Campus Chronicles 4: Return of the Touchdowns

You used to call me on my... You used to...you used to. You used to call me on my cell phone late night when you neeeeeed myyyyyyy looooooove. Call me on my cell phone late night when you neeeeed myyyy loooooooove and I know when that HOTLINE BLING that can only mean one thing. I know when that HOTLINE BLING that can only mean one thing. EVER SINCE I LEFT THE CITY YOU...

Hello Baylor Nation! Matt and I are so happy to be back for another week of Campus Chronicles! This week we've got first hand views of Baylor's first football game of the season at SMU! Also another week of classes that are getting more and more real as the training wheels come off and we get into real work. Because of all the real work I have, this Campus Chronicles is gonna be a little late. Sorry guys, please forgive me, this scholarship ain't gonna keep itself. We're looking at the week starting Monday 8/31 just so we're clear. But before we get into it we have a real live reader question this week!

Reader Question:

TopSeededAmateur asks "what is this Zeta Zigga Zamma you speak of?

Well TSA, ZZZ is what it would look like if the Lonely Island made a music video about fraternities. They're like an anti-frat frat. It's a group of guys who are all kinda goofy and sometimes funny who do stuff like throw parties with actual kool-aid (you can actually drink their punch) and spoof Sing every year with an event called Zing. So yeah it's hard to explain but ZZZ exists and most people find them generally amusing. A brother from ZZZ might have a better explanation for you though.

Jam of the Week:

Matt McBeezy's Week:

This week was remarkably bland until Thursday for me. But on Thursday, WE GOT COLLEGE FOOTBALL (congrats to everyone who survived, you may bury those who didn’t where they are found), even if it was TCU, I was just excited that I had a sport to watch, besides baseball. On Thursday, my roommate and one of my suitemates watched/switched between the TCU-Minnesota game, the UNC-South Carolina game, and the Michigan-Utah game. Yes, it was glorious watching College Football again.

On Friday, after my classes were all done, I rode with my roommate to Dallas for the SMU game. I also saw Dex (lord.hinton) in a car near the SUB (Whaddup Dex?) My parents drove to the game as well and sat with us (because they had the tickets. Thanks Mom and Dad!). I’m not going to describe the game, because if you haven’t heard about it, you might be living under a rock. After the game, we drove back as fast as possible to Waco.

Saturday. It’s one of the best days of the week (Friday and Sunday have an argument as well.) and with all of the college football going on, I think I left my apartment maybe once on Saturday. But I watched Gameday (Rece Davis is a solid substitute for Chris Fowler) and saw Corso put on that elephant head. Of course, since there was no Big 12 Football that day except for Oklahoma demolishing Akron, Kansas State beating South Dakota(and the band marching in the formation of a Jayhawk and a "spaceship") and West Virginia putting a smack down on Georgia Southern (I’m not counting Kansas’, Iowa State’s and Texas’ loss as Big 12 Football. Texas, especially played like garbage.) The day lived up to expectations. Penn State was upset by Temple. Yes, Temple. Stanford, who Desmond Howard picked to win the national championship, lost to Northwestern. AND BYU BEAT NEBRASKA ON A HAIL JOSEPH!!!!!!!!!! That was basically it. On Monday, I watched Ohio State beat Virginia Tech, and that was interesting.

Until next week, Sic ‘Em Bears!

lord.hinton's week

I actually had a really bland week too up until Friday 9/4. Finance still kinda sucks, the business school is still incredibly impressive, the man bun is still strong, etc. But Friday was LIIIIIIIT.

As you can see from the picture above (look in the convenient oval) I was able to make it up to Dallas for the game against SMU and it was awesome. I sat with ODB notables Matthew Tenant and Darthbear for the second half and hung out with them, Kimbo Smash, and my best friend Mellie Mel (pictured next to me above, she was my ride to Dallas, sat next to me, and is generally an awesome human being) at the tailgate. I unfortunately didn't see Matt at the game after happening to run into him on campus before leaving for Dallas. I was queasy most of the first half because the thought of going to SMU and losing did a number on my innards but after halftime it was AWESOME. I'm gonna get into some thoughts on SMU's atmosphere and more importantly our football team in a second but first more pictures.

During the first drive of the game, a few hundred fans hadn't quite made it to their seats yet but eventually the stadium did get nearly full and it looked like a neutral site game with half the stands being Baylor fans.

Just after Seth rushed for his short touchdown in the 1st quarter.

The SMU alumni band playing during the tailgate.

Ya boy under the scoreboard.

The Ride:

The trip up to the game from Waco took about an hour and a half which is reasonable. We left around 2 o'clock and there wasn't any traffic until we got right into Dallas so can't complain. I got to listen to Houston rapper (H Town represent!) Travis Scott's debut album Rodeo for the first time during the car ride and I recommend it for any of you rap fans out there!

Tailgating:

Tailgating is one of the few areas where Baylor has something to learn from SMU. Their tailgate was a ridiculously good time. This may be because Greek Life has a stronger presence at SMU, it may be because there don't seem to be any qualms with alcohol on campus, or it may be because they knew the Campus Chronicles Crew was in attendance and they went all out. Regardless, the participation, the scenery, the music, the dancing, it was all awesome. Students, alumni, it made no difference everyone in red, white, and blue was having a good time. There were even a few really big groups of Baylor fans tailgating that appeared to be having tons of fun. The only problem I had with the tailgate was the SMU fan dressed in a prison jumpsuit wearing a Baylor hat with "Ukwuachu" written across his back that hung around us Baylor fans. You're tacky and I hate you.

The Campus:

SMU is very pretty. It's not quite as pretty as Baylor in my opinion though. They also seem to be very fond of red bricks but their bricks look kinda dull and dingy. Also the campus looks like it's designed for people to visit and take pictures, Baylor looks like people live here but also has the picturesque qualities to it. I do love the way SMU's sports complexes are all arranged with Ford Stadium, Moody Coliseum or Arena or whatever they call that place they play basketball in and a few other things all right next to each other connected by pretty walkways. Ford Stadium itself looks a lot like where my high school football team (and all the teams in our district including Katy High with their stupid dumb amount of state championships) play so it was hard to be impressed. I did rather enjoy their berm. It had some very convenient food trucks parked at the back which I thought was a neat idea. It's also much steeper than McLane's so I would think the view is a little better from Ford's berm than McLane's. But most people on the berm weren't watching the game towards the end and were just watching their kids slide down cardboard boxes down the hill. Gotta have fun somehow.

The Game:

You've seen plenty of reaction to the game on ODB and I don't have a whole lot of new thoughts to contribute. What I will say is that Seth Russell didn't feel like a guy who threw as many incompletions as completions. Watching live it felt like he was in control of the offense pretty much from the kickoff and only had a few lapses which is to be expected in the first game of the season. Our offense still looks poised to be the best in the nation because scheme wise it is literally unstoppable. What are you gonna do? Stop the pass? Nah. But even if you do we can run. Stop the run? Nah. But even if you do we can still pass. Our offense has to stop itself, otherwise we're going to score a ridiculous amount of points cause there's not a whole lot a defense can realistically hope to do.

Our defense was unacceptable in the first half but turned it around in the second and that's all we can really ask for when we're going in blind to a team's offense. Our defense will probably be fine, especially at home. But I am a little worried about holding up on the road when teams start to try and get a little tricky. Also SMU's also going to have a pretty good little squad before Chad Morris is done there.

The atmosphere of Ford Stadium isn't very intimidating. The SMU student section is pretty close to the berm and I wasn't really able to hear them at all. Other than when they started chanting "OVERRATED" which was hilarious to think about as they left after being thoroughly taken to the woodshed early in the second half. There weren't very many students there. It looked like maybe 500. I can't tell if the student section at SMU always wears white or if that was a special promotion for this game but it was funny that at the end of the sea of green and gold was a group wearing all white...as Baylor wears all white. They also have a very very very small band compared to the Golden Wave. At halftime I could not hear their band at all. Apparently they played Uptown Funk and some other stuff but I don't know if anyone knows that for sure other than them. The Golden Wave was sitting in the opposite endzone across the field from me and I could hear them throughout the game just as much as I could hear the SMU band that was basically right next to me. They did play some really fun Top 40 stuff like Rihanna's Umbrella and David Guetta's Hey Mama.

There don't appear to be a whole lot of ways that the Stadium Announcer is supposed to get the fans into the game. When Baylor gets a first down the announcer says "And that's good for another BAYLOR..." and we all respond "FIRST DOOOWN" right? Well at SMU the announcer just goes "and that's another first down for the ponies brought to you by Sewell". That's it. Instead of "IT'S THIRD DOOOOOOWN" followed by rock music at McLane when Baylor's on defense, the SMU announcer would just say "that brings up third down for the Bears" kinda lame. The announcer also didn't seem ver excited or upset about anything that happened for either side. I did like the way SMU used music in notable moments in the game though. If Baylor's offense got a penalty Ludacris's "Get Back" or something similar would play. If a Baylor receiver had a drop "Drop It Like It's Hot" by Snoop Dogg would play. Little funny stuff like that was entertaining.

Overall an awesome experience and I'm really glad I got to go. Shoutout to the homie Qmy on the hookup with the tickets.

Saturday I drove down to Austin for a friend's birthday and we went paintballing. I will never go paintballing again. Enough said. But Thomas had a fun birthday and that's all that really matters. We went to In n Out for dinner and ya know, they aight. The Burgers are fine, nothing special. The only thing I understand the hype about is the Animal Style Fries. Those are amazing. But otherwise, In N Out ain't no What-a-Burger. Feel free to fight me in the comments.

Sunday and Monday were pretty chill, watched Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix which was hilarious. Other than that just did some homework, hung out with some friends, etc. Anyways this Campus Chronicle is pretty long winded so...

There you have it folks. Another week on Baylor's beautiful campus in the books! Hope you enjoyed it. As always leave any questions in the comments so we can answer em next week!

May the afar flung green and gold guide and protect us as we onward go down this Good Ole Baylor Line. See ya next week guys!