Theodore Evander's Page

When Baylor defeated Texas over the weekend, the Bears completed their most successful basketball season in more than 60 years. I remember. I was there.
In 1948, Baylor became the first Southwest Conference team to play in the NCAA tournament finals. Unfortunately, Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky Wildcats, led by All-America’s Ralph Beard and Alex Groza, was the opponent.
Kentucky treated Baylor like it had everybody else, 58-42.
In those days, the NCAA was an elite tournament, no bubble teams or non cha… Continue

Rubbing Their Noses In it

Minnesota’s last Brett Favre touchdown Sunday against the outclassed Dallas Cowboys ruffled some feathers of “fair play” advocates who believe in the compassion of a mercy “thumbs up” for an opponent who fought so nobly. Of course, on this day there was nothing noble about the Cowboys performance..
Maybe so, but scoring is the name of the game, and a team that does not take the knee to avoid running up an embarrassing margin, it’s not against the rules.
Interestingly,… Continue

For me, the story of Thursday’s BCS championship game was Garrett Gilbert, rushed into the breach when starting Quarterback Colt McCoy was injured and sidelined for the night on Texas’ fifth offensive play.
What a spot for Gilbert, the prized freshman recruit, and he almost pulled it off, even without the first half protection of an overwhelmed offensive line and dropped passes, when he did manage to have time to throw, one a touchdown pass.
While Colt was amassing Heisman impressive statistics,… Continue

With the BCS championship game limited to SEC against the Big 12, with an occasional intrusion by Ohio State or USC, conference changes could be in the air as the Big Ten and possibly the Pac 10 expand to make a championship game a necessity, thereby garnering attention, now forfeited.
Meanwhile, upstarts TCU and Boise State, potentially a wonderful matchup, play in the Fiesta Bowl, where they can’t embarrass any one in the aloof country club set. Should Cincinnati happen to beat Florida, they c… Continue

Four teams from District 2-5A made it to the playoffs, but you can’t decide how they did it without a slide rule, and most people nowadays don’t know what a slide rule is. That makes it all the more amazing. What ever happened to the coin toss, or did it disappear with the tradition of going to first downs or yardage gained to decide overtime games.
Perhaps, the saddest part of all was the Lee-Odessa game. Lee beat the only undefeated team in the district, but it didn’t matter a whit in deciding… Continue