iowa Hawkeyes. As Ida Mae observes, “Boy, whoever said it isn’t far from the castle to the outhouse sure knew what they were talking about.”
And finally, don’t miss Matt Damon’s hilarious impersonation of Longhorn fan Matthew McConaughey on a recent Letterman show. As Clear Thinkers favorite Dan Jenkins might say, “Dead Solid Perfect!”