Rhubarb Report 057

Welcome to 2013. The new year brings with it the refreshing sense of a clean slate. Tabula rasa. Raise a glass for the excitement ahead.

But then we are hit by the realization that January 1 looks a whole lot like December 31 – just add champagne and a ball dropping in Times Square.

Another year is upon us, and as always, yesterday’s rhubarb is tomorrow’s humor. An humor is always plentiful. Sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Here is Episode 57 of the Rhubarb Report.

1. It is college football bowl season – which means we have a lot of games that, for all intents and purposes, mean absolutely nothing and are played in empty stadiums. Yawn.

The University of Texas was invited to one of those games: the Valero Alamo Bowl in San Antonio against the Oregon State Beavers. I can’t say that having a beaver as a mascot strikes fear into anyone but maybe a Canadian lumberjack. With that said, their football team has been pretty good this season.

The first half of this game was beyond boring. Fortunately, the second half made up for it. The Longhorns took the lead for the first time with just over 2:00 left in the game, and they left San Antonio as 31 - 27 winners. Their season record was one win better than last year. That doesn’t exactly provoke a big vote of confidence for Mack Brown. A bowl win will silence (or at least muffle) the boo-birds in Austin for at least a few weeks.

2. Speaking of boo-birds in the Longhorn Nation, let’s talk about quarterbacks born and raised in Texas. There are currently 9 Texas quarterbacks starting in the NFL: Drew Brees, Nick Foles, Christian Ponder, Matthew Stafford, John Skelton, Andy Dalton, Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, and Ryan Tannehill.

Next question: how many went to the University of Texas? Not one of them. Doesn’t every Texas high school football player grow up aspiring to play for the Horns? Westlake High School is 8.5 miles (driving, not as the crow flies) from the front door of DKR Texas Memorial Stadium. Yet history shows that Brees ended up at Purdue, and Foles at Arizona. Hunh?

Oh, and ponder this: the last two Heisman Trophy winners – Texas quarterbacks, I might add - played at Baylor (100 miles from Austin) and Texas A&M (107 miles from Austin). The boo-birds should nibble on that one for years to come.

3. Finally, this not-so-uncommon news just in: John Boehner cried. Again. He was narrowly re-elected as Speaker of the House by 28 votes. The Republican Party holds 233 seats, yet Boehner only collected 220 votes. I wouldn’t call that a vote of confidence.

And on this day in 1999, former professional wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura was sworn in as governor of Minnesota. He was a Reform Party candidate who defeated the Democratic and Republican candidates in the election. If that isn’t a fine example of living the American dream, I don’t know what is. WWF wrestler makes good, becomes Governor – details at 11. Truth, my friends, is stranger than fiction. Again.

Photo credits: Wikipedia