Late Summer Pleasures

Ah, I love The Ticket this time of year.  My flower garden is tossing out its last hopeful blooms, and the Cowboys are wilting.

And The Ticket throws out some great Sunday broadcasting.

I heard a fair amount of That Shake Joint Thang this morning, and it was very sports heavy.  Very solid sports talk by Jake and Sean.  Both of those chaps, to my ear at least, do their homework -- including studying Bob's blog, which they graciously acknowledge -- and the result is a pre-pregame program that is very worthwhile.  It's fresh (despite the partial debt to Bob) and does not step overmuch on the Bob-and-Rich pregame.

Then there's Bob and Rich, joined for part of the show by another Ticket host.  I really enjoy the Bob/Rich interaction.  I know not everyone who visits this site shares my high opinion of Rich as a sometime host, but I really like his contributions and the way he and Bob deal with one another.

Today's guest was, as Bob and sometimes I refer to him, "Craig 'Junior' Miller."  Good stuff from Da Joonz, as usual.  There was a very interesting moment later in the show, after Craig reported on some historical research he'd done on the old Dallas Texans, and the nexus between football in Dallas and Kansas City.  I wish I had a transcript of what Bob said, but he praised Junior as a "sensitive" guy -- the kind of guy he, Bob, said he also believes himself to be -- who digs down and looks behind stuff.  My opinion, too, and I wish there were an opportunity for Craig to serve more often with the Stat Men on the station like Bob and David Newbury.  Craig doesn't ignore tendencies, but he reads between the lines of the recent performances on the field and comes up with some arresting insights.  Interesting contrast, and interesting that Bob made note of the flavor of Craig's contributions.

After the game, there's Norm and Donovan.  I continue to find myself puzzled sometimes by Norm's analyses -- I've written in the past that Norm will be slagging the Cowboys one moment, and in the next defending them against some caller on what seems to me like the same point.  If one were to break these instances down, I'm sure one would find that Norm is not being inconsistent.  Perhaps he's just instinctively challenging with callers.  In any event, I'm usually on board for the whole post-game.

Time to go rake some leaves, yellow, brown, and red.

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ThePlainsman1310@gmail.com

@Plainsman1310

Got a Question; Actually, a Question and Then a Little PS Question

OK, Cowboy season over.

At the beginning of this season, the national consensus was that the Cowboys had top talent, some depth, and were favored to make a strong run to a championship of one sort or another.  Although blown out in their final game in last season's playoffs, they finished strong during the regular season (especially the defense) and won a playoff game, yay.

Turns out, they sucked.

They sucked for a variety of reasons.  Phillips sucked.  Players with strong 2009s sucked in 2010.  There was a dinstinctive lack of on- and off-field nonsucking leadership among the elite players.  Coaches, oh yeah, they sucked too. 

Now that the whole season has sucked, however, I'm hearing things like "the talent was overrated" and "we've got to draft at [name any one of a half-dozen positions] because we have no depth and our starters suck."

In other words, the pre-season expert conseusus has completely turned around, and those same experts (and Cowboy fans who agreed with them) are now saying exactly the opposite.   Now mark:    They're not saying that the players just sucked in the course of playing their 2010 games -- they're saying that the talent level sucked from the outset.  

I don't propose to argue this one way or the other.  Here's my Tickety question:  Did anyone at The Ticket predict anything like this?

This is a sincere question, and not one intended to be critical.  There's no reason for the Ticket experts to have had any insights that the national experts didn't have.  I'm only curious as to whether anyone at The Ticket -- anyone, hosts, producers, weekend guys, Alexis, board ops, the Ticket Mouse -- saw this coming.  I'm not sure whether to count guys like Mike R who seem simply to dislike the Cowboys.  (Or am I wrong about that?  I may be.)  Yeah, I think we can count Mike R -- what was his pre-season outlook?  Was there a discouraging word from anyone up or down the broadcast day?

I don't get to hear Norm or BaD very often, so don't know their pre-season views on the Cowboys.  I have a dim memory that maybe Dan McDowell was skeptical. 

I recall an interview with a pre-season analyst who puts out a detailed mathematical analysis of the teams in some kind of a magazine or yearbook or something.  I think the interview was on BaD Radio.  The analyst thought that the Cowboys would be last in the division.  (I recall that among the reasons he gave was the age of the offensive line.)  I don't recall BaD's reaction.

As I say -- I'm not saying that the Ticket guys are bad analysts -- I'm just wondering if someone at the station deserves a pat on the back as having seen things more clearly than the rest of us way back when.  Maybe the Sports Humorist?

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PS:  Isn't Greg Williams usually on the Cowboys post-game show?  He doesn't seem to be on this evening.  Anyone know if he's on vacation for the holidays?  Has he been on RaGE?

Have a fine 2011, all.

Another Idle Question -- A Couple, Actually

Last season I wrote that I couldn't figure out Norm's attitude about the Cowboys, since he frequently defended them in losses whenever anyone would call in.  He's doing it again.

(1)  Did I just hear him say that you can't coach avoidance of penalties?

(2)  Did I just hear him say you can't coach focus?

What, praytell, are coaches for?  Why do some teams commit few penalties, and some teams are chronically the most penalized?

Idle Question

Can't the Norm/Donovan Cowboy post-game show attract better sponsors than strip joints?

Those ads cheapen the station whenever they appear.