Jason's Untimely Thoughts

That is all.

I discovered on New Year’s Eve that I hate the SEC. The Southeastern Conference that is, I’m not nearly enough of an investor to hate the Securities and Exchange Commission. I’m not an investor. Is devestor a word?

Anyway, I hate the SEC. If I was sure of the definition of irony, I’d say my hatred is ironic, because it’s based on my evolving hatred of the other teams in the Big 12. Specifically, I used to just hate KU. A lot. Over time, I started hating Nebraska and K-State too. Lived in San Antonio, hated UT and A&M. Went to a game in Boulder, hated CU (fans). Whining visor boy becomes coach of OU, I hate them. And so on.

To the point now where I simply hate them all. If they’re playing someone, I want someone to win. If someone is already winning, I want them to win by more. A simple philosophy for a simple guy. I realize the whole argument of makes the conference look better, thereby making Mizzou look better. Really, I get it. Occasionally, not when KU is playing, but occasionally, I can talk myself into that. But mostly, I don’t care and I hate them. The combination makes for a mostly win-win situation for me.

Then, at a bar in the hotel in Dallas while Arkansas fans are openly and loudly cheering for the Kentucky football team. Except they never say Go Kentucky, or Go Cats, or anything resembling that. Just every time there’s a good play, they smugly say “SEC!” or some crap and smirk at each other before another round of calling the Hogs. And over and over again for the remainder of the trip. Didn’t you guys just join the SEC last week or something?

And then the LSU fans start chanting “SEC” in the Superdome at the end of the national championship game? What?! Celebrating your conference is crazy, give me a nice round of rivalries.

On other news, Adelaide had a hearing screening done at pre-school a few months ago. As a result, she now has tubes in her ears. She had a vision screening done a few weeks ago. Found out this morning she needs glasses. Hooray Screenings.

on a side note, screw ku.

It’s been another grand year for the Becking household, moving forward with housing and growing and schooling and dancing and Mizzouing as appropriate.   Sarah & Jason travelled to New York, Virginia, Colorado, Oklahoma City, and San Antonio, with the rest of the family also making those last two trips.  We mixed in some medicine and some Mizzou on those trips, but even better got to see some old friends on each of them.  Thanks to all for hospitality along the way.

Jack Thayer is now two and likes race cars and football guys and super guys.  And race car shirts and football shirts and super guy shirts.  He’s also not above wearing a pink leotard should the occasion arise (with sister’s encouragement).  He’s attending pre-school for the first time, two days a week, and seems to be taking that very well.

Adelaide is five but missed the cutoff for the start of kindergarten by a few weeks, so back to CDC pre-school for her, this year at five days a week.  Jack shares her class in the afternoon when he’s there, so she gets to boss both the teachers and the brother around on those days.  She just had her third Christmas Dance recital, performing wonderfully in a Mambo Santa number, on the path of wanting to be Hannah Montana or, even better, a Golden Girl (and thanks to them for being so nice to her during the year).

Sarah & Jason are each cruising along in the photography realm.  Sarah continues to shoot for Mizzou and lots of kids’ portraits.  Jason continues to bring lots of her orders home with him from Miller’s.  It’s conceivable that her business is the only reason he remains on the payroll.  On the health front, monitoring and education remain the primary treatments, with the good help of our local physicians and friends accompanying the national groups.  Sarah continues to feel well, thank you.

It’s been a shockingly busy year, with lots of time in lots of places, but not nearly enough time with lots of friends and family.  The way of everyone’s busy world for sure, but we hope to improve there and see more of each of you along the way.  You’re warned for 2008.

Most of the family is already in San Antonio… Here’s the Riverwalk for proof:

Tigers are ranked #1 and have a potential Heisman winner playing QB. Here he is on the cover of SI:

Here he is on the cover of The Sporting News:

After beating the mythical shoe-wearing birds on Saturday in KC, our beloved Tigers are ranked #1 in the BCS Standings, the AP poll, and whatever the other poll is called that was supposed to accomplish something. Mizzou stands at #2 in the coaches’ poll. MU plays OU on Saturday in San Antonio, one of our favorite places in the world, for the right to play in the BCS National Championship game.

While I commonly predicted 14-0, told a few people in private asides that the game at OU was going to be tough but 13-1 might really happen, and am generally fairly optimistic about our chances (I tried to avoid saying “our”, “we”, etc., but simply can’t), the reality of being #1 in BCS standings and potential of playing in the national championship game simply hasn’t hit me. Oh well, lots of time between now and January 7!

Since the Tiger victory Saturday night, I have been genuinely amazed and surprised at the number of people who have told me “congratulations”. And meant it. I’m extremely happy we won. Thought of losing to KU in that context was especially difficult to stomach. But, I didn’t play. Didn’t coach. Etc. I sent lots of e-mails though and bought lots of tickets, so perhaps that’s why people feel the need to tell me congratulations and I can’t resist saying “we”.

On the lots of tickets topic, my obsession led me to purchase 81 tickets to MU football games thus far. 81. I’ll have used 12 personally, but still. That’s crazy. And doesn’t count the 380 tickets I put on the work credit card for company tailgate or the however many we end up with for the next game. I say again, if only there was some really obvious way that the athletic department and Sarah could get together so they’d get photos they need and we’d get tickets we evidently need.

Back to the KU game. Pre-game, the beakers once again proved to be liars with their athletic director making the ridiculous claim that the crowd would be 70% pro-KU. Wow. Wrong. However, sincere thanks to whomever in beakerville was responsible for keeping the red socks in the drawer this year. I’ll assume that was a nod towards respect and sanity.

Finally, many were expecting me to go crazy on KU week and send out large chunks of material (insert Mangino joke here) (insert Reesing with a piece of KC sod joke here). Home games only, for tailgating purposes, that is all. If I’d have been funnier during the year, I might have sent another one. As it was, I was sick of my ramblings.

Finally, No Freaking Cursing. Chase Daniel is on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week. Has caused me to read many e-mails of “oh no” and what not. Garbage. SI’s own research proves that any alleged curse has come true at most 37% of the time. Since the curse clearly worked on the shoebirds last week, my expert statistical reasoning allows that there’s only a 14% chance of it working two weeks in a row. And that’s if there was every any such thing. And there’s not.

BEAT OU!!!! And on a side note, screw ku.

KU game is forthcoming… hatred is building… frightening scenarios are being played-out all over two states and ESPN.  Enough attention this week without me adding to it.  Game is national broadcast on ABC at 7:00 p.m.

My early suggestions for signs:

Chickenhawks:
Always
Been
Cheaters

Chickenhawk
A Mythical Shoe-Wearing
Bird That Presumably
Can’t Fly

A
Beaker
Cookout

Sarah sent on the following… thought I’d share here.

As the holiday season approaches (or maybe we are in the middle of it??!!??) I just wanted to suggest to all my friends and family that we SLOW down, enjoy the time that we get to spend with each other. Lets not rush from holiday to holiday worrying about who is getting who what, and where & what are we eating next. I am sincerely going to try to savor every (well most) moment that I get to see the kids smile and laugh and to hear the funny family stories that I have heard a million times before.

The column (pasted below) made me think, if not realize that there is a time for everything and for everyone. Please enjoy the rest of the year and give everyone an extra hug and kiss!

Remember then that there is only one important time and that time is now. The most important one is always the one that you are with. And the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side. For these, my dear boy, are the answers to what is most important in this world. This is why we are here.  — The Three Questions by John J Muth

Sorry for the length

Sarah

“A perpetual Holiday,” George Bernard Shaw said, “is a good working definition of hell.” This year the perennial ruckus over little girls’ slutty Halloween costumes was still going strong even as the perennial ruckus over the War on Christmas began. It’s as though we’ve supersized our holidays, so that they start sooner, last longer and cost more, until the calendar pages pull and tear, and we don’t know which one we are meant to be celebrating.

Seasons once had a rhythm to them, tuned to the harvest or the hunt, with rituals spaced through the year to bring the rain, praise the sun, mark the time between solstice and equinox, celebrate birth and honor death. Our holidays answer our needs to feast and mourn and manage risk, our customs customized to the point that the Roman pagans had a holiday specifically designed to prevent a certain kind of mold from destroying the wheat by offering animal sacrifices to the god of mildew. We remember those we love on Valentine’s Day, those we revere on Easter or Passover or Ramadan, those we fear on Halloween. Thanksgiving was a celebration of harvest, the stuffing of oneself a natural response to all the work that once went into managing one’s crops and now goes into managing one’s relatives. Just as meals and sleep and work and recess pace the days, so do holidays pace the year. Clump them together, and they lose their fizz and juice, the useful little monthly boosts turned into a pileup of duties and lists. When every day is a holiday–or more precisely, part of the holiday season–none really are.

It’s true that our forebears could never agree when the cycle should begin. The ancient Egyptians celebrated the new year as the Nile rose at the end of August. The Incans picked the year’s shortest day (June 21 in the southern hemisphere), while Chinese New Year usually falls on the day of the second new moon after the winter solstice. It was Pope Gregory in 1582 who finally settled on Jan. 1 for Europeans. But wherever it lands, it serves its purpose: the past falling away, its demons chased out by bells and whistles and drums, a new year born with no mistakes in it yet, just resolutions.

Since winter can be long and dreary, when days are short and the sunlight thin, we rely on the revelry of carnival and Mardi Gras to carry us over until spring and rebirth. Then come the patriotic plumes, of Memorial Day and Flag Day and July 4 (not to mention Cinco de Mayo, Bastille Day and Samoan Independence Day) before a long spell when the holidays themselves go on holiday. August is the rare month with no shared celebration in it, when we gasp along for weeks on end without collective permission to overspend, overeat and overindulge.

Given that hardship, retailers seize the opportunity. Now it’s not only school that starts the day after Labor Day; so does Halloween. Target and Wal-Mart had their spooky gear out by the following weekend. Monthly magazines do Halloween in the September issue, so Christmas can hit in October. This year the weather even conspired to confuse and collapse the calendar–outdoor pools open in Washington in January, leaves defiantly green and aloft in the Northeast through October, when they’re supposed to lie curled and dead and sweet-smelling beneath the feet of the little witches and ghouls. Maybe Christian radio stations were playing Christmas carols on Halloween just to counterprogram the pagan holiday.

To 17th century Puritans, of course, Christmas was largely a pagan holiday too, so they fined workers who took a single Yuletide day off. Now the Christmas season and the baseball season nearly overlap, as retailers count on Santa for as much as half their annual sales. If that’s not bad enough, the political season has spun forward as well; Iowans plan to caucus on Jan. 3, with confetti still underfoot.

Celebrating these occasions serially is hard enough; handling them simultaneously makes you dizzy. Red-letter days are our measuring sticks, the fixed points from one year to the next by which we can tell how much we’ve changed. They let us gauge the function or dysfunction of the clan, see how our hopes ferment, our kids grow and ripen. Little sister wears big sister’s Easter dress from two years ago, and you suspect she’s going to end up taller. The cub scouts in the annual Memorial Day parade are eagles now. So in the spirit of holiday acceleration, let’s make some early New Year’s resolutions: no costume purchases in September, no holly before Halloween. Ignore the campaign as long as possible: its season will come in due course. Let’s not rush but savor the holidays one by one and preserve their power, their flavor–and our sanity.

Column by Nancy Gibbs
TIME Magazine

November greetings Tiger fans,

Sad to say, but the end of the (home) season is approaching rapidly, with our beloved Tigers taking on the Fighting Texas Aggie Fighting Aggies on Saturday at 11:30 a.m.  We’ll be at the tailgate in some combination by 9:00.  It’s a “Blackout” game, so I’d encourage everyone to get really drunk and try to forget the game.  Oh wait, sorry, that was a college flashback (sorry mom).   Beyond wearing black, it’s also Senior Day.  20 Tigers will be playing their final games at Faurot Field, so go inside early to salute them.

While I’d normally do my best to make considerable fun of the Aggies, especially since it’s so easy to do, our trip to College Station last year cured me of my evil ways (toward them, if we were playing someone else I’d still be full of hatred).  It wasn’t all good in College Station… their tradition of being “friendly” to everyone kind of creeped me out.  Mostly it came off as ROTC guys saying “HOWDY” to you as loud as possible to see what kind of reaction they’d get, hoping that reaction would then justify a mass beatdown of some sorts.   Like they were ready to jump out and snap my neck like I was a rabid cow.

The real show came when we went to “Yell Practice” on Friday night before the game.   Despite being midnight, and full of college students, and associated with college football, and about 30,000 people there, absolutely no one seemed the least bit intoxicated.   After seeing my college experience from above you can understand the confusion this caused.  Everyone filed politely into one side of the stadium and inexplicably did calisthenics periodically.  Punctuated by sporadic banging on the bleachers and “WHOOOP” noises.  All while some West Texas cracker with a microphone said random nonsense, causing more calisthenics, banging, and WHOOP making.

It was all enough to drive us to the very edge (of the crowd).  Being in complete and utter amazement at the surroundings, I turned around to watch the freak show.  And then promptly found myself laying on my back and head about 4 bleachers down from where I’d just been.  At that moment, though, the Aggie niceties sincerely kicked in.  Despite being with Sarah and Missouri’s two finest sportswriters, the absolute only person that moved to see if I was still alive was an Aggie dad, who had to stand up from ‘humping’ position and walk down 6-8 rows to check on me.  Again, at no point did Sarah or Missouri’s two finest sportswriters ever make a move.  When I finally managed to drag myself back up to their area, they sort of looked at me, snickered a little, and then turned their attention back to the Aggie circus.  Meanwhile Aggie dad returned to humping it and making WHOOP with his young children.

Hope to see you and yours at the tailgate and the game.  They may be nice, but we shall still destroy them.  Go Tigers, 13-1 will be almost as good as 14-0!

Here are the 20 Seniors playing in their final home game.  I’m confident they all join me in saying screw ku.

Steven Blair (95)    DL     Godfrey, Ill.
Greg Bracey (85)    WR    Milwaukee, Wisc.
Pig Brown (13)         SS     Adel, Ga.
Travis Cardoza (4)    S    Springfield, Mo.
Adam Crossett (90)     P    Liberty, Mo.
William Franklin (2)    WR     St. Louis, Mo.
Charles Gaines (91)    DL     Hayti, Mo.
Tyler Luellen (79)     OL     Bethany, Mo.
Lucas Null (87)         WR     Crystal City, Mo.
Jason Ray (4)         WR     Porter, Okla.
Martin Rucker (82)    TE     St. Joseph, Mo.
John Ruth (41)        LB    Jefferson City, Mo.
Paul Simpson (6)    CB     Oakland, Calif.
Adam Spieker (77)     OL     Webb City, Mo.
Tony Temple (22)    TB    Kansas City, Mo.
Darnell Terrell (3)     CB     St. Louis, Mo.
Chris Tipton (54)     OL     Bowling Green, Mo.
Lorenzo Williams (99)     DL     Midwest City, Okla.
Marcus Woods (3)     TB    Farmington Hills, Mich.
Monte Wyrick (71)    OL     Texarkana, Ark.

Happy Halloween Tiger Fans,

In early celebration of the Holiday, a bunch of Ronald McDonald uniform-wearing jokers are going to be at Faurot Field on Saturday dressed up like a football team. Like a football team with miserable uniforms and a confused mascot, but still.

ISU is 1-7 on the year and we’re favored by 28.5 points. We owe them for a mystery defeat up there last season, so bring on the Candy-Corn Colored Tornado Birds (beyond Ronald McDonalders or CCCTBs, other acceptable nicknames are Corncardnados, Cyclowns, and Blow Homes).

Kickoff is at 1:00 p.m., we’ll be tailgating by 10:00 or so. It’s the second Miller’s tailgate of the year, with food provided by Hoss’s Market to be served at 11:00 a.m. The athletic department is once again encouraging all fans to wear gold. I’m once again pointing out the players should wear gold pants then. They are also claiming to be giving away 45,000 ‘rally towels’, but praise be that we had the good sense to avoid a promotional ad like this (forwarded previously). The 45,000 number seems a little shaky to me also, as Jack was given a towel by the Sports Information office earlier in the year. 44,999, at the most, I say, unless there was some fluff in that towel order.

It’s the next-to-last home game of the year and your last chance to see the Tigers before they crack the Top 10. They’re having a Larry Smith era reunion, too, so come on out to the party.

That’s the end of my random facts e-mail for the week. GO A&M, screw ku.

Great article in this week’s Sports Illustrated on the Tigers.  They chose “Newfound Swagger” as the title, I’d have gone with Kinder, Gentler Hard Ass.

Austin Murphy: Missouri has a newfound swagger