RANKING THE STATE

Texas Division I Football Rankings:

Cory De La Guardia
Dec 5, 2019, 6:31 am

Born with a comic book in one hand and a remote control in the other, Cory DLG is the talent of Conroe's very own Nerd Thug Radio and Sports. Check out the podcast replay of the FM radio show at www.nerdthugradio.com!

12. UTEP

This wasn't their year and it ends even worse for these guys, losing to Rice. The Miners won one game over three months ago against Divison II Houston Baptist, and it's been a long season since then, but blissfully it's over.

11. RICE

Unbelievably we're here at the end of the season and Rice is sitting better here than they were at the end of the year last year. Improvement and growth is always the name of the game when you're bringing a program back from the dead and they did it here. Congrats Rice.

10. NORTH TEXAS

​Another week, another disappointing loss. While the odds were tilted slightly in favor of UNT, I didn't believe for a second this team would finish strong after losing to Rice last week. Honestly this is a program trending badly and trending in a bad direction, it would surprise me if there aren't talks of maybe changing play calling duties or coordinator responsibilities because what was working in the beginning is no longer working at all for these guys.

9. TEXAS STATE

This was a tough loss for a program that was trying to get right. Coming off the Appalachian State game where they weren't supposed to win at all, it's hard to believe this is a program that only a few weeks ago had managed to win big, but they had. Since then they've struggled to get leads and pull away from teams and this week was no different. A bad season is just good enough for fourth place in the Sun Belt West.

8. UTSA

That was a meaty loss to a better program. It's tough to be too critical of a program or say too many mean things when ultimately they weren't supposed to win this game or too many of the other ones they've been playing lately and perhaps it's time to re-evaluate where we consider The Roadrunners? Maybe next year, we'll start them much lower and just see how high they can rise.

7. TEXAS TECH

Well they certainly didn't come close to "getting" the Longhorns. A season that will be remembered for its close calls and almost wins ended on a heck of a thud with an old fashioned beating at the hands of Texas. Mercifully the season is over and The Red Raiders can stop looking back and thinking about what almost was.

6. HOUSTON

To score 41 in a loss has to be heartbreaking but to lose by 15 has to hurt a little more. Houston is now mercifully done, we'll see what happens with the redshirted quarterback now, we'll see what happens with this program coming into the off season. Will things start to trend a little better or is this rough season a sign of things to come under the new regime?

5. TCU

This is a confusing season for these guys, there's no way going 5-7 is a good feeling but considering how angry the back half of their schedule looked at one point, I think it's a good year. The loss to West Virginia isn't great but honestly there are some other games they should be more disappointed about. I think the Oklahoma game is a big one where there is some obvious disappointment. Yes they finished below .500 but they played good football at times and just managed to play bad football at the worst possible times.

4.  TEXAS

Well, well, well. Look who is feeling themselves again. The Longhorns haven't looked that good since they played Rice early on in the season. The desperately needed the win to clinch a winning season and now there are some people clamoring for a Academy Sports and Outdoors Texas Bowl between Texas and A&M which would be exciting but it's tough to gauge how Texas fans would handle losing this game considering how heartbreaking this season has been so far.

3. TEXAS A&M

Man that was a bad game against LSU. The Aggies have been defended all season long for the fact that their schedule is so tough, but in a lot of these games they've come up short. It's one thing to schedule the game but another to just go out there and play bad football. I still think their season is one worth celebrating but this kind of poor performance is not the thing to go out on.

2. SMU

This is the way you finish a season. The SMU Mustangs deserve all the accolades and kind words that can be said about them. They deserve all the great things and praise that are hopefully coming their way this off season. It's been a long road from the Death Penalty to here and it's worth celebrating. Congrats guys!

1. BAYLOR

Currently ranked ninth in the country and looking up at a top four that will likely only feature one SEC program this was the best chance for a program like Baylor to get into the dance. That one loss to Oklahoma isn't going to go away, record setting comeback in a situation where the win was needed. Now because of that one loss, the committees and voters don't have to put Baylor anywhere near the top 4.

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Texans mock draft season is in full swing, and no one is happy

Saying people get carried away is an understatement. Composite image by Jack Brame.


It's early April. Spring has sprung. Birds are chirping. We're experiencing the last few days of temps in the 60s. Allergies are running rampant and causing havoc. It's also in the prime of the NFL offseason. The new league year has started. Free agency has been in full effect for about a month or so. All the top guys have been signed. Vets have been cut for cap casualty purposes, or to make room for newer/cheaper talent. It's also draft season, and you know what that means!

ESPN 97.5's own Lance Zierlein put out his mock draft 3.0 for the 2023 NFL Draft. Per the usual, fans of just about all 32 teams were ready to do awful things to LZ. The things they said were even worse! Two of his 27 kids joined in on the beatdown! Our crack staff at Gow Media captured the segment from The Bench with John and Lance where the guys played audio of an AI voice reading the mean tweets:

There's something about a mock draft that sets people off. I'm not sure why. If you look at the adjective definition of mock, it states: not authentic or real, but without the intention to deceive. People tend to forget that part of the term “mock draft” and take it way too serious. They act as if this mock draft is a prediction, or a spoiler. As if these draft analysts are somehow inside the war rooms and meetings; taking the info they absorb from talking to coaches, scouts, and GMs; then formulating their mock drafts. I can assure you this is FAR from the truth.

Do some of these draft analysts pass on their mocks as gospel? Of course they do! They have egos just like any other paid professional. Do they take their jobs too seriously? Absolutely. If you don't believe in you, why would you expect anyone else to believe in you? Do they get sensitive when called out? Yes. I would too if some of you responded the way you do. Threatening people, making personal attacks, and cyber-bullying are very real. Some take it way too far.

One thing I want to emphasize is this: the people who do this for a living will get it wrong more than they get it right. LZ and I have had these discussions on and off since like 2009/2010. He once told me if you can predict the pick, player, and team eight to ten times out of the 32 picks in the first round, you're doing great. I got about six or seven right one year and acted like my bleep didn't stink! Others hated and only wanted to talk about how many I missed. They, too, missed the whole point.

I often wonder why people dislike draft analysts and mock drafts. My old co-host/mentor/great friend Craig Shelton (RIP) and I would regularly get into heated debates over draft analysts and stuff. We'd agree to disagree, then get into it again! His stance was that they don't know what they're talking about, since they can't accurately predict how it'll go. He also felt many would blame teams for doing something different and make it seem as if the analyst was smarter than the actual teams making the picks. While there are draft analysts out there like that, many are here to provide insight into what teams could possibly do.

One thing I know about LZ is he prides himself more on his player evaluations than his mocks. He's responsible for writing the evaluations you see on NFL.com and on NFL Network. That's what he thinks of all the players that are draft eligible. He has to study their game film and make the best assessment possible on their projected potential at the next level. Imagine doing this for well over 300 players over the course of about a year, sometimes more, only for some schlub on Twitter to tell you they think you should be fired for having the Raiders not draft a quarterback in the first round?

Weather forecasters get the weather wrong every day! Yet, we still go back to them every day to see what the weather will be like. Computers often fail us. Yet we use them every day. Our smartphones frequently do dumb things. Yet we won't give up on them either. People will often disappoint us. Yet we will give them chance after chance. My question is: why do we give draft analysts so much grief? Especially over something we're supposed to enjoy? I think it's time we start looking in the mirror and realizing we allow ourselves to get too worked up over something that's meant to entertain and help inform. Weed out the fakes, phonies, and pay attention to the ones who actually give a damn about their work.

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