As a constant critic of the ranking of recruits by Rivals, Scout, and other would-be recruitniks, I'm a firm believer that knowing your system as a coach and having a profile of what you're looking for in a player is more important than any 'star' or positional ranking. To test my theory, I went back and looked at the recruiting rankings for two teams that have been uncommonly productive on offense, given their resources and local demographic talent base. Over the last four years, both the University of Houston and Oklahoma State University have been among the leaders in the nation in total offense. Both of these programs have accomplished this feat despite the fact that there are multiple disadvantages facing them in recruiting talent to their respective schools. Oklahoma State is, at best, the second choice in the State of Oklahoma for football players behind OU, and has to compete against other Big 12 programs like texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech for recruits. Houston is one of ten Division I-A football programs in the State of Texas, and they are hindered by the fact that they are not in a BCS conference. Houston also doesn't have the money, alumni base, or facilities to compete with A&M, texas, or Texas Tech when it comes to recruiting. Despite these limitations, these two programs have thrived on offense, mainly because they are strong where it counts the most, on the offensive line.

The offensive line is the foundation of the offense, and I would argue the very foundation of a team. Both Houston and Oklahoma State have been able to build stellar offensive lines that have led the way for their offensive production while not attracting top recruits. How have they done it? Joe Wickline, the offensive line coach at Oklahoma State, and B.J. Anderson, the former offensive line coach at Houston (now A&M's new offensive line coach) succeeded because they were able to identify talent and develop them into players who fit into their system. Anderson and Wickline proved that identifying players that fit into your system is much more important than any recruiting by rankings.

I have compiled the recruiting rankings of all of the starting offensive linemen for Oklahoma State and Houston over the past three years. The results are surprising, to say the least.

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I'm headed out to Shreveport to see a bowl game between two teams I have no tie to. If you watch the game or have anything to comment on, this is your day after Christmas live thread.

Today is the day the wailing and gnashing of teeth will begin, as we'll see that the LSU-Alabama rematch is slated for the BCS Championship Game. Those who have waited for years for a traveshamockery to hit the BCS will get their wish today. I think the only people who will be celebrating today will be Alabama fans, who are the only ones who want to see a rematch with LSU. I suspect even the Tiger fans want to play someone new and different.

I'm hopeful we'll find out which bowl we'll be going to in the next few days, also. I'm still hoping for the Pinstripe Bowl in New York, but think there is still a chance we'll end up going to Houston for the Texas Bowl to play Iowa. We'll have to see how it all shakes out.

This is your selection Sunday open thread. The BCS selection show starts at 7:15 PM on ESPN tonight.

UH is losing to Southern Miss in the 4th quarter right now. Iowa State is up 13-10 on Kansas State in the second quarter of Farmageddon. Baylor-texas will be on in 15 minutes, or whenever television switches over to them. Oklahoma State-Oklahoma will be on tonight. SEC championship game between LSU and Georgia will be on at 3 PM. The inaugural B1G championship game between Michigan State and Wisconsin will be on FOX at 7:17 tonight. There is a lot of football to watch today, and we will have a coaching search going on, so there is plenty to talk about.

This is your Saturday open thread.

• I wonder if all of those Big 12 coaches who were happy with the dissolution of the conference championship game are having second thoughts this week. Instead of hoping a win over Oklahoma will somehow propel Oklahoma State to the BCS Championship Game, you'd be looking at the possibility of OSU playing Kansas State in the Big 12 Conference Championship Game after having already beaten OU last weekend. Despite the claims of the conference offices that "10 is the new 12", having divisional play and having a conference championship game has so value when it comes to BCS voting. I haven't gone into the mathematics of the situation, but I do wonder if having an additional game helps or hurts the BCS computations.
• I'm having a difficult time coming up with an A&M football team I've seen in the last thirty years that has underacheieved as badly as this one. The 1995 and 1999 squads are the only two I can think of who came into the season with such high expectations, but neither of those teams had the offensive talent at the skill positions this team had. This team may well go to a bowl game and get us a bowl win, but their legacy will be defined more on what they failed to do than what they accomplished.
• With Urban Meyer being hired on at Ohio State, it is imperative A&M get moving on hiring an offensive coordinator for next season. Meyer will pursue the best in the business for coordinators, so I wouldn't be surprised to see him make a run at Chad Morris at Clemson to be his new offensive coordinator. If Meyer manages to get to Morris before we do, you can go ahead and fire everyone in our athletic department. This is assuming, of course, that anyone actually recognizes change is needed in our football program, and that we need someone besides Sherman calling the plays.
• Kansas' decision to fire Turner Gill was the right one, although I knew he was doomed the minute I saw who he was hiring as his assistant coaches. When your defensive coordinator is Carl Torbush, your DL coach is Buddy Wyatt, and your OL coach is J.B. Grimes, you're doing it wrong. When you're hiring coaches who were already fired at another conference school, you're doing it wrong. Kansas needs to go out and find themselves someone who will garner respect in football circles. That program will never progress until they show the athletic department is serious about being successful in football, and it isn't just something to pass the time until basketball season comes along.
• If we do hire an offensive coordinator to take the playcalling duties off of Sherman, I hope we bring in someone with an option background. With Jameill Showers, Johnny Manziel, and Matt Davis, we're going to have some mobile QBs who can run the ball as well as pass it. With Trey Williams,  Christine Michael, and Will Randolph, we have the backs to attack the corners with the option. The option will be an addition that will make our offense that much more difficult to stop, and I'm disappointed we've pretty much abandoned it since the 2009 season. We ran some zone read option against SMU, and then pretty much abandoned it for the rest of the season. Add it to the Fly series as a list of plays we had which worked well which we seemed to forget we had at the end of the year.
• Trey Williams being moved to five-star on Rivals just shows how absolutely stupid the recruit ranking system is. Like he was somehow less of a player earlier in the year, and now suddently he has become one of the top players in the nation. If there was ever any question about the ability of the Rivals "experts" to evaluate talent, this ranking right is proof of their stupidity.

texas' offense isn't worth previewing. All you need to know is that their QBs are terrible, load up against the run and you'll stop them, and they can't score in the red zone since Fozzy Whitaker went down against Missouri. With that in mind, I decided to just focus on previewing texas' defense.

Last season, the texas defense was ridiculously weak up the middle, with Alex Okafor (now back at DE) playing defensive tackle alongside NT Kheeston Randle. All you had to do was double or zone Randle, peel off to block the MLB, and you were off to the races right up the middle of texas' defense. Inside traps were open all day, because Okafor was simply too small to offer anything but token resistance against the guards he was facing on the interior line. This season, Randle is back, and although his stats are pedestrian (26 tackles, 3 TFL, 1 sack), he has been solid. texas has rotated Ashton Dorsey, Calvin Howell, and Chris Whaley in at the DT spot (Want a laugh? Chris Whaley was recruited to texas because Mack Brown thought he was the best RB in the State that year. That was Christine Michael's senior season. Whaley was never able to keep his weight down, and ballooned into a defensive tackle. Great evaluation, coach!!), and they've been serviceable. Compared to Okafor getting pushed around every play last season, the ability of those three to at least temporarily hold ground is an immense improvement. texas' leading tackler is LB Emmanuel Acho, with 100 tackles, 17 TFL, and 3 sacks. Keenan Robinson is second, with 76 tackles, 5 TFL, and 1 sack. This is a team that doesn't get much pressure on the QB without blitzing (only 21 sacks on the year), but they're good at the point of attack. Handy Manny's scheme is aggressive and risk taking, albeit unsound. Diaz guesses a lot, and when he guesses correctly, you get a big play for a loss. When he guesses wrong, the it is a touchdown.

texas' secondary, with Kenny Vacarro and Blake Gideon at the safety positions, is really the weakness of the defense. Vacarro is a big hitter, but is weak in coverage. Blake Gideon is just out there because he is the only person smart enough to remember the defensive calls and coverages. He can't cover me, and he often takes wrong angles against the running game. You may remember Gideon from last season, when he was futilely attempting to chase after Cyrus Gray on yet another one of his TD runs. CBs Carrington Byndom and Quandre Diggs are both very young, but they've grown as the season has gone on. Both Diggs and Byndom are solid in coverage, but are beatable, especially if the offensive line gives the QB time. Against their safeties, the middle of the field will be wide open the whole game, so we need to be willing to take advantage of it by passing to our TEs. Overall, texas' secondary is solid, but our WRs will be able to get open against them and make plays. texas simply doesn't have the players or depth to match up with Jeff Fuller, Uzoma Nwachukwu, Ryan Swope, Brandal Jackson, Malcome Kennedy, and Nate Askew. Our WRs on their secondary is a mismatch in our favor.

The strength of this texas' defense is their run defense, where they are only giving up 94.9 yards per game. We need to pound their interior line and linebackers with the run, giving them a heavy dose of Cyrus Gray and Ben Malena. texas is a gambling defense, which means if we get a crease, there are big plays to be made in the running game. We can also utilize Will Randolph's speed on the outside. If we're running plays with Randolph off guard and off-tackle, we're doing it wrong. With Gray, Malena, and Randolph, we have the horses in the backfield to hammer this texas defense, and wear them out. texas showed against Oklahoma and Oklahoma State that they struggle against balanced offenses, and we're going to take advantage of that tomorrow.

 Handy Manny has their defense playing hard. but they will give up at least one big play or two that will go for a score. With texas' offense, two or three scores is enough to win the game. Given the ability of our offense, I think we'll put three scores on them in the first half, get an insurance touchdown in the third quarter, and then run out the clock. texas knows their offense can't bring them back, so while their defense will play hard, they know when they get down, the game is over.

Per the current texas depth chart, it looks like Case "Rascal" McCoy may be the starting QB for texas when they take the field Thursday night at Kyle Field. McCoy replaced David Ash in texas' loss to Kansas State last Saturday, leading texas to their only offensive TD in their last two games. Ash had two interceptions in the game, and was benched, and Rascal replaced him an in attempt to rally the team. It worked temporarily, as McCoy threw a TD pass to Blaine Irby, but Rascal wasn't able to solve texas' red zone woes. Ever since Fozzy Whitaker went down against Missouri, texas has been completely unable to score in the red zone. Whitaker and the single-wing series he commanded was texas' red zone offense, and they have yet to find a replacement for his offensive production.

Defensively, the selection of McCoy does little to change our gameplan. With Ash on the field, the defensive game plan is to use a lot of run blitzes, and put pressure on him to force mistakes. With McCoy on the field, the game plan is to blitz the hell out of him, put pressure on him, and force mistakes,. The only difference between McCoy and Ash is that McCoy is a little better in the short passing game, but his lack of pocket presence and his lack of arm strength make him a one-trick pony. Ash can throw the ball deep, but he is inaccurate. texas has two bad QBs, so putting one out on the field right now as the starter in front of the other really doesn't matter, because either one is a poor choice. The issues in texas' offense mainly stem from a lack of development in their passing game. texas' offensive line is poor in pass protection (they give up an average of 2.2 sacks per game), which doesn't help their QBs, but their biggest issue is a lack of a cohesive plan in their offense. Say what you want about Greg Davis and his love for the WR screen game, but Davis had foundational passing plays in his offense, and when things went wrong, he could take the QB back to basics and get him back into a rhythm passing the ball. I have no clue what Harsin's foundational passing play is for texas' passing game, and I don't think Harsin knows, either, because I don't think they have one. texas has spent so much time trying to work around a weak offensive line and establish a running game ot protect their young QBs, they haven't done anything to really develop the offense as the season has gone on. The offense really isn't that much different from what texas put on the field last year during their 5-7 season, except now they have two RBs who can tote the rock. Their inability progress beyond one dimension on offense, however, makes it easy for defenses to shut down their offense, which makes the choice of Rascal as the starting QB largely irrelevant. Until texas finds a passing game, it doesn't matter who is taking snaps under center.

It's that time of the year again, Aggies, as we remind ourselves what we are thankful for on Thursday. Chief among the things we can be thankful for is that we had the foresight and the intelligence to attend the greatest university in the world, Texas A&M University. This choice also means we were intelligent enough to avoid going to that craphole overrated junior college masquerading as a university in Austin, texas university. Now, I know what you're thinking: Beergut, texas isn't so bad, I have friends who went there. Yes, we all have friends who do stupid things. Some people do drugs. Some people drink to excess. Some people go to texas. Do not worry, dear Aggies, for these people are to be pitied. I'm not telling you to hate your friends, I'm just asking you to acknowledge their mistake, and move on. We all make mistakes, but unfortunately this one is going to stay with them for the rest of their lives. Pity Week doesn't quite have the same ring to it, though, so this is Hate Week.

It is important to remember that these are the cowardly SOBs who tried to lie to the rest of the Big 12 about their new television network. We just want to show our non-revenue sports and a non-conference football game that wouldn't otherwise be televised, they told us. Then we find out they want to show two football games a year on their network, including a conference football game, and show high school football games highlighting their recruits. When A&M finally became tired of their duplicity, and said we don't want to be in the same conference with you anymore, texas threw a hissyfit and said they won't play us in any sport ever again. They claimed they couldn't schedule us in their non-conference football games because they don't have room, but then turned around and moved Arkansas on their schedule to shoehorn in a game against UCLA in Arlington. Cowardice and lying, it's a new texas tradition.

So as you give thanks on Thursday for all the blessings you have in your life, remember to give thanks for the fact that you didn't go to or cheer for that denizen of cowardice and duplicity, texas university. This is Hate Week 2011, so let your disdain for all things puke orange flow through you.

If you want to list your favorite sports memory regarding A&M beating texas, or your favorite memory of t-sip stupidity (Sergio Kindle playing a drunk game of chicken with an apartment building, hollah!!), feel free.