Written by Adam Jones
Thursday, 05 January 2006

They did it.

You know, I do my absolute best to write an objective and unbiased look at college football from a national perspective each week. But tonight I simply don't give a damn. The Texas Longhorns are national champs.

I thought this would happen in 1977. I was ten years old and I would stake out the afternoon paper delivery boy every Tuesday. In Amarillo there was still a morning and afternoon edition of the paper long after it was fashionable in other cities. The cynical believed that it was simply so the Amarillo Daily News could sell the same content twice. During college football season, however, it was vitally important that the afternoon paper could pick up the Associated Press college football poll, which did not appear in the a.m. And in 1977 I would intercept the delivery boy and turn to the sports, where the Longhorns were number one on the strength of a victory over whatever poor bastards got in the way of Earl Campbell. The story didn't have a happy ending however. Notre Dame 35, Texas 10 in the Cotton Bowl.

Written by Adam Jones
Thursday, 15 December 2005

I drive across the Enfield bridge over Lamar street every day on the way to work. As you approach the bridge, the pink dome of the State Capitol appears, seemingly out of nowhere, with postcard-perfect morning light behind it. I'm not so jaded; it still gives me a warm feeling in my heart. On the other hand, it's only my second-favorite landmark. That's because, to the right of the bridge, sits House Park Field. House Park has hosted high school football games since 1939. The old gal looks every bit of her 66 years and, allegedly, seats 6000 - they had better be skinny. My two youngest took in their very first football game at House Park this season. That night was filled with wonder. McCallum beat Lanier and B's babysitter turned in a helluva performance as the McCallum drum major - they went to state this year, you know. The stadium buzzed with the energy of hundreds of teenagers on a Friday night. Nothing else in life really approximates that feeling. But those feelings fade. On this morning, a man in khaki coveralls and a black watch cap slowly moves through the bleachers at House Park with a leaf blower. He removes, re-circulates and re-organizes all manner of debris from all manner of events. McCallum v. Lanier is just another box score, another piece of historical debris. There won't be another football game played at House Park this year, nor in most of the rest of the House Park Fields around the country.

Written by Adam Jones
Tuesday, 06 December 2005

Bored at work? Or are you just depressed that in college football, as opposed to any other sport, we all are forced to sit around and wait a month between the end of the season and the next meaningful game anyone plays? To combat that depression, I give you the first annual JonesTop Ten Best of the Season column. Here's my year in college football for 2005.

FAVORITE LINES
Great literature? No way, but I do hope you find something you like every week. Here are my favorites.

"...the BCS settled on Harris Interactive to create for them a new poll of 114 former players, administrators, coaches, trainers, cheerleaders and at least one sousaphone player who once dotted the "i" for the Ohio State band." - season preview

Written by Adam Jones
Sunday, 04 December 2005

Uhm, OK. Really, I don't have much to write. I guess I could get in a couple of paragraphs about perhaps the least competitive day of the college football season - on championship day, no less. Other than that, we might as well wait around a month for the big finish. It's not like we have playoffs to watch or anything. Sigh.

Texas blasted Colorado 70-3 to start the day and then, almost as if they had been watching the game in the locker room - and they may have been - USC throttled UCLA 66-19 just to keep Reggie Bush in the Heisman lead. UCLA was allegedly ranked 11th going into the game.

Written by Adam Jones
Sunday, 27 November 2005

Santa now appears in commercials. Not as window dressing -- you know the shot at the end of a spot where he winks at the camera or you see him fly off into the night on his sled -- but as a real character. This I can't take. Santa apparently stops taking present orders at the mall to walk across to one of those slick, corporate, "how much can we get away with marking this up?" guilt-inducing jewelry stores to pick up a sapphire anniversary ring for Mrs. Claus for $499 plus tax. Now, why, I ask you, does a man who employs thousands of skilled craftsmen for basically room and board require Kay Jewelers to ensure the wife has something under the tree? It may be that things aren't so hot at the Arctic Circle for ol' Santa. He plays second banana to a goose in the last Aflac commercial. Kringle is also picking up some extra change shilling for big auto. Apparently he's got an ongoing argument with the guy in the Chevy red tag suit. Both big guys in red, both offering up all kinds of discounts, making people happy, obvious rivals. But come on, this is Santa Claus here. He's the man. And he's arguing with a guy dressed as a price tag. What's next? Jesus comparing car insurance rates?

Written by Adam Jones
Sunday, 20 November 2005

We could go home. Or we could go to Lala's over on Justin. At home we will get two very small children, one of whom should be asleep and the other of whom has no regard for his parent's need for eight hours of uninterrupted quiet. At Lala's we get year-round Christmas decorations, beer in a can and a jukebox that doesn't have a single song dating past 1970. Lala's won partially because it's been a long time since I played "Hey Porter" by Johnny Cash or "Twistin' the Night Away" by Sam Cooke on a jukebox. The latter confused me as a child. I knew the song because I had older siblings (it didn't hurt that it was on the Animal House soundtrack). Sam Cooke's protagonist spends a fair amount of time "dancin' with the chick in slacks." I always assumed that he was dancin' with the "chicken slacks."  I was white bread and middle class; obviously "chicken slacks" were some mysterious clothing item from the soul underground that helped one approximate the moves of a chicken, or perhaps do the funky chicken. Or maybe they had a small chicken pattern printed on them. I did not know. Given that Lala's had a fair number of young twentysomethings on this Friday night, I wondered if some of them might be hearing Sam Cooke for the first time and perhaps they discussed the same thing.

"What the hell are chicken slacks?"

Written by Adam Jones
Sunday, 13 November 2005

It requires some serious investigation to figure out that George Killian's Irish Red is actually a product of the Adolph Coors Company of Golden Colorado. The people of Coors type their imprimatur in a tiny font on the bottom of the back label. The rest of the bottle reminds one of the old country (Ireland, not Colorado) - or at least of what some bright marketing grads from Wharton want you to believe about the old country as you sit in front of your television set on college football Saturday. Coors peddles authenticity with Killian's. If you squint hard enough, you might actually believe that what you are drinking was made by an old Irishman named George Killian in a tiny family-run emerald isle brewery.  The people of www.ratebeer.com are not fooled of course. They don't say anything bad about Killian's - exactly - they write things like: "not bad for a Coors product," or "...obviously designed for mass consumption, but it's not offensive." May I pause here and note what a great country we live in? What other nation would have invented ratebeer.com? Granted the Australians might have, but you get my point. What was my point again? Oh yes, peddling authenticity. You can't peddle authenticity to college football fans. Ours is both the worst-marketed sport and the sport in least need of marketing. Beyond the idiocy of not having a playoff (cha-ching) ask yourself why college football is the only sport where the networks can't guarantee a national television audience for a "must-see" football game. Television made the NFL and it rescued the NBA, but college football was made long before Roone Arledge was born. We are going to go to the games regardless of the marketing campaign. Because we always have. Especially in Tuscaloosa.

LSU 16, Alabama 13