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Post by OscarWildeCat, Admin on Jan 16, 2021 5:25:26 GMT -6
I hinted about starting this thread elsewhere and here it is. We all root for the Wildcats. Many of us have one or more other universities we watch as well.
Most of you know when I’m not watching the Wildcats, I’m pulling for the Georgia Bulldogs. During this past football season I sometimes changed clothes, switching from ACU to UGA gear to watch my two teams on ESPN.
I didn’t grow up a Dawg fan but I spentl 30 years on the UGA faculty. I had season football tickets for all but one of those years dating back to the the Herschel Walker era and ending in 2006 when we moved to Abilene. I occasionally bought season tickets for other sports, including men’s and women’s basketball and gymnastics and sometimes watched individual baseball games but football was special. My whole family attended (faculty and dependent tickets were half price) and we spent many a year tailgating with other families from church.
Edit to add....l
I completed grad work at Arizona State and Arkansas and Oklahoma State. I cheer for Arizona State because I went to high school in northern Arizona and became a fan of ASU football , baseball and wrestling. My “kin” hail from NW Arkansas and I grew up a hog fan. Oklahoma State was more a place I went to school. I was married and had a child by the time I started my doctoral studies in Stillwater and never really developed an interest in Cowboy Sports. I taught part time at Harding for a couple of years but I have no interest in their sports.
Tude, Bogey, RC, Buckeye, and TF have all mentioned their “other school.” Maybe they and others on here can tell us more....
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Post by Outsider on Jan 16, 2021 7:53:27 GMT -6
C&Pd from the HDWV thread:
I don't follow Harding at all really. That is my undergrad alma. My other grad school alma is Tulane SPHTM. I try to catch Green Wave football games when I can, but don't really keep up with them closely. ACU is not only my first grad degree, but my family has such a long history here. It's my primary focus. I follow other DI programs mainly to compare how ACU is doing and when I was voting on polls. Growing up in Arizona, I root for ASU when I can. I like the competitiveness of college sports in general and the diversity they bring.
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Post by buckeyecat on Jan 16, 2021 10:50:16 GMT -6
If you have seen my posts and my byline, The Ohio State University, where my parents, who were ACU faculty, and myself received our PH.D.s is my primary other school. I also have an attachment to UT Austin, family members who graduated from there, and my MD. And sorry Outsider, I am a fan of the University of Arizona, especially basketball, because I was on the medical school faculty there during the 90’s, the championship “Lute” years. Arizona was the most beautiful place I have lived in. I was introduced to it by Dr. Kenneth Williams on one of his famous Botany trips.
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Post by Outsider on Jan 16, 2021 11:26:55 GMT -6
If you have seen my posts and my byline, The Ohio State University, where my parents, who were ACU faculty, and myself received our PH.D.s is my primary other school. I also have an attachment to UT Austin, family members who graduated from there, and my MD. And sorry Outsider, I am a fan of the University of Arizona, especially basketball, because I was on the medical school faculty there during the 90’s, the championship “Lute” years. Arizona was the most beautiful place I have lived in. I was introduced to it by Dr. Kenneth Williams on one of his famous Botany trips. Them's fightin words My brother graduated from Arizona State and I had friends that went there. I always liked NAU as well. I had several classmates move on to there after HS. I used to love visiting the dome when I was a kid. Honestly I don't have a lot of emtional attatchment to any of them though. I have always like Ohio State becasue my grandfather was a huge fan. They were from the Newcomerstown area where my mother grew up. Both of my parents lived there for a few years before they moved here to Abilene to be close to me. So, my dad and I always appreciate watching OU games together. Arizona has one of the most diverse types of landscapes in the US. It is where my love for exploration grew.
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Post by OscarWildeCat, Admin on Jan 16, 2021 11:34:32 GMT -6
If you have seen my posts and my byline, The Ohio State University, where my parents, who were ACU faculty, and myself received our PH.D.s is my primary other school. I also have an attachment to UT Austin, family members who graduated from there, and my MD. And sorry Outsider, I am a fan of the University of Arizona, especially basketball, because I was on the medical school faculty there during the 90’s, the championship “Lute” years. Arizona was the most beautiful place I have lived in. I was introduced to it by Dr. Kenneth Williams on one of his famous Botany trips. Them's fightin words My brother graduated from Arizona State and I had friends that went there. I always liked NAU as well. I had several classmates move on to there after HS. I used to love visiting the dome when I was a kid. Honestly I don't have a lot of emtional attatchment to any of them though. I have always like Ohio State becasue my grandfather was a huge fan. They were from the Newcomerstown area where my mother grew up. Both of my parents lived there for a few years before they moved here to Abilene to be close to me. So, my dad and I always appreciate watching OU games together. Arizona has one of the most diverse types of landscapes in the US. It is where my love for exploration grew. I visited Tucson several times during high school for state wide FFA competitions or high school wrestling tournaments. We usually stayed in a dorm that was literally under the stands of the football stadium. I always thought that was cool. I was 15 or 16 at the time though and easily impressed.
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Post by buckeyecat on Jan 16, 2021 12:24:17 GMT -6
A little Arizona trivia: Unlike most universities, the College of Medicine was not the richest department. It was Astronomy. In fact, the visitors side of the stadium is built on top of a huge telescope mirror grinding facility. They build mirrors not only for the large scopes such as Mot. Graham and around Tucson but observatories all over the world. Tongue in cheek: we wondered why optical sciences couldn’t mount some parabolic mirrors on the stadium to focus a little extra Arizona sunshine on the visiting team during those wonderful ESPN day games. It might have given he football team a better chance.
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Post by WildCatToothDoc on Jan 16, 2021 12:51:46 GMT -6
Okay here's one for you. Graduated ACC 1973. Of course this is my number one school that I root for. I got my DDS from Baylor College of Dentistry. I really like Baylor quite a bit but never did really cheer them on. Now I have a real dilemma. The name changed from Baylor to Texas A&M School of Dentistry. I'm sorry, that's definitely not one that I can cheer for. (Sorry aggie fans). That leaves me pretty much with good ole ACU! Three cheers for the purple and white! Go Cats!
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Post by catfanatic on Jan 16, 2021 15:50:40 GMT -6
Okay here's one for you. Graduated ACC 1973. Of course this is my number one school that I root for. I got my DDS from Baylor College of Dentistry. I really like Baylor quite a bit but never did really cheer them on. Now I have a real dilemma. The name changed from Baylor to Texas A&M School of Dentistry. I'm sorry, that's definitely not one that I can cheer for. (Sorry aggie fans). That leaves me pretty much with good old ACU! Three cheers for the purple and white! Go Cats! Always a good decision!
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Post by bogeyman on Jan 16, 2021 16:27:32 GMT -6
Although I'm all about Coastal Carolina now, it will always be #3 on my list. My #2 is the University of Texas. Started going to UT football games in 1959. 1st star I remember was "Jackrabbit" Jimmy Saxton. I was privileged to see Roger Staubach (Navy), Donnie Anderson (TT), Walt Garrison (Ok State) and others play at Longhorn Stadium as well as numerous UT greats. #1 Go Cats.
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Post by TNcatman on Jan 16, 2021 21:28:30 GMT -6
The first football game I saw in person was at the Univ of Washington when dad was teaching in the Speech/Communications Dept. I vividly remember that he bought me a #6 jersey of QB Sonny Sixkiller. Sixkiller is now the color analyst on the U-Dub broadcast. While I've never been back to see another game, I've always rooted for the Huskies and proudly have a Huskies pennant hanging in my man cave.
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Post by rc on Jan 17, 2021 12:08:58 GMT -6
I am a dedicated Wildcat, I even bleed purple. I played in a Wildcat Jersey and was co-captain of my first year basketball team before injury ended that fun. Back then we had even and odd numbered jerseys so I was 30 at home and 33 on the road. My mother and father both came to Abilene for ACU and married here.
Grad school was at UT, or Texas as we called it back then. I got to be one of the first ever to use the Cray designed Super Computer and ran it almost every day. A roommate in our rented house was the back up punter to Super Bill Bradley so on Saturdays I would go down and field punts and throw them back. I often ran around with Pete Lammons and Corby Robertson. The girl's tennis team asked me to be a workout horse to help them adapt to harder hit serves and ground strokes, and Harvey Penick asked me to play with his golf team recruits (yes, Crenshaw and Kite among others) so my second favorite is understandably UT -- I still have a pretty strong connection there. UT asks me to speak there more than ACU does here.
After the PhD, I spent a year as a visiting professor for UT then joined ACU to build a key department here that does quite well today. I did some post doc work at Purdue learning to program orbiting satellite images of earth, but felt no connection to the Boilermakers -- it was all sort of semi-secret stuff and the campus was next to a corn field. Texas Tech also asked if I would be an Adjunct Professor for the Red Raiders, which I did, but I had no real loyalty to Tech.
So for me it is Wildcats and to a lesser extent Longhorns. Funny, I don't ever root for the Aggies (which actually recruited me) or OU unless Texas is already ousted, then I cheer for A&M or the Okies. Also for my Arizona friend... Astronomy is a really big deal for the university there and my cousin's Ph.D. from there led to him being the head planetary researcher for NASA. He was the scientist in charge of the moon rocks.
Just realized this was too long and too personal but loyalties are an interesting thing. That first school you connect with really does have a lasting effect. I likely would never have joined the faculty at ACU given the offers I had (32 of them actually, including Harvard) but loyalty and appreciation for what the school stands for trumped all other factors. ACU really is special.
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Post by buckeyecat on Jan 17, 2021 22:18:00 GMT -6
My freshman year at ACU, I got to assist in the Astronomy lab. The professor was a cool guy and a lot of fun. Would dress up as Galileo. RC, you wouldn’t happen to know him, would you?
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Post by rc on Jan 17, 2021 22:40:05 GMT -6
My freshman year at ACU, I got to assist in the Astronomy lab. The professor was a cool guy and a lot of fun. Would dress up as Galileo. RC, you wouldn’t happen to know him, would you? Oh my... I've been discovered. I enjoyed all the Astronomy Students and the wonders of the Universe. You must have been a smart one since I recall those that worked in the Observatory as quite capable. And yep, we built an Observatory, two actually since the first one had to be moved to the roof of the science building with the expansion of workout fields. Amazingly, the design for the roof one was asked for and copied and built at a university in Trondheim, Norway. I still love Astronomy and spend time at McDonald Observatory out near Fort Davis where the Dark Energy/Matter experiment is being done on the HETDEX telescope. Thanks for the memories of Galileo -- that was a long time ago. And for those that know about the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) set to be launched now on October 31, a major designer of the adaptive optics is an ex-ACU student from the department. This will replace the Hubble Telescope. ACU students do significant things!!!
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Post by buckeyecat on Jan 17, 2021 23:07:45 GMT -6
That is amazing and very exciting!!
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Post by WildCatToothDoc on Jan 18, 2021 5:54:26 GMT -6
I loved astronomy and I did go up on the roof of the science building a few times. Is the observatory still there?
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