Zaxby's Heart of Dallas Bowl: North Texas 31, Army 38

Since the NCAA started allowing teams with 5-7 records (and high APR scores) to participate in bowl games last season, every team with a losing record had, remarkably, won their bowl game.

Of course, it had to be North Texas to come along last Tuesday and break that streak. 

The 2016 Zaxby's Heart of Dallas Bowl was actually entertaining. The Mean Green rallied from a ten-point deficit to send the game into overtime, but - alas! - couldn't answer the Black Knights' touchdown on their first overtime possession.

North Texas beat Army in the regular season, 35-18, but then went on to lose four out of their next five games and the Mean Green were clearly struggling as they entered this bowl game. UNT ends the season with a 5-8 record, which doesn't sound great but nevertheless represents as many wins as they've accumulated in the last two seasons combined. Here's to hoping that North Texas can continue improving next season.

Army, on the other hand, ends their season on a high note, winning their first bowl game since 2010 only a few weeks after breaking their 14-year drought over arch-rival Navy.

Incidentally, this isn't the first time a 5-7 UNT team has gone bowling. In 2001, they went to the New Orleans Bowl with that record because they won the Sunbelt Conference in spite of their overall losing record. They were then dispatched by Colorado State, 20-45.

UH football: coaching change, Las Vegas bowl, and season wrapup

When Tom Herman was hired, I wrote the following:

If Herman is successful at Houston, it is probable that he will move on to another job at a higher profile school in a three or four years. That’s fine with me, because it will have meant that he left the program in better shape than he found it; my only request for Coach Herman is that he not screw the Cougars the way Kevin Sumlin did when he left for Texas A&M (who cost the Coogs a Sugar Bowl appearance by spending too much time negotiating with the Aggies and too little time preparing for the Conference USA Championship Game).

Unfortunately, Tom Herman did indeed screw the Cougars, not because he left for his dream job at Texas after only two years - he clearly had his foot out the door the entire time he was here - but because he abruptly departed immediately following his team's final game of the season and took most of his coaching staff with him in the process, leaving UH to prepare for its bowl game with a skeleton staff and a bumnch of players who felt betrayed and demoralized.

Tom Herman (or "Vermin," as he's now known on UH message boards) will be well-compensated in Austin, to the tune of $28.75 million over five years, plus incentives. I hope he's worth it. Herman has only been a head coach for two years, and while some of his wins have been impressive (Florida State, Oklahoma, Louisville), he's also had some disappointing losses (UConn, SMU). For a man who preaches the importance of winning conference championships, he managed a rather sad 2-3 record in the AAC West this past season, good enough for fourth place. Herman is also a less-than-stellar 6-4 on the road. Those numbers won't cut it on the Forty Acres.

In the wake of Herman's departure, the University of Houston conducted a coaching search that reportedly included high-profile names such as former LSU head coach Les Miles, Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin, and West Virginia head caoch Dana Holgerson, but ultimately settled on promoting from within and elevated offensive coordinator Major Applewhite to the head coach position.

Applewhite took the helm of the program just in time to lead the Cougars to their bowl appearance in Las Vegas against Mountain West Conference champion San Diego State. Even given its status as a lower-tier bowl game, the Las Vegas Bowl would have been a nice win for the Coogs, as it would have assured the Cougars of back-to-back double-digit-win seasons, probably would have earned them a place in the final top 25, and at the very least would have ended a dsappointing season on a high note.

Alas, that didn't happen. The Cougars jumped out to a 10-0 lead and led 10-6 at halftime, but completely collapsed in the second half. Greg Ward Jr ended his college career in sour fashion, throwing four interceptions, and the offense could only manage a pathetic 25 rushing yards forthe entire game. The Aztecs scored the game's final 34 points, and SDSU RB Donnel Pumphery broke the NCAA career rushing record against the UH defense. In retrospect, it was probably too much to expect that the Cougars, with its players demoralized and its staff hollowed out, would win this game. But that doesn't make the blowout loss much easier to stomach.

So a season that began with so much promise ends with a whimper: the Cougars failed to win their conference or go to a New Year's Six Bowl, their head coach abruptly abandoned them after only two years (and an entire season of distracting, media-fueled speculation), and, after being ranked as high as #6 during the season, the team won't even crack the season-ending top 25. The Big XII's decision not to expand - the UH program had hoped to be invited into the ranks of the Power Five - only added insult to injury.

Normally, a nine-win season which includes victories over to-ranked Oklahoma and Louisville, and the program's highest average attendance since 1978 would be cause for celebration. But the 2016 UH Cougar football season leaves a rather bad taste in my mouth.

Nothing to do but move forward now. Although I admit to being underwhelmed by the Applewhite hire - the last time the Coogs promoted from within it turned out to be a disaster - I've liked the guy ever since he was quarterback at Texas (he played when I was attending graduate school there) and so I'm giving him the benefit of a doubt. That being said, there are a lot of things he needs to do - quickly - in order to keep the 2017 season from being a true disaster. The first order of business is assembling a staff. Then he has to figure out how to fill the holes going into the 2017 season; the team is losing a lot of talent - Ward, cornerback Brandon Wilson, linebackers Steven Taylor and Tyus Bowser, defensive end Cameron Malveaux, just to name a few - and he also needs to find a way to fix the offensive line, which was the team's most glaring weak spot in 2016. The Chronicle's Joseph Duarte has a list of these and other tasks for Applewhite to attend to.

The 2017 season features games against former SWC foes Rice and Texas Tech and easy, fun road trips to San Antonio and Tulane. The Coogs also get the three teams they lost to this season - SMU, Navy and Memphis - at home next fall. There's certainly reason for optimism heading forward.

Romantic, rapey or just rubbish?

Emily Crockett ponders the 1944 Christmastime standard "Baby, It's Cold Outside:"

When you first hear it, the song seems like a cute, flirty call-and-response duet between a man and his lady friend who are debating whether she should stay the night. On the one hand, what would her parents or the neighbors think? On the other hand, it’s just so cold outside. The ending is ambiguous, but it’s implied that she decides to stay after all, keeping them both warm on a cold winter’s night. 

But when you listen closer, the song’s lyrics also seem, well ... a little rapey. The guy ignores his date’s protests and badgers her to stay, which feels a lot like sexual coercion. At one point the woman asks, “Say, what’s in this drink?” — which is pretty alarming to a modern audience that understands how roofies work. The original score even lists the man’s part as “Wolf” and the woman’s part as “Mouse,” making the predator/prey dynamic creepily explicit. 

The song’s legions of defenders argue that those concerns are overblown. They note “What’s in this drink?” was a common joke in the 1930s and ’40s made by people who wanted to make an excuse for something that they knew very well they shouldn’t be doing. And in that more prudish time period, women were expected to turn down sex (at first, anyway) even if they wanted it. 

The vastly different ways people hear the same short song have set off an annual internet battle over its feminist merits. For every think piece calling it a “date-rape anthem,” there’s a corresponding “Oh, come on” take about how oversensitive “social justice warriors” are killing romance and seduction and taking the song’s lyrics out of context. 

Which reading is right? Is “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” too problematic to enjoy with a clear conscience anymore, or is our perception of it the real problem?

Crockett goes on to break down the song's lyrics, providing both a "rapey" and "romantic" interpretation of each verse, and then goes into a lengthy discussion about the song, its historical context, its modern interpretation, sexual assault, feminism and affirmative consent. The "romantic versus rapey" debate regarding "Baby, It's cold Outside" is not new, and is culturally important.

However, this debate overlooks the most important and fundamental issue regarding this song, which is that IT ABSOLUTELY SUCKS.

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" is the Yuletide equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. Its call-and-response lyrical structure is obnoxious and annoying, and the lyrics themselves are as vapid as they are creepy. The song is melodically repetitive, monotonous and uninteresting; it lacks the most basic elements of songcraft, such as a bridge or a chorus. What's more, it's not even a song about Christmas; there's no mention of anything holiday-related in the lyrics. "It's cold outside" in January, February and even March, too, depending on where you live, so why is this piece of acoustic crap assumed to be a holiday song?

Look, a lot of Christmas songs are utter garbage. Humanity died a little when "Jingle Bell Rock" and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" were recorded, and don't even get me started on the mind-bending stupidity that is "Christmas Shoes." But "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is the absolute worst. It is unlistenable, a crime against music. I don't know it really is a song about date rape, but I do know that I feel like my ears are being raped every time it is played.

So, please: stop playing this song. Better yet, delete or destroy every copy and every version of this song, and for the love of baby Jesus stop recording new versions of it every year.

The best way to resolve the "rapey versus romantic" debate regarding "Baby, It's cold Outside" - and, in the process, to improve Christmas music as a whole - is to simply erase this horrible excuse for a song out of existence entirely.

Seriously. It sucks.

UH wins and attendance, 2016

The Cougars are getting ready to face San Diego State in the Las Vegas Bowl next weekend, and are searching for their next head coach (who hopefully will not be this guy). In the meantime, here's my annual update of the Houston wins-versus-attendance graph for UH Cougar Football:

The Coogs averaged 38,953 fans at TDECU Stadium this past season*, which is a 5,666 fan increase over last year and 9,724 fan increase over last two years.

This was also Houston's highest average attendance since 1978 (39,253) and fifth highest in program history (behind 1966, 1967, 1977 and 1978).

I'm not sure that the Cougars will be able to improve on these numbers in 2017, especially since the 2016 season didn't end with the Cotton Bowl appearance that the UH faithful hoped for.

On the other hand, there was a time in this program's history when, if you told me that the Coogs would one day average almost 39k fans per game, I would have laughed in your face.

I will update the "wins" bar on this graph if the Cougars win their bowl game.

* The game against Oklahoma at NRG Stadium is officially considered a neutral site game. Add that game in, and the Coogs averaged 43.5k fans per game in Houston this season.

Checking in on China's road-straddling bus

After making its much-anticipated debut last August, it looks like the innovative transit solution is now, quite literally, collecting dust:

Well, what once looked like a treatment for China’s serious cases of pollution and traffic “is currently causing them,” as Shanghaiist puts it. A local reporter checked up on the 72-foot-long behemoth earlier this month and found it to be right where engineers left it back in August: on the 300-meter test track of a Hebei city road, blocking lanes and gathering a thick layer of dust in an open shed.

And it looks like it won’t be moving any time soon. Shanghaiist reports that the lease for the track was supposed to expire in August, but has since been renewed for another year. Song Youzhou, the designer, insisted his staff still tests the line every week and that his company—which earlier had been accused of operating a Ponzi scheme—is searching for new investors. (He blames the accumulated dust on China’s smog.) But workers still guarding the bus (or more accurately, the train) told local news that they haven’t heard a peep from the company.

I'm not going to lie: I'm a little bit sad about this, because - in spite if its obvious ridiculousness and impracticality in most urban areas - this project intrigued me and I wanted to see if it could actually succeed.

This is not to entirely abandon hope for the road-straddling behemoth; its current problems seem to be more financial than technical and it might yet survive. However, as a transportation planner, I think that transit's future isn't in inventing fancy gadgets that will completely replace the bus, but is rather in making improvements to the bus itself.