You Are Baylor

Before I begin, I have to say this: I am not sitting here saying that the deed has been done. A run to a Big 12 and/or BCS title is not a foregone conclusion - if you are mistaking my excitement for green-tinted foolishness then you just aren't getting it. That out of the way, read this:

When I first went to cut together the "Hey Baylor - Let's Do This" video, I had an inkling of an idea where it was headed, but truth be told I was winging it. I wanted to capture the growing excitement for this team, get a few people potentially a little more excited, and encourage people to wear black to the OU game. I have made Baylor videos before (see here and here) and they had played well, however, I truly wanted to bring something different to the table. I was headed in a pretty normal direction for a hype video when I accidentally wound up on Jim Rome's rant in the nether regions of YouTube while searching for material to piece together. It struck a chord. Yes, he recanted and yes we had the Year of the Bear to shove in the faces of those who doubted, but this year is a totally different animal. If 2011 was a ceiling, 2013 is breaking through it. So I deleted half of the timeline I had started and left it just ... black. You were going to have to be patient to enjoy this video, and if Baylor Nation is anything, it's patient.

In the scheme of things, I am a young fan, therefore I do not pretend to know the sufferings endured for the previous two decades by the Baylor faithful. I was lucky enough to walk on campus the same year Robert Griffin III and Art Briles began their retooling of arguably the worst BCS conference football program in its existence. I was there when RG3 made his entrance into Floyd Casey for the first time and I remember thinking, I kid you not, "this is going to be huge." Now, was I predicting our current rise to the Big 12 front runner, #6 ranking in the BCS, or even a bowl game at the time? No. I am certainly no fortune teller, but I remember the feeling watching RG3 make the move seen below on the night of his debut, and knowing something was different.

Now, even though I had had this "feeling," the pervasive thought stayed in the back of my head: "When you signed up to come to Baylor, you knew you were signing your life away to non-relevance in the world of sports." I grew up in Oklahoma and every time I started to talk of Griffin and Briles with my friends back home, I was met with glazed eyes as they humored my excitement and then ended the conversation with, "Well yeah, but you're still Baylor."

Bryce Petty is right, Baylor is a "but" team. All we hear, even now, is "but this, but that." I was watching the video get shared all over Twitter and Facebook and trying to figure out why it had hit home for so much of Baylor Nation when it finally hit me: Look at what this team has done! Want to know why the video resonated with so many of the Baylor faithful? Because like this team has done all season, it said, "But what?" We don't care about your buts and biased reasoning, we are good and you are going to have to deal with it.

The video laid out our history to this point, and no matter what point along the timeline you jumped in, you are Baylor. So own it. We are watching the passion that has always existed at the university, transferred to the football team and it is making noise across the country. At the end of the day, yes this is just a football team and we are all just a bunch of fans, but let's not forgot how fun this is right now. Do not forget that there has NEVER been a team open a season the way we have, this is unprecedented. So do not forget to show up, be obnoxiously loud and enjoy every moment the rest of the way. And the next time someone says, "but ..." show them this video and say "But ... what?"

Baylor we are, and Baylor we'll always be.

Sic. 'Em. Bears.