Barking Carnival Mixtape 2013: The Metamorphosis

TEXAS!!!!

(3 hours later)

FIIIyawn.

I suppose it stands to reason that, in this season with 13-day breaks between games, we'd have a game with a 3 hour tour between plays. What a strange, strange trip it's been thus far this season. Let's randomize it (while wondering if Chalky White and Blackie Sherrod would've gotten along)...

A Compendium of Disjointed Musings, Reflectoids and Wonderments:

THE FOOTBALL

* What do we even know about this team at this point? Seriously. What do we really, really know? I'm asking.

* One thing we know is that life/football is full of strange twists and turns. We know that David Ash has had a really disappointing/frustrating UT narrative, and that has coincided, oddly, with a fairly satisfying narrative for Case McCoy. Who on earth could've predicted the kind of senior season story Case McCoy may end up having to tell? He's becoming--for me--almost lovable, and that would be impossible if it weren't for the unfortunate circumstances in which Ash finds himself. Life/football is unpredictable. I hope and pray for David that maybe he gets an unexpectedly pleasant turn in his narrative next season. How crazy would it be if both Ash and McCoy end up having, dare I say it, "fairy tale" senior seasons?

* How sparkling is the sexual chemistry between "Amy", the creepy Amazon Kindle tech support myth and "Guy", the lonely, hip, guitar-playing Kindle user? It's palpable. That commercial needs a sequel.

* Honestly, what does it say about Mack Brown and Manny Diaz that an unemployed coach coming in off the street can come in, and--in the middle of the season--wring competent defensive play simply by eliminating the foolishness by which we were proactively shooting ourselves in our 22 defensive feet every week?

* Case McCoy is the college football equivalent of a knuckleball pitcher.

* At the end of the First Quarter, does Casey Pachall get a 15-Minutes Sober Chip?

* Anyone else weirded out by our utterly credible running game?

* Let me cut through the cluttered, indecipherable subtext that the marketers at Wrangler jeans are apparently too afraid to just come right out and tell you...Their jeans are better for your nuts. You're welcome.

* Is it time to take another look at the Lightning/Weather protocols in college football? Look, I get it. Safety is important. But aren't these parameters kind of arbitrary? Why is 30 minutes the magic number for safety? Why not 27? Why not 16 minutes and 18 seconds? Last night was excruciating. My intuitive (beautiful) mind tells me there has to be a better way. If that's what playing Among the Carter is all about, I don't ever want to play there again.

* Last night especially sucked for the bands. Think of the bands! "Wackass, tiny little halftime", thought Eric, the cymbal-smashing Freshman Interior Design major from Azle, TX.

* What's that? They just added 30 more minutes to this endless timesuck of meteorological kissmyass? Looks like the timeline on me cracking open my brand new Batman video game just got moved up.

* How do the announcers not get completely and totally ishfaced in the booth during a 3-hour weather delay?

* Terrell Suggs is convinced Roger Goodell is responsible for this.

* I can't think of anything in sports more entertaining than the 3.5 seconds when a Herp-A-Deep Ball is in the air. The possibilities are as endless as a frog-gobbling thunderstorm in Fort Worth on an October night.

* Consider, as I did, that this UT football team could actually finish this season playing one of the following in a BCS bowl: undefeated Florida State, undefeated Oregon, undefeated Ohio State, undefeated Fresno State, at-large aggot. How are we feeling about any of those possibilities?

* Abilene Christian played New Mexico State on the road last night and lead 22-21 at halftime. Ended up losing 34-29. Just saying.

* How does New Mexico State's ACU win impact our BCS ranking? Where is Jeff Sagarin when you need him? He's like 3 hours of rain on your wedding day.

* We burned Swoopes shirt. There it is. Now react. With vigor. Personally, I think whether or not it was a good decision depends entirely on what unfolds from here on out. If we get him legit snaps with actual, real-live football responsibilities and decision-making reps, if we feature him in packages that place him in a position to succeed, that feature him doing what we know he does well and that may add an element of unpredictability to our offensive repertoire...If we do any/all of that, I'm all for it. If we Mack Brown it the rest of the way, i'm less enthusiastic.

* Ballgame! Witness our Kafkaesque in-season transformation, TCU!!

THE MUSIC

It's fitting that, on a week when we played a team Darrell Royal famously referred to as the "cockroaches", that our mixtape entry would come from a Bugg.

Remember that Gatorade commercial that used to play earlier in the summer? Like all the time, earlier in the summer? I heard it (a million times) and automatically assumed that they had taken some old Bob Dylan song that I'd never heard and purchased it for the purpose of inciting nostalgia and moving sports-drink units.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that it was not some old, repurposed regurgitation of Boomerdom and is actually the work of Jake Bugg, an Englishman born in Nottingham in 1994. My surprise was metaphorically like being struck by a lightning bolt! After the worldwide-acknowledged safety duration of 180 minutes, I gathered my faculties back together, tried to see the Forest through the lightning-singed trees,  and knew that where this track is concerned I should Sheriff I could. So here is your Week 7 Mixtape entry, my 'roaches:

Morning, it's another pure gray morning
Don't know what the day is holding
When I get uptight
And I walk right into the path of a lightning bolt

********

For previous tracks on the Barking Carnival Mixtape 2013, please see:

Game/Track 1. I'm Set -- Goodie Mob
Game/Track 2. Pompeii -- Bastille
Game/Track 3. Don't Know Why -- Ben Kweller
Game/Track 4. Wake Me Up -- Avicii
Game/Track 5. Hugs -- The Lonely Island
Game/Track 6. On the Chin -- Kings of Leon
Game/Track 7. Lightning Bolt -- Jake Bugg