UTSA: Bird Season

I don’t think my son cares about Looney Tunes. I know that’s a weird thing to say, but it surprised me a little when I realized it earlier. I watched a ton of Looney Tunes growing up, it seemed like it was always playing somewhere, which is nice when you’re a kid and don’t really understand the complicated nature of cable TV programming. 

“What’s the Boomerang channel?”

“I don’t know. Shut up. Bugs Bunny just put a carrot in Marvin the Martian's gun. Let’s see what happens.”

But the one time I pulled up HBO/Max/HBO Max/We’re So Bad at Branding and showed my son some episodes, he seemed disinterested. That might be different now, a few years later. I’ll have to circle back to it and try again. Because that’s what a lot of parenting is, just trying again, failure after failure. Good parents are ok with that failure, because they feel certain they'll get it right the next time around (even though most of the time, we don't).

The Looney Tunes get that idea. Just repetitive self destruction trying to chase the one thing you think will make you happy, then building yourself back up and running at that wall again. Trying to get your rabbit friend shot by the hunter instead of you, and falling for his classic Rabbit/Duck Season bit. Chasing that roadrunner off a cliff, amazed that somehow he made it across to the other side, while you’re plummeting to the hard desert dirt below. You shake off the gun powder, you un-accordion yourself, you push the anvil away, and you keep going. Maybe that’s the relentless Millennial optimism we’re always being made fun of for. I don’t know.

I do know that’s college football in a nutshell... hyping yourself up for something that will at best escape through your fingertips, and at worst hit you in the face with a comically large wooden mallet. A very, very select few of the fans will end the season happy, and that’s a feature… not a bug. The misery is the point. That applies to most sports, but college football is particularly unique in its… looniness. Something about a sport that pits an elite 19-year old athlete against a 23-year old future B2B Salesman makes for a constant cycle of unpredictability and chaos. But that’s part of why we love it, and why we have hope. Because anything seems like it can happen, we always come back. Failure doesn’t mean you can’t do it, it just means you have to do it differently. So you buy a different ACME product or build a new weight room and feel certain you've solved it.

This time we’ll catch the bird, I just know it.

When the Aggies take the field this Saturday night against the UTSA Roadrunners as 24 point favorites, I know regardless of what happens I am preparing to run through a tunnel that is not there. It’s a mirage, an illusion that wants me to believe this season will be different. 

I’ve seen other people get through it, why can’t I?

And I say that not because I think it is impossible for the Aggies to put together an incredibly strong season, in fact all the pieces are there for something pretty special. I don’t believe in curses or fate or whatever, so I don’t think my team is necessarily doomed to mediocrity. 

It's just hard. It’s 12 games where anything can and will go wrong, and if you get through those, congrats, you might get to play a few more where MORE things can and will go wrong. It’s hard. And I don’t care. I will choose to always believe something fun and magical can happen, at least at the beginning of September.

If the Aggies cover that generous spread and walk off the field with a 30 point win? There’s no reason to think they can’t do that against everybody (They can’t).

If it’s a tight game, or God forbid one where the wrong team wins? There’s no reason to think that the issues I see in that game will plague the team all season (They will). 

You see, I will chase that elusive bird until one of us is dead. Call it childlike optimism. Call it supporting failure. Loving something that can’t love you back. Whatever. The truth is, what would that coyote do if he didn’t have that bird to run after? Sleep all day? Scratch his back on a cactus? Try not to get shot by a farmer? Or would he do what everyone else does, and find something else just as unattainable to pursue?

Piss on that.

It’s football season. Gimme my helmet… I’m running at that wall and I’ll see you on the other side.

This time, I’m going to make it.

A Song

The Aggies will be hunting Roadrunners on Saturday, and on the Monday after, some folks will be loading their shotguns, driving out in the dark of the morning, and probably sweating through their shirts by the afternoon trying to shoot some dove. I haven’t been bird hunting in years, but I always did prefer it to the quiet, cold misery I sometimes felt with my dad in the deer stand. It’s a little less serious, you're usually in a group, someone’s probably got a dog, and if you miss, well you’ll probably get another shot later. Repeated failure eventually will lead to results.

What’s better than a song about a guy trying and failing, and finding himself thankful for the friends and family and dog that are there to pick him up off the floor? I’ve seen this one performed live a couple of times now, and I swear to you when that fiddle starts in, I levitate.

How good does it feel? You belong in these hills. It's best that you let it all in.

Some Stats

It’s not terribly difficult to see why the Aggies are favored by more than 3 touchdowns in this home opener. A&M brings back so much production from last year’s offense, specifically on the offensive line and in the running back room, has a known quantity starting at QB for what feels like the first time in forever, and has overhauled a receiving corps that let them down a lot in the previous seasons. They’ll face a UTSA defense that was pretty terrible last season (107th in DSP+ and 93rd in DFEI), and lost a lot (80% of their production) off that very bad squad. Maybe a defensive overhaul was needed to correct a unit that was one of the worst in the nation at stopping big plays, but there are a lot of question marks on the depth chart in Game 1.

On defense, the Aggies will also be looking to improve at limiting explosiveness from opposing offenses. They’re replacing some NFL talent on the DL, but bring back a ton of experience in the secondary and LB group. This is a decent first test all things considered, the UTSA OL is a veteran group with a lot of starts, there is a lot of continuity in the receiver room as well (4 of their Top 5 pass catchers return), and Owen McCown really improved at QB in the second half of their 2024 season. It shouldn’t be a group that can really stress this defense, but will be a good opportunity to see how solid the Aggies are in the middle of the field, and to see what adding Lyle Hemphill to the staff and having Elko more in control of the defense has done for the team this offseason.

A Snack

Maybe I don’t have hunting plans this weekend, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need some ammo, so let’s make some shotgun shells. The Meat Church recipe is a pretty good jumping off point, but I think it offers some flexibility to make it your own (I like to add a little more cheese and even some cream cheese to keep it from drying out).

Meat Church Smoked Shotgun Shells

I’ve seen some complaints online that they take too much time to prepare or are not worth the hype, but I disagree with both of those takes. I think in the wake of the “le epic bacon” moments of the early 2010s, we’ve swung too far the other way and think anything wrapped in bacon is trying too hard or doing too much.

Don’t fall for the propaganda. Wrap some meat and cheese in a slice of bacon and rejoice in the fat and the sodium that weaker willed men are frightened of. God bless football, outdoor cooking, and hatch green chile season.

What Else?

It could be a really fun weekend to be a hater, with A&M opening up against an AAC opponent, while the Longhorns and LSU travel for what should be interesting road tests. Any combination of outcomes from those two games will not be surprising, and all will provide some level of delusion, schadenfreude, and entertainment for me… but I know what combination I prefer.

But before that, Friday Night Lights are back. Auburn and Baylor is one of the more interesting non-ranked matchups in Week 1, a game where the coach who most recently had to apologize for something controversial isn’t Hugh Freeze. If you’re like me, you’ve taken a small amount of pleasure in the fact that two seasons in, Freeze has the same record as the Tigers did under Bryan Harsin. It’s a make-or-break season for War Eagle, and how fun is it to start that on the road in front of 45,000 screaming Baptist virgins?* I don’t know who pulls this one off, but I love the under in a game where both teams bring back a lot on defense… especially when you have Aranda on one side and Jackson Arnold on the other.

*No shame intended, I was a Baptist virgin for a while too.

Finally to close this first post out, a brief reminder that this sport is the most cartoony thing that the Disney Mouse has a hand in...

That's all folks. See you next week.