I'm overstepping my boundaries here...

Though I am not the blogger of choice for anything but baseball (and I'm not even the blogger of choice for that), I stumbled across these stories today on the intra-webs.


We all know how much we loved trouncing Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl. The Rebel fans that attended the aforementioned trouncing probably noticed how weird (but really nice) the Texas Tech fans were. Some were dressed as pirates and wore eye patches, and all of this is part of Mike Leach's ploy to get a role in Pirates of the Caribbean 3: The Quest for the Big XII South. Anyway, the Pirate's Guild recently named Mike Leach as the coach "most likely to be run through with a sword and be fed to the sharks."


The guild is trying to send the same message the Texas Tech administration was trying to send a month ago: we don't want you either.


In other news, the never ending search for the 12th game for THIS fall's football season was thought to have found some new life. Chris Low reported earlier this week that some schedule shuffling had freed up September 12th for Colorado, and that would have been a perfect match for Ole Miss. I was initially writing this post to encourage Pete Boone to book the game because of this article I found that shows the QB position for Colorado is still up for grabs and will be until August.


As I sit writing this post, Lowe has made another report...

Colorado not a likely foe for Ole Miss.


Dang't Pete Boone. Dang't.

Could scheduling a 12th game really be that hard?

Rebel Roundup - Sr. Bowl and 2009 Schedule talk

Draft Stock Rising for Jerry, Palmer; Falling for Oher - Click here, here, and here for some Senior Bowl coverage. As one would expect, Ashlee Palmer and Peria Jerry are ruining whatever poor sons-of-bitches they're up against in the Senior Bowl practices. Unfortunately, Michael Oher hasn't been as impressive. Hopefully Oher will get out of whatever slump he appears to be in.

The Kansas Jayhawks to Highlight the Rebel OOC Schedule in 2009? - We're hearing rumors which would lead us to believe that the Rebels will be playing the Kansas Jayhawks in 2009. If this is indeed true, the matchup will be held in Dallas at the New Cowboys Stadium (is that really what they're calling it?) with a guaranteed payout of $6 million for each team. I know a lot of folks have been hearing that such a matchup would be held against Texas A&M or Colorado, but this matchup makes the most sense. Both teams will be looking to beef up their OOC slate in order to impress the BCS computers and both programs would draw just enough to attract a good TV deal and some serious cash. Bring it on, Big XII.

Nice shoes, bird.

What's that? Huh? I mean, it's just... well...

... I'm sorry, I can't hear you over how awesome we are!

Sure there are plenty of applicable chants.

"SEC! SEC! SEC!"
"Ok-la-hoooo-maaaa! Ov-er-ra-ted"*
"Choooooooooooook-lahoma where the wins go to the other team!"**

But, those chants are all a bit overdone. Here, at the Cup, we've come up with this new chant which applicably describes the Oklahoma Sooners as of late.

Ooooook-la-ho-ma is a respectable football program. They've been able to produce some of the NFL's hottest talents and Bob Stoops is surely a capable coach. However, with their recent postseason shortcomings, one must wonder as to how vialbe the claims surrounding not only Oklahoma, but the Big XII at large, truly are. Certainly, excellent collegiate quarterbacks have made Norman their home but where do their true talents lie? Likely not at quarterback as their NFL careers are short and forgettable. But, I digress. Perhaps their conference, the Big XII, has been continuously overestimated by the likes of the national media due totheir poor defensive performances (and subsequently high offensive performances) and "squeaky-clean" coach and player behavior. Unfortunately, with the system of determinging national championships being the way it is, one can no longer reasonably expect the Oklahoma Sooners to be capable of sustainable national success as they are not geographically biased towards overly athletic playes who, even after claiming to play at 90%, still pwn n3wbz.

The SEC is better than you. Get. Over. It.
Drunk and happy. You?


*Tune of "Boomer Sooner"
**Tune of "Oklahoma," the Broadway show tune

While watching the game with some friends tonight one of them made this brilliant observation. See if you agree.

Sam Bradford:

Chaka:

Agree, disagree?

The Big XII: Exposed?

Last night's Fiesta Bowl was indicative of many things.

Ohio State's senior class still doesn't know how to win a BCS Bowl game. Terrelle Pryor should be a future star while Colt McCoy may have maxed out his potential. And, obviously, the Big XII is simply not as good as we've been led to believe.

You all heard it at the Cotton Bowl. You could even hear it through the TV.

O-ver-rat-ed! *clap* *clap* *clap-clap-clap*

True. Tech was very much overrated. Some may nitpickily disagree with that assessment, saying that such a sentiment downplays our victory but they were, by the very virtue of their #7 ranking and the definition of the word, certainly overrated. They were rated higher than they should have been.

As were Mizzou, Texas, and Oklahoma State. While Northwestern, Ohio State, and Oregon are all good opponents, none are exceedingly great opponents (Oregon's pretty close, though). This is noteworthy because, for the duration of the regular season, we were told that the aforementioned Big XII teams were exceedingly great.

Let's not kid ourselves here; Ohio State sucks. The Big Ten sucks. The Big Ten reeled off an impressive single victory this bowl season. When we learned that the Rose and Fiesta bowls were going to pit USC and Texas against Penn State and Ohio State respectively, we all thought "well, damn, those bowls are going to be lopsided."

Well, USC held up their end of the bargain. Who would have imagined that Texas would have ended the first half trailing to the Buckeyes 6-3? Likely a few assholes from Ohio and that's it. Furthermore, the same assholes would have also predicted Ohio State to actually control a lead over the Longhorns late into the 4th quarter! If the Longhorns were who we thought they were, they wouldn't have required 4th quarter heroics to defeat the Buckeyes. If the Mizzou Tigers were who we thought they were, they wouldn't have gone into overtime against Northwestern. If the Texas Tech Red Raiders were who we thought they were, Michael Crabtree wouldn't have been limited to 30 receiving yards against an undersized Rebel secondary.

"But, but, the Big XII has such great quarterbacks!"

Does it? While sitting here "at work," I jotted down the 32 NFL teams and the conferences from which their #1 quarterback hails.* Would you like to guess how many of them hail from the Big XII? C'mon. Give it a shot.

Yep... one. And his team is playing pretty stellar football without him. The other Big XII quarterback of note is Seattle's Seneca Wallace who is only starting as the replacement to an injured Matt Hasslebeck.

Of the current starting quarterbacks in the Big XII, only Sam Bradford is truly a convincing NFL prospect. The others are too small (Chase Daniel, Todd Reesing), fold under pressure (Graham Harrell), or play in gimmicky offenses (all of them). Matthew Stafford and Jevan Snead both have better pro potential than Colt McCoy, Chase Daniel, and Graham Harrell. Certainly, these quarterbacks are great college quarterbacks but, when we SEC fans see the Mannings, Jay Cutler, Jamarcus Russell**, Jason Campbell, et al every Sunday we get just a bit peeved with the media's love for Big XII quarterbacks.

Jason White won the Heisman over ME?!

With regards to "ratings," we Rebels were, and likely will continue to be, underrated. A poor start to the season will do that to any team because, while we had one of the nations strongest finishes, rankings systems operate based on a team's season-long body of work. We're certainly playing like a top-10 team and, no matter what our final ranking may be, I'll continue to think of this team as such.

Oklahoma, may Tebow have mercy on your foreskin soul.



*I'm not perfect at this so I may have made a mistake. If so, I'm sure I'll get a dozen comments or so about it.

**He sucks balls. I know.

More salt, more wounds

I'm bored, alright?

The Sourest of Grapes

Outside of our bowl matchups and the home-and-home series in 2002 and 3, I've had no real ill will towards Texas Tech. I've always thought Mike Leach to be an innovative offensive coach and I think the Big XII is the only conference which truly rivals the SEC in football tradition and fan fervor.

Hell, I even have family who graduated from Tech and no, I'm not just making that up.

However, despite my otherwise neutral feelings towards Texas Tech, these last few weeks have found me a little more than annoyed with the Red Raider fanbase. I had always heard from friends of mine who are fans of Texas or Texas A&M that Tech fans were "classless clowns."

Nah. I didn't believe it. There are age-old rivalries involved there and all kinds of blind prejudice is likely to result. I figured that folks outside of the SEC wouldn't listen (or really care for) whatever we spew about State, LSU, and the other usual suspects so why should I put much into what they had to say?

Next time, I'll pay more attention.

Just visit any Texas Tech forum. If you'll look back a few weeks you'll see all of the anti-Ole Miss trash. You'll even see it on several Ole Miss sites. Now, just look over the last two days. You'll see some Rebel fans returning the favor, only to be called "classless" by Red Raider fans. We're disgusting and (get this) need to learn how to "win with class."

SCRedRaider, who has over 1000 posts to the Scout forum had this to say:

I have never seen a teams fan base talk sh!t after they won a game. You have certainly done something that I have never seen before.

Alright, I'll cut the guy some slack. Maybe he's only been a Tech fan for, oh, I dunno a couple of months or something. Certainly that's doubtful but, if he had never seen such a thing then he obviously never saw Tech play against Texas A&M in 2001 or Oklahoma in 2005.

Many, many Rebel fans have commented as to how obscenely disrespectful the Red Raiders have been over the last several weeks. Forums and websites on both ends have been overrun with the same old senseless, trite garbage about how Ole Miss "sucks," Mississippi "sucks" (by the way, shit turns real motherfucking personal when you bring the Magnolia State into this), Texas Tech deserves better, yadda yadda yadda. Hell, your own players dogged the Rebels and the Cotton Bowl during press conferences!

Yet, we're not supposed to talk trash because the game is over...

Yeah, that's real fucking lame, Tech. We deal with LSU, State, Alabama, and Arkansas (who obviously picked up the art of annoying bullshit from you back in the old Southwest Conference days) every single season so the fact that your antics and general assclownery have caused a stir among we Rebels is pretty damned significant.

Granted, there are some commendable Raiders on the Internet who are civil and mature about these kinds of things and Mike Leach showed our team more respect than most SEC head coaches would have so I do not mean to suggest that everyone affiliated with Texas Tech behaves in this manner.

Furthermore, I am not necessarily defending the Rebs who have trolled your forums and/or treated some of you with disrespect at the Cotton Bowl. A lot of them have been damned embarrassments. My point in all of this is that, with regards to "class," Texas Tech fans are towards the bottom of the Big XII.

A whole host of you deserve every. single. bit. of. this. shit. If you can't take what you deserve, then either move the fuck out of your glass houses or quit throwing stones.

Post Game: Cotton Bowl

Sorry this didn’t go up last night, but the day started for me at 6 AM after precisely zero hours of sleep. A brief work shift, lunch at KFC, an awesome football game, and Evan Williams white label put me out cold until almost midnight. Having said that, here is a hastily thrown-together set of post game observations:

1. Texas Tech did not play a poor game. Your team was not prepared for the intensity that Ole Miss brought on every play. Sure, a lack of talent in the secondary caused us to give up some points, but Graham Harrell's pocket was usually a small and unpleasant place to be. The receivers got jammed hard, and manned up by guys who should not be able to hang with them athletically. The linebackers occupied throwing lanes and chased down guys in space. There were none of the wide open spaces that Tech had become used to. And the defense? Tech's defense was far worse than I could have hoped for. Assuming that Tech had an average SEC offense, and played in the SEC (so they wouldn't be helped by getting a lead early, time of possession, etc.), they would have had the worst defense in the conference. Bank on it. So no, you didn't play poorly, you just got beaten.

2. Pat Summerall is a bad overbite away from being Lou Holtz. Terrible. He made many mistakes about personnel on both teams. Oh well. It starting being amusing when we stopping being terrible and took control. I especially enjoyed hearing that Michael Oher might be a first-round pick in NEXT April’s draft, and hearing about Ole Miss running back Inrick Davis.

3. Tech is a good team, and offensively, the game didn't go much differently than they predicted. Obviously, Crabtree wasn't 100%, and would have had more production had he been healthy, but the main thing that limited him was pressure on Harrell. I love that we got to see one of the nation’s most hyped quarterbacks flinch in the face of pressure, throwing errantly off his back foot and hoping for the best. Still, their offensive line did a much better job of holding back Peria Jerry and company than I expected, and the receivers displayed good hands and good routes for the most part. We just robbed them of the ability to make plays in space, and they weren’t able to dink and dunk it forever.

4. The Ole Miss offense is for real. We didn’t show it early, but the lucky convergence of Jevan Snead, Michael Oher, Dexter McCluster, Shay Hodge, Mike Wallace, Kent Austin, and Houston Nutt makes Ole Miss the 2^nd best offensive unit in the conference, and one of the better units nationally. It is hard to scheme against a team that can literally do anything with the football like the Rebels currently can. They were certainly the reason we won this game, and putting up 38 points (47 minus the pick-6 and safety) against anyone when you have three turnovers is pretty good.

5. Big XII fans are silly. Honestly, look at yourselves. Put away the hand signs, the hair gel, the silly outfits… Talk to most self-respecting SEC fans, and you’ll talk about the upcoming football contest, not about “How BAD UR teems gonna L00se, SUCKER, LOl.” Of course, there are fans all across the country that put far too much personal pride on the line when their team takes the field, but this crowd of Red Raiders seemed to take this game as something personal, and their collective psyche had a hard time considering that maybe their team wasn’t as awesome as they’d first thought. I dunno, maybe Rebel fans are just used to realistic expectations, and realize that sometimes things don’t work out like you’ve planned. We’re only occasionally used to this whole ‘winning’ thing, and I hope that if it continues, we’ll continue to handle it gracefully.

6. The national media is silly. Dear ESPN: stop talking about the teams that look cool and have interesting, feel-good stories, and start talking about the teams that know how to play football. I guess sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s who, but by now, it seems like the SEC is usually the most dominant conference, it’s usually easy to tell who the best teams are in other conferences, and there are only a few BCS buster teams worth talking about, ever (Boise, TCU, and Utah). I hate seeing undeserving teams get coverage because of their location and/or the size of their fan base.

7. Rankings. Here’s how I’d stack up the top 10 or so (I know the games haven’t been played out yet, more on that later). I’m basing this on (get ready!!) how good each team is RIGHT NOW, rather than penalizing a team for losses that happened in September.

1. Florida (provided they beat Oklahoma)

2. USC

3. Utah (hard to choose between 2 and 3, but hard to argue against USC’s late dominance)

4. Texas (provided they beat Ohio State)

5. Oklahoma (provided they don’t get blown out. Flip-flop UF and OU if OU wins)

6. Ole Miss (I’m not backing down here. These 5 teams are the only teams that could beat a healthy, well prepared Ole Miss team right now)

7. Oregon

8. TCU

9. Penn State

10. Alabama

11. Georgia

After that it gets fuzzy, but I defy you to claim that Ole Miss, right now, isn’t a top 10 team. And that’s pretty cool.

We’ll probably post more about this game and its ramifications in the future, but for now, I’ll stop taking it about and bask in the awesomeness just a while longer.

Who's your Heisman?

A couple of days ago, during a time when I should have been working, I followed Chris Low's ESPN.com online chat session. Low, for those of you not in the know, blogs about the SEC for everyone's most hated batch of evil, anti-[MY TEAM] journalists EVAR favorite sports network and, in my opinion, does a damn fine job at it.

In Low's chat session, he revealed his Heisman ballot to have Tim Tebow, Sam Bradford, and Colt McCoy ranked in that order. Shortly thereafter, a few Oklahoma fans quickly polluted our fair, Southeastern chat with cries of Chris Low's despicable habits of drinking "that SEC juice" and not paying enough attention to the Big XII.

Low, with his remarkably pithy writing, replied "Where were you in 2003 when I voted for Jason White (ed: over Eli Manning*)?"

He then made a brief case for Tebow and pointed out that, no matter who wins the Heisman, we're going to have a couple of fan bases bitching about how their guy got hosed.

And he's right. We have three, if not four (if not five) deserving candidates for the trophy. Bradford, McCoy, and Tebow are all three incredible quarterbacks. Graham Harrell is certainly as worthy a dark horse as we've had in a while and Michael Crabtree, a future NFL ballertron 5000, is only the 5th dog in the pack because he's not a quarterback.

So who am I voting for? Well, nobody because bloggeurs don't get a vote. But, if I did get the chance to I'd pick Tebow. My reasons are as follows:

1. I'm biased towards the SEC. Yeah, I said it.
2. I don't care what Bradford's, McCoy's, and Harrell's stats are. While they're certainly important and decent indicators of success, statistics aren't everything. If statistics were everything, then that Colt Brennan douchebag would have won the Heisman last season.
3. Tim Tebow is the single best leader in college football. Sure, Bradford, Harrell, and (espeically) McCoy mean a lot to their team, but seeing Tebow live up to his promise to work his absolute hardest to win ballgames after dropping a stunning loss to the Rebels was pretty phenomenal. The other candidates are certainly important to their respective teams; but not nearly as important as Tebow is to the Gators. Oklahoma and Texas would be something like 10-2 without their respective quarterbacks. Florida would be at best a 9 win team without Tebow.
   

Tim Tebow is the kind of player your grandkids are going to ask you about. I personally take some sort of bizarre pride in the fact that I have seen one of the greatest SEC athletes of all time play in person. And, yes, I do mean "one of the greatest SEC athletes of all time." Just watch. Soon enough, you'll hear Tim Tebow mentioned in the same breath as Herschel Walker, Bo Jackson, and the Mannings. Along those same lines, twenty years from now Sam Bradford will be lumped into the "great OU quarterbacks" pile with Josh Heupel and Jason White while Colt McCoy will still be playing 2nd fiddle to Vince Young in Longhorn folklore (despite the fact that he's a statistically better quarterback).

Of course, if all three come back for another season, all of this could change.

Oh, and you know what? I've put a new poll regarding this topic up. Yes, now loyal Cup fans, barely literate Arkansas trolls, and bitter Texas Tech visitors alike can weigh in on this issue.

Vote and tell us who you voted for and why.


*No, Chris, your sins and transgressions against the Rebels and the Manning family are not yet forgiven. Repent now and tithe your earnings (to the Cup) and we'll kinda-sorta-maybe consider forgiveness.

Mike Leach to Washington?

Been wondering why Captain Mike's gimmick offense is in the Big 12 South and no the Pac-10? Apparently so has Mike Leach. ESPN is reporting that the Pirate King met officials from Washington in Seattle last night and might be raising the old jolly roger in the great northwest next season.

Plunging and pillaging has gotten too difficult in the Big 12 South. Mike must be looking at his potential new shipmates to the south, Oregon State, who looked potentially Rose Bowl bound with three losses, and decided that the Cotton Bowl is not sufficient booty for his 11-win mastery. Avast, lads, the captain be abandoning the ship and leaving the Lubbuccaneers to wonder why is all the fun gone.

What does this mean for the Rebels? Well, hopefully it means that Captain Mike will have his one good eye on the recruiting trail and not on Dallas when the new year rolls around.

Domi-ference (Part the Second)

This series seeks to settle objectively the question of whether man has a soul which conference, between the SEC and Big 12, can claim dominance over the other thus far in 2008. Part the Second compares the bottom-feeders of the two conferences in a segment I've named Clash of the Tenders. Those tenders are: Mississippi State, Tennessee, Arkansas, Iowa State, Texas A & M, and Baylor.

The question to be determined is what would a match-up be like between, say, Mississippi State, and all the members of the lower class of the Big 12 be like? Well, first of all, it would be totally boring, inconsequential, and uninteresting. Or, perhaps, we should ask which of these six teams would win a hypothetical conference made up only of these six teams. Of course, that would only tell us which of them would be the perennial favorite were that team to join the Big East, it would be a poor measure for deciding which conference is heavier at the bottom (not to be confused with bottom-heavy).

Let's, instead, focus on the particularly impressive and the particularly unimpressive. For example, Baylor's win over Washington State, who certainly would be included in this discussion were the Pac-10 part of our debate, was a 45-17 rout. But, Texas A & M dropped a decision to anonymous Sun Belt team. While, Arkansas tried to do the same against two Sun Belt teams, the SEC should be given credit for taking care of business. With a 3-2 ledger against non-BCS schools that play in Division I-A, the Big 12 trails the SEC's 3-1 record in that category (confining these records, of course, only to wins and losses by the losers here referenced).

Though, it should be noted that four of the six teams - Baylor, Mississippi State, Iowa State, and Arkansas - have played Division I-AA teams. The combined score for SEC teams (Miss. State and Arkansas against SE Louisiana and W. Illinois, respectively) was 62-34, while the Big 12 teams (Iowa State and Baylor) beat their opponents (South Dakota State and Northwestern State) 95-23.

The real saddlebag for the SEC is Arkansas. The real saddlebag for the Big 12 is Texas A & M. So, it's probably instructive for my totally objective decision that I feel pretty confident in the Aggies ability to beat the Hogs. Meanwhile, Tennessee, which should be the greatest among the least, does not inspire in me the confidence that they could handle Baylor, which has shown flashes of respectability. An important factor to note is that, despite the worst things you can say about the Big 12 teams, they have shown some ability to score points. Such kind words might be laid upon Arkansas, but certainly not Mississippi State or Tennessee. And there is nothing impressive about the Vol or Hog defenses.

The SEC may indeed be deep, but at the bottom of the ocean, COWBOY CONFERENCE seems to be the dominant species.

Domi-ference (Part the First)

The argument raging around the country is which conference has the legitimate claim to conference superiority - the Southeastern or Big 12?

In an effort to answer this question in a completely unbiased manner (as well as, with more speed than the Big Televen and a stronger defense than the Pac-10), I am going to attempt to answer the question definitively (yeah, right) in a four part series entitled (as noted above) DOMI-FERENCE - a very crude wombination of "dominance" and "conference."

Part the First will be foundational - classifying the conferences into three tiers. Parts the Second, Third, and Fourth will compare these tiers.

First, the foundational because seemingly legitimate factors like head-to-head would, obviously, be irrational this season with the only head-to-head matchup being between the high-flying Texas Longhorns and the putrid Arkansas Razorbacks. I doubt I would be giving away any suspence when I reveal, prematurely, that Arkansas will be classified in the Southeastern's "Third Tier," preliminarily labeled "Sylvester's Inferno."

Big Boys of the Big 12
I may need request parlay, as I (completely objectively) rank only Oklahoma, Missouri, and Texas among the Cowboy Conference's elite (excluding Captain Mike Leach's Texas Tech Raiders, to whom I make my plea that this is really more of a set of loose guidelines). Forgive me, fierce Lubbuccaneers , if I question your placement with the top-ranked Sooners, the Longhorns, who are showing at least something akin to defense with 11.4 points per game allowed, and a Missouri team that returns basically intact from its BCS Title Game near-miss. These three teams, all can confidently proclaim, are in the hunt for BCS glory, and these are the only three teams in the Big 12 who can stake such a claim.

Sovereigns of the Southeast
As with the Big 12, there are four teams in the SEC who might lay claim to being top dogs - only one of them isn't the Dawgs. After Georgia's humbling experience two weeks ago, the SEC seems to be left with only Alabama, Louisiana State, and barely Florida still thinking championship. The Tigers, who boast the conference's only consistently impressive offense, and The Tide, who boast the best resume in all of college football, are obvious. Why is Florida included in this discussion? While the Gators loss to Ole Miss seems less respectable, it revealed less troubling defects for their team as a whole. Georgia proved to be very suspect along both lines. Florida lost because of turnovers. Butterfingers can be fixed with coaching; Offensive lines cannot.

The Middle of the Middle of the Country
So, Texas Tech, obviously, Kanas, Colorado, KentuckyOklahoma State, Kansas State, and Nebraska make up the Big 12's Raycom Team. It's obviously bigger than the First Team, but it's the closest thing to a strong break, even though Texas Tech will likely beat Nebraska every day and twice on Sundays. These are teams with, either, very identifiable flaws, a mediocre record, or both.

The ordinary class of the Old Confederacy
Don't go picking bones with me Georgia. You either, Vanderbilt. The 'Dores and Dogs know that they have real flaws, namely, a couple of Stay-Pufts up front in Athens and the worst offense in a league of classicly poor offenses up there in Nashville. Kentucky, Auburn, and South Carolina are clear from record and performance. The only real question is whether Ole Miss should be the least of the mediocre or the masters of the low. But, call it homerism, I think Ole Miss is, at worst, the small fish in this pond.

Hard Times
Well, there are only three left in each conference. Baylor, Texas A & M, and Iowa State. State has only wins over only South Dakota State and Kent State; Baylor whomped Northwestern State and Washington State before falling to Connecticut and (unimpressively) Oklahoma; and Texas A & M lost to a Sun Belt Conference school. That'll earned you instant doormat cred.

Meanwhile, for those of us in Dixie, it's fairly easy to note the poor performances of Mississippi State and Arkansas, but this season seems destined to out-smudge and scuff Tennessee's 2006 losing season for least lustrous of the Fulmer era.

So, there you are, a pretty fair grouping of the teams. Tune in for Part the Second: Clash of the Tenders!