Siete Season
The new Enron folks ran full-page ads in the Chron Saturday and yesterday. No ad today. The new Enron folks are supposed to make an announcement this morning. Stay tuned.
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Commentary is certainly not an expert on foreign affairs. I do know that Russia has been helping prop up the murderous dictator of Syria. Russia then decided to invade Ukraine. The U.S. and our allies supported Ukraine with money and weapons. Russia could not sustain its effort in Ukraine and support the Syrian dictator at the same time. The Syrian rebels toppled the government yesterday and the dictator is now living in Russia. I guess you can say that the U.S. and our allies contributed to this outcome. Let’s hope Syria can now get its act together.
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For those still complaining, shut up. I get that Alabama Nation is upset. Hey Tide, you lost three games.
In the past, sports talk show host Jim Rome, used to call bowl games a bet. Only sports bettors seemed to take an interest.
In the old system, when the AP National Poll determined the national championship, maybe two or three of the New Year’s Day bowl games mattered.
When they went to a two-team one-game national championship, only one game was of interest. When they went to the four-team playoff system, three games mattered.
Now that we have 12 teams in the College Football Playoffs (CFP), 11 games will be interesting. 4 games on December 20 and 21, the six so-called New Year’s Day Bowls for the quarterfinals and semifinals, and the National Championship game. If you are a college football fan, what more could you ask for.
I was watching the announcement show on ESPN yesterday and some of the talking heads were already crowing about changes that need to be made in the selection process next year. Shut up. I like the idea that the top four conference champions get a first-round bye.
I am not a big fan of all this conference realignment. Heck, I didn’t even know that SMU was in the ACC until this past October. Now if your team is ranked like 15th and sneak into the conference championship game, you got a shot.
Teams from Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana (2), Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas (2) are still in the hunt. That’s the Midwest, Northeast, South, Southwest, and West. Nothing wrong with that.
The CFP just made college football a lot more interesting.
BTW, including the 11 CFP games, there are 46 bowl games being played from this Saturday, December 14 through Monday, January 20, 2025. Have a happy Pop-Tarts Bowl game!
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I saw this in the Chron this past weekend:
There will soon be a new way to identify a Houstonian.
For the first time in a decade, a new area code will be distributed in the Houston area in January. The new area code, 621, will join 713, 281, 832 and 316.
The codes share an overlay complex, which is an area that has multiple codes. This region, which features parts of 10 counties, includes Houston, The Woodlands, Sugar Land, Pearland and other cities.
Here is the entire read: When has Houston previously gotten new area codes?.
Just another span call area code to Commentary.
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I found this Chron article informational. See this:
As more highways were built in the (H-Town) region, more contests were held. In 1953, we ended up with the Eastex Freeway, the stretch of I-69/U.S. 59 that goes from downtown Houston to the area’s northern exurbs in Montgomery and Liberty Counties.
“It soon became apparent that a formal freeway naming plan would be needed,” (author Erik) Slotboom wrote, “rather than the existing practice of naming freeways as an afterthought or by their planning names.”
Enter the compass-point naming system.
In 1956, City Council adopted a naming scheme it hoped would make it easier to navigate the spaghetti bowl of highways being planned and built throughout the Houston region.
This gave us the geographic names that are still in use for many Houston freeways: Southwest Freeway for I-69/U.S. 59 heading toward the, you guessed it, southwestern suburbs, the Northwest Freeway for U.S. 290, the East Freeway for I-10 east of downtown and the South Freeway for Texas 288.
Personally, the biggest winner from this era of highway-naming discourse was I-45 north of downtown, which ended up with the apt name North Freeway instead of something ridiculous like the Dallas Freeway.
The plan also split up the I-610 Loop (fun fact: it was once set to be called the Defense Loop) into the North, East, South and West Loops because that’s not at all confusing.
Predictably, City Council’s naming convention did not solve Houston’s collective highway disorientation.
After years of confusion, the Texas Department of Transportation proposed new names for five Houston highways in 1965 that focused on cities instead of cardinal directions: Beaumont Freeway instead of East Freeway, for example, or the aforementioned Dallas Freeway to replace the North Freeway.
Houston City Council rejected all but one, adopting Katy Freeway for I-10 west of downtown.
Here is the entire read: Why do Houston’s highways have so many nicknames?
I would have preferred Baytown Freeway over the East Freeway, if you are going to do a Katy Freeway, you have to do a Baytown Freeway. Baytown’s population is four times the size of Katy’s, just saying.
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‘Tis the Siete season. See the featured photo. I will be using the Siete cups for my morning coffee this Christmas season.
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I don’t have much to say about the economics of MLB and Juan Soto’s $765 million dollar deal with the Mets. The $765 million dollar player will be at The Yard on Opening Day on Thursday, March 27, 2025, when we host the Mets.
