On football: Big 12 Champs & Texans-Jags

We see via our favorite sports betting emporium that the Texas Longhorns are 14.5 point favorites over the Nebraska Cornhuskers in Saturday night's Big 12 Championship game at JerryWorld in Arlington, Texas.

That's a lot of points to give in a football contest if you like the Longhorns. Be that as it may, we think the Longhorns will cover. Our advice is to go with the Horns if you are wagering, which we are not doing.

The other football contest that's of great interest in the Petrochemical Underarm of Texas is the NFL matchup between the Houston Texans and the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday.

The betting line at our favorite online sports betting emporium has the Texans as 1-point underdogs.

We'd take the Texans if we were wagering, which we're not, even though the Texans, quite frankly, have underachieved this year given the level of the athletic talent on the roster.

Texans owner Bob McNair has hinted that this contest is of utmost importance. A number of professional sports writers have taken this to mean that if the Texans lose on Sunday, Head Coach Gary Kubiak could lose his job. We have no idea if this is true.

The Texans-Jags game is not even a sellout in Jacksonville, which is truly pathetic because this game is as critical for the Jaguars as it is for the Texans.

It adds further ammo for those that say J'ville really is not a big league town and doesn't deserve an NFL franchise.

The Jaguars supposedly are for sale, though owner Wayne Weaver, denies it, but the scuttlebutt is he's willing to sell to someone who agrees to keep the team in northeast Florida. This significantly reduces the number of potential buyers who would be reluctant to invest $600 million to $800 million into a pro football team stuck in Jacksonville.

Look at the geographics of it. To their north lies South Carolina and North Carolina; to their northweast lies Georgia, populated by stone-cold Falcons fans, and to their south within the state of Florda are the Buccaneers and Dolphins. Jacksonville is surrounded!

In our opinion, Florida has one too many pro football teams, especially in this poor economy that has hit Florida particularly hard. (We read in the NY Times about a week ago that around 40 percent of Florida's homeowners have negative equity in their homes. We did a spit-take while sipping our Metamucil when we read that statistic.)

Our advice to Mr. Weaver and the other NFL powers-that-be: send the J'ville franchise to LA or San Antonio. Jacksonville will get over it.

We think San Antonio would do backflips for an NFL team and would be willing to cough up enough public monies to get a stadium built. Of course, we're fairly sure that Texans owner Bob McNair and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who both reportedly wield considerable influence in the league, wouldn't be too crazy about another NFL franchise in the Lone Star State.


(Editor's note: We have become apprised recently that the Federal Trade Commission now requires bloggers to disclose any financial arrangement they might have with certain business persons of whom they blog about. With that in mind we would like our readers and the United States federal government to know that we have an advertising agreement with Bodog, our favorite online sports betting emporium, with whom we've never placed a wager. As part of our advertising agreement, Bodog has asked that we place one hyperlinked mention of their sports betting emporium in one post in The Brazosport News, along with a standing hyperlink to Bodog that you might have noticed in the right sidebar, which has been there around 3 years or so. The Brazosport News neither condones nor discourages placing monetary wagers on sporting events, believing that citizens should what they want with their money, so long as it does no unnecessary harm to themselves, their friends and loved one, or the The Republic as a whole. The Brazosport News also acknowledges that gambling is addictive for some persons and is an acknowledged "illness" in the eyes of most psychiatrict/addiction professionals. Go Horns!)