The Most Dangerous Game

With the start of football season, I've started listening to quite a bit of sports radio. Our local station has a mix of Texas Tech topics, high school coverage, and some ESPN nationwide programming. Every weekend KKAM hosts a pick 'em contest, where callers pick the winners in weekend college games and guess the scores and stats of the Tech game. Last season, Steve and I replicated the pick 'em contest at work. We made it interesting by betting the responsibility for completing minor work assignments.


Tech fans are notorious for bad sportsmanship. There was quite a controversy a few years back about all the tortilla throwing at the football games, until the law stepped in. I even remember television ads with a referee saying something like, "If you throw a tortilla, I'll throw a [penalty] flag." I like the comments on this blog entry in favor of the tortilla tradition.

Just one thought for you. When I went to a Tech game a few years ago, several of us Aggies were hit in the head by frozen tortillas. It hurts. It doesn't leave a good impression on people. No pun intended.

Frozen tortillas? That's even better. Boo hoo, Aggies.

Why throw tortillas at all? Why spend money to throw food away when hundreds of thousands of Afgan [sic] children will be starving this winter? Why not start a new tradition and send the money wasted on tortillas to a worthy attempt to eradicate worldwide hunger?

Oh yeah, she's gotta be from UT.

Tech fans are also notorious for getting drunk out of their small minds before, during, and after the game. Scott has season tickets to the Tech home games. He related a story from a Tech tailgater. This tailgater was up in the stands and came across a UTEP fan with a noisemaker. He said something to the effect of, "Hey! You're not supposed to have that. They're banned by the Big 12 and it's not fair for you to have those." The UTEP fan responded by sounding the noisemaker in the Tech tailgater's ear. So the Tech fan threw his nachos in the other guy's face. Now that's sportmanship.

The big news in town this week is about Tech students changing the lyrics of the fight song to something profane. It's nothing too new. They were doing it during my undergrad when I was a young skull full of mush. The school's response is to stop the band from playing the fight song. Maybe we should be as worried about our lack of a defense. And at least we're not cheating like the Pats.

But the best football news I've heard recently was during the high school football spotlight on KKAM tonight. An area high school coach had called in and was talking about his team's disappointing Friday night loss. I missed hearing what school this coach was from, but I'm thinking it was a small town. Apparently the Friday night game was delayed because a herd of wild hogs ran onto the football field. The coach said that really threw his boys' game off. The game I attended Friday night was delayed and then called early because of lightning, but wild hogs sound much more dangerous.