tvc184

In reference to my last post about respect, winning and losing........ All student athletes deserve respect no matter the performance of the team or the individual. What matters is that they have the guts and desire to go out and practice and strive to win. I think I respect players from a losing team more since I am sure it is more difficult to want to play on a team without a winning tradition than it is to play on one that has a good chance at the playoffs and maybe a championship. Imagine putting up with long, hot and hard football practices when you have a good idea that you are not going to make the playoffs, yet you continue to try anyway. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. It is a passage from a speech by Teddy Roosevelt and it is called Man in the Arena. I think it does a good job in describing how I feel about the "kids" that play high school sports, especially on losing teams. THE MAN IN THE ARENA "It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again;…. who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." THEODORE ROOSEVELT April 23, 1910

Having watched the posts from the last few weeks, I see a lot of threads talking about “proper credit due", "respect", "underrated", "overrated", etc. A team will get respect or the proper credit when they put a winning team on the field. That is not just for Lumberton but for any team. For a 13 year period (1953-1965), Nederland was in the playoffs 11 times. That was when you had to win district to go to the playoffs. In that time they won 1 state championship, lost in 2 other state championship games and had three other quarterfinal appearances. I will bet Nederland was well respected back in those days. But guess what? That was followed by 22 years out of the playoffs and a mediocre team most of the time. In that time frame Nederland had 7 or more wins in a season only twice. I am sure that they got almost no respect during that stretch. Why should they? A team is judged by its fairly recent history of being competitive. With 22 years of losing, you can't point back to another generation and demand respect; I don't care how good the run was before. The same goes with a good showing in a couple of scrimmages. If you win, respect and proper credit will follow. If you don't, then it will not. It is as simple as that. Lumberton's time will come and they will be competitive in the future (playoffs or not). Maybe it will be this year, maybe another year but it will come….then they will get the respect that seems to be such a hot topic.

If it is posted in public, assume that others will comment and not keep it between only two parties. If it is not open for public comment, then why not carry the conversation in private messages?

It is too cluttered. Good looking helmets are simple yet effective. When you put too much on a helmet' date=' it looks like nothing more than a multi-colored blob on the field. A helmet that you have to hold in your hand in order to see the design is not a good helmet emblem. Helmets like Dayton, PN-G, Nederland, Vidor, WO-S, etc., have simple designs but it represents their team or community. Color scheme goes a long way, especially when copying know helmets such as and the Indianapolis Colts. Sometimes teams use a helmet from a college or pro team but change the colors. Sometimes it looks better but often worse when they try to mate the emblem to established team colors. Originality also helps as long as it is simple. Helmets like PN-G or WO-S come to mind. They show their colors and school name without cluttering the helmet so much as to render it useless on a football field. Lumberton's new helmet is a little better, but still not up there with the better helmets in the district. While the design itself is quite well done, it doesn't lend itself very well on the side of a helmet. Here is the link for the 4A Helmet Bowl-2006. You will see that most of the helmets that won are simple, especially the state champion, Corsicana. Nederland won the best helmet in 22-4A but the raters did mention that 22-4A might be the best helmet district in the state. [url'][Hidden Content]

Yep, it sounds bad when they do it and it would be worse if we did.

I loved it when some of the earlier models showed it coming in to the TX/LA border area since there is almost never a correct prediction that far out. I remember when Rita was looking like it might turn into Mexico. Then Brownsvile, Corpus Christi, Galveston and then the Golden Triangle. Even then, it actually turned into Louisiana first even though the eye crossed the Golden Triangle. This storm, like Rita last year (and others), show that predicting hurricanes is far from an exact science. Even the best science available really has no clue as to where a hurricane may be 48 hours from now. All you can do is be prepared and wait for the last 48-72 hours (maybe) and hopefully get an idea where it may make landfall.

I am not sure how you think they are underestimated. Almost every post that I have seen and every district preview has Dayton as one of five teams going for a playoff spot.

Was that the game that Silsbee won 48-44? If that was it, it was quite a shootout. Silsbee was running all over the field and Nederland was passing all over and nobody could stop the other team.

Nederland v. LaMarque @ 5:00pm PN-G v. Brenham @ 8:30pm

It will have to be recorded since I will be sitting in Reliant Stadium, hopefully watching the hated Indians pull off an upset of Brenham.

In the scope of life, teachers are more important than coaches. It is very hard to make a living if you cannot read and write but know how to play football (unless you are about 1 out of 5,000 that can make it in the NFL-I guess the other 4,999 are out of luck). I would bet that Bill Gates never played high school football and look where he is. The problem is the free enterprise system, supply and demand. How many teachers get offering bids from other school districts after the school year ends? Does the best math teacher in your school get an offer for twice the money from a neighboring district due to her teaching skills? I see the new Port Arthur ISD superintendent just signed a salary package that amounts to more than $200,000 a year. Compare that to the teacher's salaries in that financially strapped district. How does the new superintendent's salary compare to others in the area, especially considering that we have several high performing districts and Port Arthur ISD is usually near the bottom. The bottom line is that you cannot compare one position to another by "importance". I would say that to a parent, a great teacher is much more important to their child's education and future rather than a good superintendent. Why then does the superintendent make up to 500% more than the teacher? It is the apples and oranges argument. You cannot compare positions by saying which is more important.

I don't believe in prior history predicting anything but in 2003, Nederland lost the first game of the year to LaMarque 30-7. They then went on to go three games deep in the playoffs (only to be beaten by LaMarque again who then went on to win state).

I usually read tea leaves myself or if I am really worried, throw salt over my left shoulder while I am knocking on wood........

Is that like the Monday before Rita hit, it was going south of Corpus Christi?

Silsbee looked to have a stronger defense against the run. There was absolutely nothing that Jasper did that slowed down Nederland's running attack. I am glad that Nederland threw the ball a quite a few times because they need to work on the passing game but if they just wanted yards and scores, they never needed to put the ball up. Nederland would try two passes (incompletes) and get a motion penatly and have a 3rd down and 15 yards to go. They would use the run as their 3rd and long play and pick up 20 yards. Offensively Jasper and Silsbee did not seem much different. Jasper's third drive was a great 90 yard drive that took several plays so it wasnt a one play deal. They had some sharp blocking and opened some nice holes. Other than that, they were pretty much ineffective. They would put together a nice play or two but could not sustain anything. Other than the one long drive, I don't think they ever got more than two first downs in a row.

Moshier looked sharp. Unfortunately just like last week' date=' Nederland is still looking for some receivers to step up. 2-5

Ernesto looks like it is making a direct line toward the upper Texas coast and since they always seem to turn one way or the other...................

You can stop all the guessing because the Bulldogs will take this one.

"The sky is falling, the sky is falling.... Nederland lost a scrimmage!!" :shock: