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!”