I went ahead and fixed that for you, OCF.

FWIW, you're right on this.

Perimeter, you just don't get it do you? In 1971 we played the game between the lines. Games were hard fought and emotional but they were played with much better sportmanship, I'd say. Personally, I get playing with emotion but what I hate seeing is players so undisciplined and out of control after just about every play like they are now.

And, like referees, players should always ignore the crowd. Crowds can be stupid, players should not be. And while we are at it, seriously, no offense but our #51 was doing stupid things most of the game. Including the 15 year unsportmanlike conduct when he gave the "slit the neck" gesture. Then, later, he blows an assignment on the tight end (even the announcers emphasized that on the replay) that gives App St a TD. Those are the kinds of things, taken in total, that piss us 71 guys off.

Do you mean playing with the discipline of Jack Tatum or George Atkinson? Or the class of Harvey Martin as he threw a funeral wreath into the Redskins' locker room after the Cowboys had beaten them? Different game, different time, different world. 1971 left the building a long, long time ago.

These gentlemen were very, very much the exceptions in their day and to further contrast the eras, each of them drew more criticism from their teammates and opponents than from fans and writers. In fact, the whole "rebellious" thing was in vogue in the '70's (remember the anti-establishment movement). Billy "White Shoes" Johnson and Joe Namath were glorified for non-conformance and individuality. There is no longer any individuality involved. Everyone's a showman, even when they're 3 scores behind.

Typical Baby Boomer, looks back on a time in American history when our country's national guard was gunning down students on campus, civil rights leaders were being assassinated, our military personnel were being spit on, and anybody who wasn't a Caucasian, publicly heterosexual, Christian, English speaking male was told to sit down, shut up and do as they were told; and says "those were the good ol days, when America was great, before these kids with their baggy pants went and ruined everything".

Sorry pops, it was your generation that destroyed the middle class, not mine. Your memory of a time when young people were morally superior is a fabrication.

I guess you didn't take very many modern history courses at OU. It was all of those things that you enumerated that the boomers fought to end. It was our parents, the so called greatest generation, that told us to sit down. But that is off the topic because what we are talking about in this thread is a common level of decency off and particularly, on the field. 15 yard penalties and me first flip the bird to anyone else just don't cut it.

No, I think our country is wrekt. I watched 12yrs of Regan/Bush trickle down economics turn southern Ohio into a rusted out meth lab and any steps in the right direction we took in the 90s were destroyed by two draft dodging Boomers, Bush and Cheney. Now our only hope for a brighter tomorrow are two more boomers, the lesser of two Clintons or a draft dodging, blow hard reality TV star. There will be no gold watch and happy retirement at 65 for my generation, the Boomers have made sure of that.

I think you miss the cause. Any economy works best when each person does his best. This country was build on a free enterprise system, which was based on this premise. Over the last 80 years we have been slowly eliminating that, and replacing it with creeping socialism. The result is not surprisingly, a slowly crippled economy, a growth in government, and a growing deficit. It's a problem endemic to our form of government. Both parties have learned that to stay in power they need to build a constituency of people dependent on government. Neither party is better than the other - both do what parties always do, spend more, with the goal of staying in power.

It's a process that is inevitable, and it will continue until the country collapses under the debt load. You see it happen with regularity in developing countries, usually quite quickly. The US existed longer than most republics/democracies simply because the Constitution was framed to try to forestall the inevitable implosion by spending to death, and it wasn't until 1937 that the Federal Government gained complete power to spend on anything and everything.

Now it's just a matter of time. Perimeter, it's not useful to blame one generation or another for what is inevitable. Is it our grandfather's generation who is at fault for allowing the changes in 1913-4 who effectively added the powers to the government to tax, and to print and borrow money? Perhaps. How about our parents, who allowed the power to be added to spend without limit? Or ours, who allowed it to go on, unchecked throughout our lifetime? Or yours, who, oblivious of history, will follow the expected cycle to collapse? Or, is it just another example of the cycle of history, one that was anticipated long ago by the founding fathers, even as they created this form of government?

I think it's the latter. I remember my mother telling me 60 years ago what the future would bring, that I might see it in my lifetime, but that it would be after her death. I have often told my children that I am not sure I will live long enough to see the end of the United States, but that, without a doubt it will come in their lifetime, most likely in the 2030-40 timeframe. We still seem to be on track for my expected timeframe. Could it be prevented? In theory, your generation could generation rebel against both parties, and dramatically reduce government size, the number of government employees, and government pay and benefits, forcing people back into the private sector, but we both know that will never happen. As a result, the intervening events like Presidential elections will be more of the same, amusing sideshows, lacking substance, as both sides try to blame the other for all the ills, when instead both are the problem.

Have a Merry Christmas, everyone, and don't take politics of "Republican versus Democrat" too seriously, because it's all part of an inevitable long term cycle.

Well said, LC. Depressing and frustrating, but well said. Not sure about the Merry Christmas at the end. You may need to work on your paragraph transitions. LOL.

Nice job with the right wing echo chamber.

Crippled economy? Slowly collapsing under creeping socialism and the debt load?

There's no immediate evidence that the latter is true and the former is 100% wrong.

It could happen that the debt load will bring us down. But we've had it...and such predictions...for a good long while.

I'll concede that parts of the extreme (extreme) right wing view are or could be true.

But it's amazing how the right wing echo chamber cannot accept a reasonably objective view of current reality.

To bring it back to the 'correct' subject matter, the right wing is pretty much the side here that cannot get an objective view of OHIO FOOTBALL.

That we're 11 years Solich without a MACC and the last four years filled with horrid losses to mediocre teams is not taken as a message that there are problems evinces a really impressive ability to not step back and absorb a reasonably objective grasp of reality.

"Slowly crippling economy"--compared to what? The rest of the world? That is an absurd statement that is detached from reality. (See today's report about record setting low unemployment. You may argue about the methodology but you cannot dismiss this that easily.)



Hint to the apologists: LC's (and others') wonderful predictions (Which we've seen before) that 2016 or 2017 will be great years for OHIO FOOTBALL are not reality. They are predictions.

+1
Absent any fiscal policy, the economy has grown more than most developed countries and unemployment is at 5%, we are almost at full employment. That's pretty darn good. We need to recruit better, tackle better and drastically improve our play-calling if we want to win the MAC.

Years ago I remember reading Taylor Caldwell's Great Lion of God. It is set in the early A.D.s. She had done her research on nations and their ascensions and declines. In one scene she has a centurion father riding horseback with his young adult son. They are discussing the slowly deteriorating state of Rome's sprawling but still prospering empire. Says the father (I'm paraphrasing), "In all of recorded history, when a nation's taxes exceed one third of personal incomes, the nation soon ceases to exist as it once was." How much has that changed?

Read some about the reasons for the decline in particip.

The point is that the economy is at least doing fairly well.

The tendency on the right is to trash Obama for everything.

It's an unfair reading.

Not saying the economy is perfect. But it's in decent enough shape and a pretty fair recovery from the inherited grave depth.


You can believe what you want to believe....or you can believe a reasonable representation of the truth.