40 Acres Sports

I wonder how much film they saw on him? (bugmenot)

Florida and Florida State? Eh. The upcoming season is definitely a toss up.

Texas running back Ramonce Taylor was arrested early this morning when police discovered five pounds of marijuana in his car. Five pounds is a lot more weed than you can claim is for personal use so Taylor could be facing second-degree felony charges. A large fight had broken out at a party near his hometown of Belton, Texas and sometime during/after the fight Taylor had the window to his vehicle broken. Taylor contacted the police to report the vandalism. When talking with police about his broken window, Taylor gave the officers permission to search his car.

While interviewing Taylor at a convenience store, deputies were told by other officers at the fight scene that Taylor had been involved and had threatened to return with a gun. Taylor was placed in handcuffs. Taylor told deputies he didn’t have a gun and gave them permission to search his vehicle. Deputies reported finding the bullet and the backpack with the marijuana.

Taylor’s lawyer, Buck Harris, says the weed wasn’t his and for now I believe him. I can’t imagine Taylor would call the police if he knew he had more than $3,000 worth of marijuana in the back of his car. The fact that his window was broken out also leads me to believe someone could have chunked the weed into his car to hide it as the cops were showing up at the party. If you’ve got a felony’s worth of drugs in your car, you don’t call to report a misdemeanor and than let the cops search you car. You get the heck out of there and worry about the $100 window some other time.

A bit of a conspiracy theory and orange-tinted glasses, but right now it actually seems more likely than the alternative.

As for Ramonce’s Longhorn football career it may be in trouble whether he’s guilty or not. This isn’t Taylor’s first time to make news for the wrong reasons and his return in the fall was already questionable. You can’t just lock yourself in your dorm room for four years, but if you’ve already got two strikes against you than you’ve got to be more careful where you party and who you hang out with. Reports had been leaking that he had gotten his grades in order, so if this incident turns out to be nothing then there’s still a chance he’ll be back. I imagine his status depends as much on what the Texas coaches think of him as a young man as it does on the outcome today’s events.

For Taylor’s sake I hope he gets things figured out. If he makes smart decisions (and stays away from poor decision making friends) he’ll have the chance to get a UT degree and set himself up for an NFL career

Despite rumors still surprising. He’d have seen serious minutes this year with Aldridge & Tucker gone.

If you are a fan of High Definition television, then you better make it to a Texas Longhorns home game this season. The Longhorns will be unveiling a new 134 ft x 55 ft (that is 7370 sq ft folks!) HD LED scoreboard, replacing the current 70 ft x 70 ft currently in place. And this is coming just a month after the Dolphins announced their new HD scoreboard, which at the was the world’s largest HD LED screen. Too bad for them they are about 400 sq ft short.

This addition is part of a large overhaul of DKR Texas Memorial Stadium, including $8 million in audio-visual improvements and $150 million to renovate the north end of the stadium to allow for 90,000+ in seating capacity.

Unfortunately the Longhorns will not be able to hold the title of having the world’s largest HD screen for very long, as a horse track in Tokyo has plans of installing a 197 ft screen sometime this year. Though I guess we can say we have the largest screen in the Western hemisphere.

Update: TexasSports now has a live webcam up of the construction of the scoreboard.

Read

They will only be on display May 6-7, so you better hurry.

Good news for both Longhorns and Sooners today as the two universities have reached an agreement that will keep the Red River Shootout in Dallas through 2010. The lack of improvements to the Cotton Bowl had caused both UT and OU to threaten to change the matchup into a home-and-home series.

While the agreement is only through 2010, Dallas officials are poised to announce renovations to the stadium totaling $50 million next week. That money would be a big step to keeping the game in Dallas and would likely result in a long-term deal. The game brings in big time money and it was definitely in Dallas’ best interests to keep the game in the city. For the two schools, the low capacity and lack of luxury boxes in the Cotton Bowl limit the revenue brought in by the game. Hopefully the proposed renovations will create a stadium and a situation that causes all parties to want to keep the game in Dallas.

One last note, contrary to what Mayor Laura Miller (the reason we’re in this mess and the Cowboys are in Arlington) and the Dallas TV media are trying to claim, this is not a five year extension. The previous agreement would not have ended until 2008, so while this is a new five year deal it only guarantees an additional two years at the State Fair for the historic series. The city of Dallas has avoided complete disaster (for now) but they must get the $50 million bond approved or we’ll be having these same discussions in another year or so.

Kudos to Texas’ DeLoss Dodds and OU’s Joe Castiglione for getting a deal done, and to Mayor Miller for miraculously not screwing things up.

“The recipient must be in compliance with the bylaws defining an NCAA student athlete.”

Still not cleared to play, but at least he’s not thinking retirement.

I only have one question, but I’m pretty sure her answer would be “no.”