Recruiting Luv Among the Assistants: Any for Jerrance and Kurtis?
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Is everyone forgetting about Darrell Arthur all the sudden. He played at South Oak Cliff High School in the Dallas Metro Area. I used to go ball there with my high school team mates when I was at Hebron High School in the Plano area. It doesn’t get anymore Texan than that I assure you. He was undoubtedly the unsung hero from our 2008 NC game. The guy puts up 20 pts. & 10 big rebounds, and it seems apparent very few can recall that now.
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I recall it but the question earlier was about the last five years.
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Gotta recruit Tayhoss, because there are 30+ million folks down there.and increasingly the brain scanning research will funnel more and more of the Texas kids into basketball. Texas population is an increasingly big percentage of persons that don’t go back more than one generation, and so don’t have Darrel Royal as a kind of demigod in the backs of their minds.
The same thing is happening to Texas that happened to California. People like it and they want to stay there to live and work, but some of the old counter productive traditions, like football will slowly begin to be limited to that dwindling portion of the population that does not care if their children are brain damaged for fun in high school on Friday nights. It will take time, and it will never go away, any more than bull fighting ever goes away completely, but it will diminish in significance over time.
It will take another 20-30 years, but Texas and football will one day not be anymore synonymous than California and football. The big global money is in basketball petroshoes and petroapparel, not in petro football cleats and shoulder pads. The writing is on the market study wall.
Californians once LOVED football and frankly produced more than their share for much of the 20th Century even though they had lots of other things to do all that time. Southern California had not one but TWO one hundred thousand seat football stadiums BEFORE World War II!!! But there came a tipping point, when the culture changed from so much immigration; even that in southern California, which was where most of the transplanted old south (Carolinas, Georgia, etc.) and old new south (Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas) southerners moved to and so made California’s south both so politically conservative, cotton and tree plantation oriented, and so football loving.
KU ought to keep recruiting Tayhoss. Heck, between our former assistant that is at A&M now and Janks at SMU, we have Jayhawkers down there that could recruit the heck out of Texas if Self ever hired them back. And of course we have Keith Langford that could be drawn upon, and Billy Gillispie could be risen from the dead and redeemed with a bit of fundamentalist assistance.
But its a little more complicated than just jocks and shoes and on the ground knowledge of Texas right now.
There also appears to be some political tension between the states of Texas and Kansas right now over oil policy and over who should be the next president within the oil and gas bidness itself (Bushistas vs. Kochistas), and in its ties to central banking (between Anglo-Bush and Saxono-Koch alliances in banking) and liberal vs. conservative in politics. The Anglo-Bush folks seem to be getting a little impatient with the Saxono-Koch folks seeming inability to keep the state of Kansas and KU immune to the other Anglo complex of Anglo-Rockefeller-Mellon influences apparently trying to restore their legacy strength there. And, without putting too fine of a point on it, this tension between Texas and Kansas interests, that up until the Obama years had pretty much made Kansas a colony of Texas, now seems a little more tense and conflicted. I mean how would you feel if you had just invested heavy in tar sands and oil shale extraction and cracking it into bitumen to be pipelined to Texas, and to have invested in fracking from the Dakotas to Oklahoma to get the cheap gas needed to crack it, only to have the Anglo-Bush folks tell their Saudi partners to flood the world markets with cheap sweet crude waaaaay cheaper than anything you can crack and frack in North America right about now? So that’s nasty burr between the Bushistas and the Kochistas. Then you’ve got the Anglo-Rockefeller-Mellon apparently driving harder into Kansas, and you’ve apparently got a real powder keg just below the surface in Kansas.
All of the above probably subtly colors the news down in Texas about how fit of a place Kansas and KU are to send your kids. If you’re a liiberal Texan you figure Austin is liberal enough. If you’re a conservative Texan, you figure Kansas may not be conservative enough right now and may not be aligned properly in the oil bidness either. And there is always that fault line buried deep between Texas and Kansas–slave state and free state. And there is a basic legacy geostrategic difference between Texas and Kansas if you ignore the mutual interests in the black gold and frack gas that folks often forget. Texas is its own electric grid. Kansas is part of the Western USA electric grid. Texas is always heavily oriented to being a transportation hub for the Caribbean basin with its own energy independent electric grid and very interocean canal and Super Corridor oriented. Kansas is always massively CONUS center point oriented. It always sees things through the eyes of being a rail and highway and flight hub to all of CONUS. Thus though Texas and Kansas can agree on many energy extraction and agricultural and religious issues, Kansas has a much different geostrategic agenda on transportation and electricity than Texas. Or so it seems to little old me looking on remotely.
The really deep burr between Texas and Kansas is that they are locked in a something of a zero sum game in the issues of transportation and electricity. What is good for Texas is usually NOT good for Kansas regarding these two issues, and so Texas has to curry favor with Kansas on issues of oil and agriculture, while Texas slowly inexorably tries to cut Kansas out of its center point influence in transportation by shifting the transit hub south and tries to take over the Western Electric grid, which in the long run will reduce Kansas even further into being a colony of Texas.
I suspect that oil policy right now is a very serious raw wound between the two states that has not yet openly ruptured, but soon could. And I suspect that conflict over oil policy was what brought President Obama to Kansas during basketball season. The Democrats and their base in Chicago, New York and so on, were looking to drive a little bit more of a wedge between Texas and Kansas, as Obama Prepared for a China Pivot that was going to do serious harm to the Bushistas efforts to open up the Tarim Basin in northwestern China, and so the Bushistas went to the Saudis and said something like open up the valves and we’ll look the other way while you sell all you want. We are not talking conspiracy at all here. Just strategy and policy. And so Obama and his base said something like well, if you Saudi’s will do the dirty work of the bombing missions in Yemen that all of my cruise missiles have failed to accomplish, we too will look the other way, while you sell all the cheap crude you want. And so Anglo Bush and Anglo Obama wind up getting what they want, and Anglo Obama eases up on provoking the Chinese, and Anglo Bush gets to keep moving forward on the Tarim Basin, and well, everyone is happy, except Saxono-Koch, which suddenly is holding the s-bag on a massive investment in North American tar sand and oil shale extracting, fracking and cracking infrastructure that suddenly doesn’t pencil out.
And so, to get out of the vice grip of currently uneconomic tar sands/oil shale/cracking and fracking investment, the Anglo-Bushistas can offer to back off on the Saudi’s flooding the world’s markets with sweet crude, and in exchange it is likely that the Saxono-Kochistas will support Jeb Bush in the next election and all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well in the oil bidness and between the states of (and private oligarchies of) Kansas and Texas.
So: because this turbulent time too shall pass, long term the state of Kansas needs to remain constructively engaged with Texas and the south, as surely as it needs to stay constructively engaged with the North and East and West.
And so KU should remain constructively engaged with recruiting Texas basketball recruits, because not so far in the future, maybe only a year, the mass media will be putting out better vibes in Texas about Kansas than it probably has the last few years, and KU will probably begin to do better at signing these kids, Nike and adidas permitting, of course. And in time Texans will internalize the brain scanning results and steer more and more of their kids into hoops.
Oh, my, what a marvelously interconnected world.
Rock Chalk!
(Note: all of the above is speculation, opining and hypotheticals made by an old fan watching everything remotely and with no insider information. But be very, very VERY wary of oil industry experts and professionals responding on this sort of thing, because they have a rather poor record of predicting things and explaining things before hand for obvious reasons. Remember Peak Oil? HOWLING!!! Remember fossil only origins? HOWLING!!! And I never will forget a relative telling me the world was effectively out of oil and was never going to make any more great discoveries; this was in 1974. Ha!!!)
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No, I think they are just noting that he and Keith Langford seem kind of the exceptions to the rule of KU struggling a bit with signing Texas recruits.
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@drgnslayr those are outdated!
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http://www.basketball-reference.com/friv/birthplaces.cgi?country=US&state=TX
Please y’all go down this list and tell me who we recruited and missed out on. Remember Kansas especially self recruits NBA level talent. Besides Julius Randle or Myles Turner recently, who was so worth pulling out of Texas. Look at Rasheed Sulaimon & Matt Jones who were five stars that we recruited pretty heavily, and they went to Duke to only disappear.
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Zach Peters was/is from Plano, Texas. Did not work out that well…
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I forgot, but thanks for mentioning Shady. He brought a monster game to Lawrence!
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Holy cow! They are! From the looks of them, I don’t think it will impact the taste… something between a longhorn patty and a rotten cactus nopale.
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Hey… nice list!
I think quality basketball talent in Texas is relatively a new thing. There are a few guys on that list I would take, and probably a bunch of guys that would be great for Kansas basketball but were not pro talent. I can think of several Kansas players that were vital to us but not NBA talent, like Sherron Collins. Still… you made an interesting point and you backed it with a well-constructed list. Bravo!
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I would say there is definitely a plethora of talent in Texas right now. Texas & Baylor are going to get theirs naturally. If we can eventually pluck a few out their backyard that’s about all you can ask for. Talent outside of Texas is just as fertile & we can’t expend all our recruiting resources in the Lone Star State. It’s also tough when TCU is almost done building a new Basketball Arena that will be a dandy in Fort Worth. Then you have Texas A&M who is the only Texas school in the SEC which is a huge recruiting edge in state. SMU & Larry Brown have done well getting Keith Frazier and other in state kids into his program. Poor Texas Tech though… I drove through Lubbock earlier in the year, and Yikes who would want to go to college there haha. Man that has to be a tough place to recruit to.
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There has been some good talent in Texas lately. Texas A&M just pulled an entire class from the state with 4, 4 star players who all will play a big role in making them a better team. We were after Davis, a lot of us fans wanted Davis. The top 10 kids in Texas this year is pretty strong, 4 of them staying in the Big 12 and as mentioned 4 going to the SEC. 2014 class was so strong Winslow was the 5th best prospect in the state who we wanted btw.
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I’m recruiting YOU now to post in here more often! I don’t even care if you are from Texas or not!
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Where do I sign my LOI haha. I’ve been following & reading everyone’s comments for some time now. Decided to finally join the party. I was born in Texas, but my while Dad’s side is from Russell, Kansas. They all went KU except my Grandmother who actually went to K-State. Conflict of interest I know, but she fell in line and now bleeds Crimson & Blue.
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We really need diversity of quality opinions and you fit that bill perfectly!
I’ll send over your grant-in-aid and show you where your dorm room is. Breakfast at 8…
Seriously… I appreciate adding you to the collection of posters in here and your opinion is appreciated and respected!
Want some help with an avatar? Mad Max opens up lots of potential.
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@drgnslayr does he get in the new dorm?? Waaaa! I want a room there! I’m going up for grad. next weekend, I’ll try to get by there and take a pic. Been anxious to see how they were coming along.
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The avatar is up now… and of course I get into the new dorms. I’m a 5
recruit. I expect a some wooing!!
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Actually… maybe this will fit better in the circle used:
5-Stars?! Well then, we’ll have your room with your own private sunken jacuzzi ready for you by 4 this afternoon!
Heck yes you get one, too!
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@drgnslayr TOO AWESOME!!
Correctamundo way more appropriate considering my profile name
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So…you want to be wooed? here you go…
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@jaybate-1.0 Speaking of the Dakotas, I know my Dakota 4x4 is sitting in my local Dodge dealer’s service bay with a “fracked-up” CV axle…
4inch lift, 33in shoes, and the PetroCo’s love that V8, fulltime 4WD drivetrain, as it get about 12mpg city, and never better than 16mpg on the hwy (new vehicle sticker states 14 / 19 mpg, but nooo way that is close, regardless of tire size…). Not too bad for a 300,000+ mile vehicle, but hate to do the math on how much my fuel costs have been driving 30k miles/year x 11yrs…BigOil has a shark-like hold on my checkbook…lol.
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Imagine what is now feasible. Imagine Tesla’s new all-wheel drive 4-door cut into a raised 6-pak El Camino with your Dakota’s tires. 265 miles on a battery pack charge. 3 minute battery pack swaps at the service station. A Tesla battery solar reservoir at your house and tesla solar panel on your roof ready for fast charging your Tesla El Camino that can tow a 23 foot Cobalt boat, or go off roading. Instant up dates to firm ware and software through uplinks to Space X satellites. A giga battery plant producing scalable lithium ion batteries at economies of scale for home use in global markets that make batteries (and solar panels) for home and car become dirt cheap and houses go off the electric grid and cars go off the the gasoline pumps. Solar, wind and geothermal suddenly become viable, storable generation alternatives. Two billion cars steadily convert to electric. Two billion electric home battery back ups make 2 billion homes go steadily off the grid.
Regime change perma war and oil dumping and first strike enabling ABMs combine to keep new crude off the market and competing oil backed central banks from flourishing. But refined crude pricing remains fixed, while energy grids are simultaneously weakened by houses going off grid incrementally with Tesla batteries. East, West USA grids user bases shrink and so merge.
Military begins migration beyond oil engines. Military realtime Recharging accomplished by lasers from Space X satellites.
Something as big as the Admiralty migrating ships in the 1890s from steam to diesel is under way.
Something very big is being signaled with the cheap Saudi oil, but what?
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I am more of a Ford man myself and not a big fan of Mopar but I would take them over GM any day. I feel your pain, my AWD Expy 5.4 L gets 12 mpg; it will get sightly better mileage if I keep it under 60 MPH on the highway; I only drive it when I need to tow something or carry a big load, under 1,000 miles per year.
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