Texas 35, Texas Tech 31

This is the true story of five ex-football players who decided to drive to Lubbock and have their life-expectancies significantly shortened. Find out what happens when five jackasses stop being sober and start getting real (drunk)...

THE REAL WORLD - LUBBOCK

What do you say we meet the motley crew...

Clay-O (Defensive Tackle) - Yes, the very same Clay-O of previous 54b road trip commentary fame. Also known as Luke Sleepwalker and Mr. Clean. He's a probate lawyer, which is always nice to have along on a trip of this nature, though I’m not sure the State of Texas recognizes last will and testaments written on a beer coaster. Regardless, the real reason we chose Clay-o for this mission is his bald head. Chicks dig it. And even though he's married, Clay unselfishly sacrifices himself for the team by pawning himself off as cheap eye-candy. His super power: Bladder of Steal. His kryptonite: The Bean & Cheese Burrito.

Fiebs (Center) - First lineman ever to debunk the notion that big and sexy don’t mix. He's single, can fill out a striped shirt like Abercrombie never intended, and sports some sweet tats that scream, "cuddly, but dangerous." And yes, in case you're wondering, he has a name for his penis, he calls it "The Big XII." He also named his balls. The right one is called "Brent Musburger" and the left is called "John Mackovic." Ladies, if you play your cards right, you might get to meet all of them. And that smell, it’s his cologne, Flower Mound Musk.

J-Rod (Tight-End) - Fieb's older brother. He’s sort of the strong, silent, Chuck Norris type. He’s also single and intends to stay that way. In fact, Cupid tried to shoot him with an arrow once and J-Rod caught it with his bare hand, gabbed the stupid cherub and poked its eyes out. And that’s why love is blind. He also played for Tech, and according to the Red Raider Football Guide, his pregame ritual always included shaving his scrotum with a Bowie knife.

BK (Offensive Tackle) - We call him the “Butter Knife.” He’s a cop who tips the scales at 3 bills. If you cross him, you better pack a lunch and one for him too. Sorry ladies, he’s married, but he does have a special pair of pink handcuffs for strippers and disgruntled transvestites. But don’t mistake him for soft. Rumor has it he did some time in the Octagon, tazers his testes once a day to stay focused, and registered his liver as a lethal weapon.

54b (All-Big XII Scout Team D-End) - I’m the weakest of the missing links, the insufferable walk-on, the defendant to be named later, and Mr. Nice Guy all rolled into one. I’m no lady’s man, but if you slap me on the ass, I’ll turn the other cheek. My only claim to fame is sacking the New Mexico State quarterback in the last 45 seconds of a blowout. Of course I found out later the other team let me do it because my teammates told them I was autistic. But that’s okay, my secret to life has always been about exceeding expectations. I figure if you set them low enough, good things will happen. And my expectations for this road trip...let’s just say getting home in one piece is high on the list.

(Road Trip Diary, October 27-28, 2006)

DAY 1

6:02am Sitting at Gate 8, Love Field Airport clutching my cell phone...”Welcome to Bank of America...press 1 for balance or payment information...press 2 for recent transactions...press 3 if you’re a complete dipshit and left your ATM card in the machine...press 4 if some jag-off is using your debit card to buy the homeless a round of Grande Caramel Machiatos...press 5 if it burns when you pee.” Needless to say, not the best way to start off the day.

7:46am Meeting Fiebs and Clay-O at the Avis Rental Car desk at the Austin airport. We’re obviously comfortable with our sexuality, or lack there of, because we’ve taken the bold step of requesting the Soccer Mom Mini-van Special with optional rally fun pack that includes a cooler. Chances are good we won’t exactly be filling it with juice boxes and orange slices if you know what I mean. It’s also got an automatic sliding door for hands-free kidnapping. So we got that going for us, which is nice.

8:43am Back at Fiebs’ house to pick up the other guys. J-Rod, being the oldest and wisest, decides to drive and quickly calculates our combined weight at somewhere over 1,100 pounds. According to NASA, he’ll have to start applying the breaks in Abilene if he wants to come to complete stop in Lubbock.

10:30am Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que in Llano...I’m not even sure words can do this place justice. You just walk up to this big fire pit and start pointing at the meat you want. Ribs, chops, sausage, brisket, Opossum/Armadillo Road Kill Mixed Grill, you name it, they smoke it. Then the helper spears it and dunks it in a vat of BBQ sauce and puts it on your tray. The dude inside weighs your kill and that’s your bill (can you say $25 lunch?) Then you drag it all back to a table and scarf it down caveman style. Plates, never heard of ‘em. Knapkins, you got a sleeve don’t you. They do offer one nice accoutrement though and that would be complimentary beans, all you can muscle. So even if your car runs out of gas, chances are good, you won’t.

1:14pm About 10 miles south of Abilene now in a little town called Tuscola. I kept thinking we’d see a water tower with the words “Home of the Real McCoy” painted on it, or at least a Dairy Queen Marquee sign that read, “Colt got a BJ behind our dumpster.” But I guess they’re waiting to see if McCoy beats Texas Tech before they crown him honorary king of the Tumbleweed Parade.

3:32pm Welcome to Lubbock and the lovely Villa Town Inn. According to AAA, this is a Five-Cockroach motel. Forget smoking or non-smoking, I’m just hoping to get a room where they didn’t recently shoot a porn movie because I’m pretty sure I just saw the “plumber” from Econo-Slut 3 walk by. Hell, you could devote an entire season of CSI to my bed’s comforter alone. I guess I should have been thankful not to be sleeping in the car, but I’m definitely not putting Hotel Bare-Minimum on my recommended list. Unless of course you like rubber toilet paper and soap the size of your taint.

4:45pm J-Rod is taking us on a tour of the Texas Tech campus that includes a visit to the E.J. Holub Strength and Conditioning Center. That’s right, four Longhorns are walking through the Red Raider Weight Room. It was pretty cool. They had some good inspirational signs posted all over the place like: “Play Like A Pirate Everyday, Rrrrr” and “Failing To Prepare Is Preparing To Go For It On 4th Down” and “Beat Texas, Leach Buys.”

6:03pm We’re thirsty, so we stop by some place called Chimy’s (I think it’s short for Chonga’s)...it’s an off-campus bar, but somehow I’m pretty sure the median age in the place is 19 which isn’t surprising considering Chimy’s most popular drink is something called the “Freshman Slut.” And there were certainly plenty of those getting passed around. When it comes to women, there’s hot and then there’s Texas Tech Trashy Hot. I can’t explain it, but there is no question you could pick a Tech girl out of line-up every time. Just look for the hot chick who looks like she’s lost at Six Flags.

9:47pm We’ve now graduated to a bar where you actually have to be 21. It’s called Bleachers, though it looks more like one of those African Safari shows on the Discovery Channel. Packs of guys and girls are roaming freely like animals on the Serengeti. At the table next to us there are some vulchers celebrating their girlfriend’s 30th birthday. Fiebs and BK swoop in like hyenas and before you know it they’ve commandeered the birthday cake (after cunningly implying that the girls could stand to drop a few pounds). Talk about thinning out the herd, Darwin would be so proud.

12:34am Just when I thought our shear machismo had totally run amuck, our survival of the dumbest experiment spilled out onto the street outside of the bar when Clay-O suggested a post-Yaeger shot aerial chest-bump. Normally this is done with two guys jumping in the air and bumping chests. It’s immature to be sure and maybe even a little Brokeback-esque, but it’s harmless for the most part. Unless of course you’re attempting the never-been-accomplished quadruple, aerial chest-bump with four guys who haven’t seen the shy side of 200 pounds since they were 12. When it comes to the four-man vertical chest bump, all you can do is close your eyes and hope the other guys use more chest than pelvis. Now I know how Brian Boitano felt when attempting his first quad.

??:??am We finally make it back to the Motel Bare Minium after several unsuccessful Whataburger drive-by’s. And what to our wondering eyes should appear, but a neon sign that says “Rosalita’s Cantina in the Rear.” Low and behold, we got ourselves an all-night Tejano Bar attached to our motel. So we had that going for us, which is nice.

DAY 2

7:30am Time for the Red Raider 10k. Yeah, I like to go running on road trips. It helps with the stress and anxiety. Plus, I can do something nice for my liver by sweating out last night’s Bud Light immersion therapy. If you’ve never run in Lubbock, a little piece of advice: run with the wind. Run against it and it’ll peel the enamel off your teeth.

10:30am I guess the non-stop, melodious, contractor music coming through our air ducts was sort of a subliminal sledge-hammer because by the time everyone got up, we were craving breakfast burritos from Mama Jossie’s. It’s a drive-thru only place on Avenue Q and Jossie’s is like the Willy Wonka of breakfast wraps. There‚s like 40 kinds and that can be a bit daunting considering the drive-thru lady didn’t speak English. But, oh well, it was all good because whatever got lost in translation probably ended up in the Chorizo.

11:02am The Strip...because the city of Lubbock resides in what is commonly referred to as a “dry-county,” all alcoholic beverages must be purchased outside of town at a row of drive-thru liquor stores that can only be described as a carnival ride for your liver. Every liquor barn is festooned with a veritable cornucopia of superfluous luminescence. There is no question Clark W. Grizwald taught these people everything they know about exterior lighting. As for the service, it’s great. You hand them your cooler and a credit card and it comes back full of ice and beer. If they had midgets and strippers, I’d never leave.

2:00pm Off to the tailgate located a couple of clicks from Jones AT&T Stadium, aka, “the Villa de Tortilla.” But this wasn’t just any tailgate. No, this one belonged to a friend and Red Raider teammate of J-Rod’s from back in the day. His name was J, just J...

J (Defensive End/Death-eater) - Every man wants to be him and every woman wants to know if their baby belongs to him. He was dressed all in black, including his boots that were assuredly made out of something that recently made the endangered species Top 10. You’ve heard of double-fisting? J pioneered the triple. He can take a case of of Miller Lite down in the time it takes most mortal men to clean a chicken wing. Hoping that we’d form a kinship as fellow D-Ends, I boldly asked him if he wanted to see my patented “forearm-shiver killer 360-spin move. Without blinking, and while inhaling 3 more Miller Lites, he said, “not unless you want a taste of my “Nut-stomp Tasmanian Chopper” move.” Considering that move's outlawed in most states, I replied, “tempting, but no thank you.”

In all seriousness, I want to thank J and his lovely wife for hosting us last Saturday. They rented a sweet RV and even let me and my school-girl bladder use their pisser a few 100 times. Not to mention they’d just killed a bunch of dove and J’s brother wrapped them in bacon and Q’d them up on the barbi. It was just awesome, and before we knew it, it was time for...

THE GAME
Before kick-off, most Tech fans I talked with said something to the effect that “Texas was going to win easily.” Sort of the preemptive, “we suck, so don’t get the big head if you win” strike. Of course, after the Red Raiders went up 21-0, they changed their tune. In fact, the whole student section, which just happened to be conveniently standing right in front of the Longhorn-fan contingent, turned around and shot us the bird while serenading us with “overrated” chants for most of the first half. Classy. Then, as if expected and right on cue, Colt took over, threw the hammer down and pulled off a 35-31 victory comeback for the storybooks.

If you couldn’t be there in person, the best way I can describe Tech fans is to liken them to that naughty kid who lived down the street who never expected to get any presents for Christmas. But on about December 20th, a huge present appeared under the tree just for him. I can’t tell you what joy it brought to my heart to watch that kid tear into his present in the 4th quarter only to find it out it was just a pair of socks and a half-knitted sweater from his senile Aunt Gertrude all along.

Despite another exhilarating comeback, it’s been a tough last couple of weeks on the old ticker. I don’t think my heart can take much more this, and I’m pretty sure my liver gave out somewhere between Abilene and Sweetwater. Who ever said it’s a long season knew what they were talking about, and even though UT is a 17-point favorite, I’m guessing with our injury laden defense, we may be in for another wild ride in the...

NEXT GAME
All the talk this week has centered around OSU quarterback Bobby Reid and the potent Cowboy offense. No doubt the win over Nebraska was impressive, but where was this “unstoppable force” against the likes of Cougar High, K-State and A&M. All losses. I guess the writers forgot to mention that OSU’s defense isn’t exactly unbeatable. And despite the many injuries suffered by our DB’s, let’s not forget that this is the same Longhorn secondary that helped hold the Red Raiders scoreless the entire second half. Something tells me the Horns can get it done, especially playing back in the friendly confines of DKR. So what about the score? Patience, it’s time for the...

UNPREDICTABLE PREDICTION
Mack changes team motto from “Do What You Can Do” to “Do What You Gotta Do”

Texas 45
OS-Who 31

TAILGATE UPDATE
Kick-off for the OSU Game (Uh-oh, better cowboy-up) has been set for 6pm (Saturday Night Lights) and even though the Horns will probably spot the Pokes 4 touchdowns before halftime (We got’em just where we want’em) and is being televised on TBS (Sager-vision), come on down to the tailgate at San Jacinto and 18th for a few beers anyway (Just Brew It). The temperature should be awesome (“the weather is here, 3 more beers and you’re beautiful”) and you know Whitemore and the Gang (Hall of Flamers) will have something good cooking on the grill (“Real tomato ketchup, Eddie?”). Oh, and don’t forget to take a second and donate a couple of bucks (Pause for the cause).


QUOTEWORTHY

As always, names withheld to protect the not-so innocent...

“Welcome to Lubbock. It’s flat, but our women aren’t.”

PA announcer at Tech’s stadium: “We have a new Jones AT&T Stadium attendance record: 56,189.”
UT Fan: “I think I had more people than that at my wedding.”

"You ever pulled a raccoon?"
"What's a raccoon?"
"That's when you hook up with a chick but bail in the middle of night and kick her trashcan over while running out the door."

“When you played center, did you find Marty Cherry to be surprisingly gentle?”
“Yeah, it was like he had six fingers.”

"Did you ever hook up with that girl you knew in KC?"
"Yeah, she was beefy but freaky."

”You know, beers are like football games...the next one is always the most important one and you just got tak’em one at a time.”

And finally, the best pick-up line ever...group of girls near us at the bar, the heavyset one walks up and says, “okay, which one of you boys is taking one for the team?”

Hook'em,
54b