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Mon February 4, 2013 9:10 am
Aggies Beating UT, 32-14 (in Recruiting)
By Jason Cohen

This week, it becomes official: Texas A&M will beat the University of Texas in the only football contest that the two schools currently engage in--recruiting.

As Sports Illustrated national college footballl writer Stewart Mandel put it over the weekend:

For years, recruiting in the state of Texas has played out like an unfairly weighted draft. First, that school in Austin takes its pick of 20 to 25 prospects, most of whom commit nearly a year before Signing Day. Then the state's other top programs divvy up the best of the rest.

But now, on the heels of its best football season in 56 years, Texas A&M is asserting itself as the new Lone Star recruiting juggernaut....For the first time in at least 15 years, the Aggies are poised to assemble a more highly touted haul than their two former Big 12 nemeses, Texas and Oklahoma.

It will also be the first A&M recruiting class to crank the national top ten rankings since 2005.

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Sun February 3, 2013 1:22 pm
Watch: H-E-B’s “True Texan” Super Bowl Ad
By Jason Cohen

Does H-E-B's "True Texan" Super Bowl ad commit something of a barbecue foul (by equating it with "grilling"), or is that part of the joke?

The clip, which features country star Jack Ingram, satirizes Texas myths ("some people seriously believe we all ride horses to work"), almost to the point that it could serve as a companion piece to Gregory Curtis's "Behind the Lines" essay in the current Texas Monthly "Cities" issue.

H-E-B is calling it the "Game Day Commercial," because the NFL's a little touchy about people saying "Super Bowl" in advertising. But as Gary Dinges of the Austin American-Statesman notes, you'll be seeing it today.

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Fri February 1, 2013 12:38 am
Kickoff: Eight Things to Know About This Blog
By Jason Cohen

Longhorns and Aggies (and Cowboys and Texans) and Bears, oh my! Welcome to Texas Monthly’s football blog, helmed by me, Jason Cohen (there’s my Twitter handle, if you’d like to complain that your team was left out of that sentence).

Here’s eight things you need to know about It’s Always Football Season.

1. The title

Should be obvious, but see my first post for the backstory.

I mean, sure, I like the NCAA basketball tournament as much as the next guy, and hockey more than almost any guy. Pitchers and catchers report in ten days? I’ll be watching (in April).

But sports in Texas still means football first. Football is brisket. Other sports are barbecue. Football is Willie Nelson. Other sports are country music. And in this era of the every-second news-and-social-media cycle, there truly is no off-season.

So here we are. It’s Always Football Season. It’s a blog, but that word can mean anything these days. Expect opinion, media criticism and round-ups of coverage from across the state, but also reporting, interviews, first-person diaries, as-told-to pieces, and, no doubt, silly lists and slideshows. Maybe even works of speculative fiction. 

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Fri February 1, 2013 12:17 am
Opening Whistle: Welcome to Texas Monthly's Football Blog
By Jason Cohen

Jone RamseyThat there on the left is former Texas A&M and University of Texas sports information director Jones Ramsey. Call him this blog's spirit animal.

Not only did Ramsey work for both the Aggies and the Longhorns (and on the Heisman campaigns, such as they were, for John David Crow in 1957 and Earl Campbell in 1977), but he's generally credited with uttering the phrase, “the two main sports in Texas are football and spring football." 

As etymologist Barry Popik wrote in sleuthing out the saying's history, Ramsey first said it in 1971, apparently about UT. Popik also found that Tommy Nobis said it six years earlier, but the Longhorns linebacker may well have gotten that from Ramsey.

In any case, it was soon applied to the entire state, and also evolved quickly into “there are only three sports in Texas: football, spring football, and recruiting."

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Fri January 25, 2013 12:17 pm
VIDEO: Johnny Football's Latest Unbelievable Performance
By Jason Cohen

It may not be as high-stakes as the Alabama game or Cotton Bowl, but Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel’s video with basketball trick shot specialists Dude Perfect (think “Jackass” meets the Harlem Globetrotters), shot at Kyle Field, is absolutely jaw-dropping.

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