College Football: The Red River......whatever.

When UT-Austin and Oklahoma-Norman play tackle football it's always a big week. People in my generation grew up calling it the Red River Shootout, but the woke folks over at ESPN have decided that such things are no longer allowed.

So, we have had the Red River Showdown, Rivalry and a host of other names, none of them which have stuck.

What we do know is that it's a pretty big rivalry game (yes, we still miss UT-Austin vs. aTm on Thanksgiving) that's pretty much appointment viewing because something weird is going to happen.

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I've decided, moving forward, to get rid of the FIVE.  One of the big reasons is that I'm not comfortable being forced to pick 5 games.  There are weekends where I have more than five, and some where I only have one or two that I really like. So I'm replacing that little experiment with this, an overview of the weekend at hand, I'll share some things that I'm considering but offer no picks.

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Tonight I like Houston.  I grabbed them at -4.5 early in the week and the line has since moved to -6.5 or -7, but I still like them against Tulane. After stubbing their toe against Tortilla Tech in the season opener the Cougars have started to get things together and, especially on defense, are starting to get on a roll.

I also like Temple as a big dog (+29 currently) against a Cincinnati team that I think is going to have a "we just beat Notre Dame team in their house" hangover.  I don't like Temple to win, but I do like them to cover comfortably.

Another play that I'm really liking is Stanford +13 against Arizona State. The Cardinal are a good team, not a great team, that can stay close to other good teams as are the Sun Devils. I'm still not a believer in the fighting Herm Edwards.

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Aside from those three games I think Michigan State (-6) is light against Rutgers as is Louisville (-2.5) vs a Virginia team whose defense cannot stop a hard-charging Jr. High Marching Band.

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Outside of the Red River game, the rest of the schedule does not pop-out to the eye, on paper. It's during weeks like this however that college football endlessly surprises.

Good luck however you bet.

1 October

 I remember sitting at home in Houston this night, four years prior. 1 October, 2017.

It was a normal night, Mrs. TPM and I were at home watching college football, I was on Twitter when I started seeing the tweets that there were some shootings in Las Vegas.  At first, as is usual in a chaotic situation, there was confusion, misinformation and panic. As cell-phone video and news reports started to filter out we realized that something very bad was happening.

We stayed up until around 4AM that morning, refreshing Twitter and trying to make sense of what was going on.  We knew it was bad, we did not yet know just how bad it was going to be.

When that deranged individual executed his plan, it forever changed the lives of Millions, but especially the ones in the families he left behind. Those that he deprived of fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, family members.

For the rest of us he reminded us that, even in our happy place of Las Vegas, we're never truly safe. As long as there are deranged individuals out there we go forward by the grace of God.

In the aftermath I sort of tuned out the news as the usual political mumbo-jumbo took hold. Those who use these things to forward their political agendas, forwarded their political agendas. Many stories were written, foolishly, about how video poker is the crack cocaine of gambling etc. Guns were, of course, the enemy, as was Las Vegas itself, by the National media that is.

For the rest of us, the normal among us, it was a tragedy, one that still lives with us, even if we weren't there.  The Vegas bubble had been broken, and their was no rebuilding it.

Today, even 4 years later, I cannot walk past the Mandalay Bay hotel without looking up where the window was, and thinking about it just a little. But we need to keep travelling and keep visiting places we love.

While the terrorists certainly won after 9/11 we cannot let the crazy win after 1 October.

We are, always #VegasStrong.