36gut

https://www.uiltexas.org/football/playoff-brackets/4AD2 Looks to me like the Panthers will draw Connally in the Area round.

Even if it were a football school, very few people other than friends and family were willing to travel nearly 90 miles on a fairly cold night to see their team likely lose in a rout.

So I was curious and looked it up. The Gilmer Buckeyes AVERAGED 61.4 points per game in the regular season of 2014. Had we been in New York, I would imagine that team would have been disqualified from entering the playoffs.

Gilmer fans turned out better than I expected, given that the Yamboree is going on.

Pleasant Grove hired a dynamic young coach. It took him a few years, but when they beat the Buckeyes in Gilmer in 2017, that proved that his master strategy was working. Frankly, the way their program rose to prominence over just a few years reminded me of young Jeff Traylor's first few years here.

Hurt and Tennison both played QB.

Carthage posters are so into their team that it's like reading the message boards of the Aggies or the Longhorns. What a fanbase!

Blake did pass an average of just over once per game - 13 of 17 for 289 yards and 3 TDs. https://www.maxpreps.com/high-schools/gilmer-buckeyes-(gilmer,tx)/football-fall-14/stats.htm

What is it in the article that is incorrect? A DEC meeting having been called suggests one of the other schools in the district is indeed is accusing Mount Vernon of something. The writer didn't say they were cheating. That's yet to be determined. My guess is that these players moved there based on the reputation of Briles. I don't think that is illegal per se. Gilmer had a UIL hearing after a DEC accusation like this 13 years ago and won. Mount Vernon probably will, too.

There's no revenge left to get. Last year Carthage beat Gilmer by 52 points, the worst margin of defeat for us since 1977.

A poster from Gilmer named Big Brother might know this, but I have heard he has abandoned the program.

The orange seats are usually MORE empty than that. That was the biggest Gilmer home crowd since the Carthage game in 2017. I have observed for a while that football, though still royal, is no longer king here.

It wasn't a fun game to watch and I would say that even if Gilmer had won - which probably wouldn't have happened even on our best night. Too many penalties plus I don't like seeing that Pleasant Grove offense being run no matter who is running it. I will say this. Paris doesn't have the passing aspect of the Wing-T down nearly as well as PG does. Hawks can throw like pros out of that Wing-T. If Paris could pass as well as PG does, they might have won a couple of weeks ago.

Webb had a good game against Atlanta in both his junior and senior seasons. He didn't reinjure his knee last year until the first half of the Paris game two weeks later. According to MaxPreps, his junior year against Atlanta he had 12 carries for 104 yards and a TD, plus he ran a kickoff back 90 yards for another TD. In last year's game, Webb carried 22 times for 166 yards and 3 TDs.

Been to every Gilmer game 2011-18. I have recurring nightmares where I am missing a game. It's become somewhat of an obsession to be there.

Unfortunately, many of the teachers are viewed as whiners by and large these days and that's because the private sector jobs (unless you're in the oil boom areas) of the rest of the population are not nearly as lucrative as they were in the heyday of industrial America (1940s through 1970s). IMO, this is why the MAGA slogan caught on so well politically. There are those of us who remember when there was a large middle class which didn't have to struggle to make ends meet. One paycheck at a good job in Longview, for instance, could easily support a family of four or more. Many of these good jobs did not require a college education either. You graduated from high school and went to work at Eastman, for example. Provided you didn't screw up, you had it made.

Legislators already acted, according to this. https://www.texastribune.org/2019/07/24/texas-made-it-easier-punish-students-who-harass-teachers/

You can ask Matt Stepp and others like him why there is very little local sports media coverage anymore. Facebook, Google etc. destroyed the business model of sports journalism and all other types of journalism. Zuckerberg's model at Facebook was to "move fast and break things." He and others like him broke the traditional media, which is now nearly broke" in another meaning of the word. The only practical way to cover events like this is DIY, as you just did, for free. No one pays for journalism anymore. You can apply for a grant from Facebook, though. Maybe they'll get back to you. https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/facebook-local-journalism.php

Exactly. Carthage has more than one helmet. Gilmer needs an orange helmet to go with the road uniforms IMO. Helmets aren't cheap, though.

I am guessing both Graham and Gilmer made the list because of what DCTF's Greg Tepper referred to as "pedigree." For Gilmer, this is the flipside of the early Traylor era when we SHOULD HAVE BEEN highly-ranked, but never were because we had no "pedigree." The Buckeyes will probably go three or four (but not five or six) rounds deep, as always, but I look at our regular season schedule and I see at least three losses and possible four. Would love to be proven wrong, of course, about those losses.

Louisiana is trying to preserve its ranking as the 50th best state. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/louisiana

Let's not kid ourselves. There was a lot of turnover here in Gilmer, but I would argue there aren't as many "Jimmys and Joes" out for the program either. You just have to look at the number of D1 FBS recruits off the 2014 team versus more recently for proof of that.

No one in Washington has the power to enforce school consolidation in Texas. If it ever looked like that were about to happen, I think the "Republic of Texas" would go mainstream and not just be some fringe idea of militia groups. However, I think Austin is always going to have a say in this, particularly when it comes to those districts who have a paucity of taxable real property and whose residents "don't have a pot to pee in" (as an oilman I worked for long ago characterized those who are now called the "economically disadvantaged" in school district lingo). "He who pays the piper calls the tune."

I think some people came around who weren't with you previously after paying year after year of ISD property tax increases. I don't think consolidation will happen much unless the Green New Deal were to come into full effect, decreeing that ALL remaining fossil fuel resources in the state remain in the ground , but I could see some common-sense cuts to administrative overhead. For example, I don't know why the seven relatively small school districts located entirely or almost entirely within Upshur County couldn't get by with one countywide superintendent rather than seven individual ISD supers. Of course, I am sure the six suddenly "former" superintendents could come up with a whole lot of reasons why this is not feasible. Realistically, the only way radical change will ever come to this system is when something we shouldn't wish for occurs - another Great Depression.

Okay, I went back and looked at the weather history for that night. You're right. It was windier than usual, but the temperature was around 50 degrees. I still think the dropped passes might have been caught in an indoor venue. Final score was 44-41, cowboyandchrist. "Shoulda, coulda, woulda ..." as the saying goes. Okay, I was wrong about the flip, too. Coach Surratt goes over what happened here beginning at 6:35: