Melinda has posted a new blog about winter today.

Winter is coming. As much as I love fall I hate winter. I wrote about my love for fall in a recent blog.

I live in Houston so my dislike of winter is not because the weather is so cold since our winter only involves a couple nights of below freezing with most days seeing highs in the high 50s to low 60’s. We live in one of the best climates for winter if you don’t like seasons, but the prolonged cooler temperatures does mean brown grass and leafless trees. All the holiday decorations come down so the one cheery element in an otherwise dreary season has been removed.

Each year after taking down my decorations the house seems a little emptier, a little colder. And most importantly college football ends. It doesn’t get drearier than that.

In Texas football is king and conversations about college football at the Thanksgiving dinner table often lead to louder disagreements than the recent presidential election. There are many “mixed” families who cheer for different teams on Thanksgiving weekend. Our family is no different.

I married a Texas Longhorn, but I am University of Houston grad. My daughter and son-in-law went to TCU and one of my sons is currently attending University of Houston. My son-in-law’s family are big Oklahoma fans so on Thanksgiving we really couldn’t talk about college football since Texas plays TCU today and Houston beat Oklahoma this year. Instead, we watched the Cowboy game and kept our opinions to ourselves in order to save Thanksgiving.

This year I fear winter more than ever. With the University of Texas having had one of its worst seasons on record rumors are rampant that Coach Charlie Strong will be sacked leaving his job open – one of the most coveted coaching jobs in the country. LSU has already fired their coach. Oregon is also looking for a new head coach.

Houston’s coach, Tom Herman, who has had two great seasons at University of Houston, brought the Cougars into the national rankings –number 5 in the nation at one point this year. He will have many options once the season ends. Rumors abound that he will leave to go to a bigger school and that school could be the University of Texas or LSU. I have cheered for the Texas Longhorns since I was a child, but both my parents went to University of Houston before I did, and now my son is there and so is my heart.

The Old Southwest Conference

Back in the day, most of the big Texas colleges like Houston, Texas, Texas A&M, TCU, Rice and Baylor were all part of the Southwest Conference. It was such a fine time to watch football and cheer for and against teams with friends or against them. When Houston and TCU were shut out of the Big 12 years ago things changed for the Cougars and the Horned Frogs. Their programs were diminished.

Gary Patterson, the coach of TCU was able to fight his way back and was invited to join the Big 12 a few years ago. Houston was on its way to doing that this year with Coach Tom Herman leading the charge, but the Big 12 decided not to expand. This was a bad decision by the Big 12 in this blogger’s opinion. I believe it will ultimately lead to the Big 12’s demise in a few years.

Continue reading Melinda’s blog.