40 Acres Sports

Kenton Paulino worries me a little if he’s the primary ballhandler, but he’s been lights out from 3.

MVP 06 NCAA Baseball comes out this week and IGN has up the first review of the game. The dynasty mode is what I was looking forward to the most and it sounds like they got it right, including year-round recruiting. Hopefully it proves as addicting as recruiting in NCAA Football.

Looks pretty good graphically, the “Load and Fire” batting system sounds like a cool idea, ESPN integration including live updates from ESPN Radio thanks to Xbox Live, as well as online play all make it sound like a must-have if you’re at all interested in college baseball. Plus, it’s got a Longhorn on the cover (David Maroul if I’m not mistaken) and is only at $29.99.

The game hits stores Wednesday. I’ll definitely be picking up a copy and posting my thoughts on the game here as soon as I can.

Close, tough defensive game. Another big national win for the now rolling Horns.

Fox Sports takes a look at the best seasons ever factoring in quality wins, elite wins, bad losses, etc.

With the 2006 essentially full, title should have an effect on ’07 class.

Team has really responded now that Tucker is playing more of an inside game again.

ESPN is running an interesting series of articles on NCAA football boosters and the power their money gives them. They’ve profiled ten of the richest and most powerful boosters and provided a little background on how they got their money, what they’ve done with it, and what kind of power it has given them with the team they support.

Here’s the profile of one of the Longhorns’ biggest backers…

Joe Jamail Jr.

School ties: University of Texas (B.A. Class of ’50; J.D. Class of ’53)
Age: 79

Reported wealth: $1.4 billion
How made money: The salty-tongued Houston lawyer amassed his fortune overseeing major personal injury cases, most recently representing victims of a BP refinery explosion.
How much donated: Estimated $30 million
School song/cheer: Hook ’em Horns
Braggin’ Rights: Just a few telltale signs of money and influence seen around campus: Joe Jamail Field at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center. … Only individual with two bronze statues on campus bearing his likeness, the most recent sits inside the football stadium. … Called the “King of Torts” by Time and Newsweek, his $11.2 billion verdict against Texaco in 1985 is listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest civil damages award in history.

The Buzz: The Longhorns lead the college sports world in fat cats, with Jamail and Billy Joe “Red” McCombs on the Forbes list of 400 wealthiest Americans. Another influential big-timer is Jim-Bob Moffett, an ex-Longhorn tackle for [tag]Darrell Royal[/tag], who built Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold into a business with annual revenues of almost $2 billion. … McCombs, who recently sold the Minnesota Vikings for $600 million, gave UT’s largest single donation ever of $50 million to the business school. The business school and women’s softball complex bear his name.

I really don’t have a problem with these donors and the powers they wield, as long as everything is on the up and up. They support the team and therefore deserve at least a little bit of say in how it is run. I do think you have to leave people like the university president, athletic director, and head coach in charge and let them run things since they’re held accountable for their actions. I also would prefer the stadiums themselves be named after people who had a role in building the program and not just the person who donates the most money. I think Joe Jamail Field at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium is a pretty good compromise.

Be sure to check out the rest of the articles in the sidebar about halfway down the page.

Notice the blonde cheering for Vince’s two-point conversion. (via)

Horns at #9 is one thing, but most of the teams he has ranked higher are facing even more questions than Texas is.

For total number of losses at their current school…

Mack 83-19
Fran 16-19

Franchione still has a chance to even things up if he can lead the mighty Aggies to 67 straight victories. What makes things particularly sad is that Mack took over a Texas program in worse shape than the Texas A&M was in 2002 when R.C. Slocum was fired. Brown took the Longhorns and immediately turned them around and led them to a national title. Franchione took the Aggies and ran them into the ground.

(Brought up here.)