Thank You Texas

[silvertrombone]

Well, what do you expect from a Bruin? UCLA's fall 2009 quarter starts September 21. They have three football games (including two home games) before classes start.

(Disclaimer - I marched with Harrison (original poster) in the Freelancers, but I went to USC.)

Geez, I'd be ashamed of marching in the same corps.

[NR_Ohiobando]

What the hell is this thread about?

[silvertrombone]

What the hell is this thread about?

An Obama supporter decided to bash Bush for Cavaliers falling to 4th place...and Phantom Regiment falling to 9th...and thought it would be cute to peg the problem on Texas before we Texans started taking credit for their corps being so good cuz they recruit OUR talent for their corps pretty much everywhere else. Creative, eh?

[JayM]

An Obama supporter decided to bash Bush for Cavaliers falling to 4th place...and Phantom Regiment falling to 9th...and thought it would be cute to peg the problem on Texas before we Texans started taking credit for their corps being so good cuz they recruit OUR talent for their corps pretty much everywhere else. Creative, eh?

How does someone bashing Bush make them an Obama supporter?

[skajerk]

I'm still trying to figure out why you're all bashing on an all-age corps that has nothing to do with this thread! Leave Bush alone!

[paultxsa]

You know, sometimes all you can do in replying to a moron is to say thank you politely for expressing their 1st Amendment right to free speech then seek out intelligent dialogue or a good book and a cold beer by the pool. I think I'll settle for the latter.

Oh...and it sure is nice to have our kids back in state now. Hope you all enjoyed them in all of the corps. How many Texans marched in YOUR favorite corps this year??

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects 'stupid man' explicitly from the Congress, not from DCP or from me.

To think...we Texans have been in charge of scheduling DCI finals all these years and I haven't done anything to get them scheduled on my days off, what was I thinking?

[SkyDog]

the county where I went to k-12 (and where I am currently working with a marching band) starts after Labor Day. They also don't get out until the middle of June.

...which pretty much precludes New York high schoolers from participating in DCI corps. By the time school lets out and standardized tests finish, most DCI corps have been rehearsing every day for weeks. Maybe this is one of the reasons we've got six DCA corps in New York and zero DCI corps.

[hsreed]

Some very interesting points. First and foremost, I did not bash BD. If anything, I complimented them for having the vision to manage their season before Summer competitions every began and they do it year in an year out. No one else comes close. I also said they get the best talent year in and year out and I've also state in another post that the have the best staff.

I've also credited Texas with changing the timing of DCI finals due to all the musical talent in the state. The whole point of DCI changing things for Texas actually wasn't due to the talent, but to increase the sheer number of people participating in DCI and the talent is a bonus. It's purely about the number of people on the field. The more people on the field, the more money DCI can make and increase their ability to perpetuate DCI.

The other people I've complimented are Texans. Without Texans, DCI would be significantly smaller than it is today.

I also agree with the statement you don't have to be an Obama supporter to bash Bush. Bush rarely sounded intelligent when he opened his mouth (and Obama can't open his mouth without a teleprompter). BUT Bush has been the only modern day American president willing to stand up and take the fight to a group of people continually trying to kill Americans since the late 50s and possibly before then. Ironically, Obama's receives his highest ratings on issues where he has basically continued Bush policies. But I really don't want this to be a political discussion. There's enough blame and credit to go around, just a politician.

Several people have made statements along the lines of "my kid/I start school today or in a week. Someone actually responded with:

"Texas no longer starts school during the second week in August. School now starts in the 4th week in August. The Texas state legislature made this change during its last session. School in our district starts August 27th. This is the same as much of the rest of the country."

Is someone in a position of knowledge proving my point? What I'm reading is that Texas leaders knew they started school earlier than the rest of the country and the legislature had to mandate starting school on a particular day late in August. Maybe it comes down to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Maybe it was brilliance on DCI's behalf. While I can't really tell if it was mandated by the act, but there is quite a bit of information linking 180 school days and 6 1/2 hours of instruction mentioned with the act. Maybe all these unrelated events led us to the place we're at today. As for when Texans began primary school in the late 70s to mid 80s, I know school began in the middle of August, before DCI finals, because I was there. I lived in Texas with my dad during the summer. I was always in Texas two weeks after all my Texas friends went back to school and I began school in CA the first week of September. Family in Michigan, Ohio and Florida also began school about the same time I did because I remember talking about it a a family reunion the late 80s and specifically discussing how Texas began school before everyone else. My brother graduated from school in Texas in 1997 and he could not march drum corps while in high school because his school started before DCI finals ended. He would have had to miss the entire winter band program because he couldn't make it back for band camp. I do not know more than this regarding his topic because I wasn't involved at any of the other times.

If you went to high school in the 80s, 90s and early 00s, what part of the country are you from and when did you begin your school year? I would need this information from an acceptable sample size to help prove my hypothesis that DCI changed the weekend to finals primarily to accommodate Texas and attract more participants.

Another set of questions could be: When did you march in DCI and were there any Texans in your corps? I would expect the people who marched before 2002 marched with fewer Texans than people who marched hater 2002. Someone stated Crossmen have quite a few people from Texas.

What I do know is the pure number of people participating in drum corps dropped throughout the 90s and it probably started in the 80s. DCI had to begin addressing the issue 15 to 20 years ago. So when you or your kids begin school this year or any year in the last 8 is absolutely irrelevant to my theory that Texas is partially responsible for DCI moving finals forward one week.

So if there is enough data that allows my assumption that DCI moved finals up a week to accommodate Texans, we can get to my original thought:

If there was another two weeks of drum corps this year, would Crown and or Cadets have passed BD? I know there have been more than just the couple times I've noted since 82 that the leading maxed out their show and gets passed at the finish line. It's also my opinion that Crown and Cadets both had better show concepts than BD this year, but they were unable to maximize their show because they ran out of time. the other reason would be because they didn't have enough talent. I also don't have a dog in this race. If anything, I'm much more of a Cadet hater than a BD basher and I'm still getting over Crown singing on the field. I also ran out of time to go through the years and track the last three or four weeks of each season to see what years had corps passing the front runner the last week and if there's any correlation to the shortened competition season.

As for bagging on Bush, all the news agencies blame Bush for all the bad things in the world and credit Obama for all the good things, when, in fact, the no President cannot sign a single check without Congress while the same cannot be said about Congress.

If your still wondering what this is all about, it simple: Would Cadets and/or Crown have passed BD this year if there were two more weeks to the season as well as an examination or speculation as to why the season is one week, and two weeks this year, shorter than every season through 2001.

[oldschooldbc]

A few years ago, Cavies were performing at the show in Houston. The local TV station was interviewing Bruno (Jeff must not have been available). They asked him what percentage of the Cavies membership was from Texas, and he said it was roughly 25%.

I was startled at that number at the time. But in retrospect, it makes sense. There were no Division 1 corps at the time (this was before Crossmen moved to the state.) We do build a lot of top talent in this state. If you want to march World Class/Division 1, where did you go at the time? You went to Illinois, or New Jersey, or California - but you didn't stay home in Texas.

Now at least we have the Crossmen in this state. So there is at least an option to march World Class, without having to fly 1,000 miles 7 times a year.

=================================

Now, I know exactly where this discussion is going. Apologists for HNC and CC are looking for more excuses, for why their corps didn't win last night.

The HNC may have a legitimate excuse: their drumline member slipped last night, and caused a collapse in their percussion score. That has already been discussed ad nausem.

CC will come up with a multitude of excuses: inexperience, poor judging, the illness they experienced last month. None of this is the real explanation: CC just weren't good enough last night to beat BD. No one was. I saw all 3 shows, and BD was the hands down winner. Like it or not, the judges give the title to the correct corps.

And one excuse that simply does not wash, is the Texas public school schedule from several years ago. Come on, what's next? The phases of the moon?

Edited August 10, 2009 by oldschooldbc

[skajerk]

Oh Lord! I give up. You win! DCI moved up everything for the state of TX. You've proven it (with no facts like everybody else has). Can we close this now?