Favorite University Series: East Texas edition

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

2 more to go after this! Map is filling in!



1. Stephen F. Austin
2. Texas A&M - I guess ironically Manziel kind of made me love them more, but the entire horrible RW culture will keep them out of the top spot.
3. Sam Houston State
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4. Prairie View A&M
5. Houston
6. Rice
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7. Lamar
8. Houston Baptist
9. Texas Southern

Past polls: AL; FL; IL; NorCal; MD; KY; CO; Upper New England; American Southwest;  Backyard Brawl;
Middle America;  North Texas;  MI; LA; NYC; UT/NV; GA; Pacific Northwest; WI/MN; Eastern Mass; IN; NJ/DE; Western Upstate NY ; AR/MS; East Carolina; Great West; Tennessee; Eastern Pennsylvania; Eastern Upstate New York; South Carolina; Western Massachusetts; Ohio; Virginia;
Connecticut/Rhode Island; South Texas; Western Carolina; Iowa/Nebraska; DC/Hawaii/Alaska

East Texas

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

THE GOOD
Rice University - a Near Ivy with a quirky sense of humor that doesn't take itself too seriously

University of Houston (UH) - I went to grad school here; I'm impressed with how much progress they've made in terms of getting out of the "commuter school" box and attracting a more geographically diverse, academically accomplished undergraduate student body

Sam Houston State (SHSU) - they've carved out a niche for themselves in their journalism program and their criminal justice program (the latter of which makes sense given they're in Huntsville)

THE BAD
Stephen F. Austin State (SFA) - really horrible bottom-tier school full of kids who didn't have the grades to get into an SEC school and/or couldn't pay the out-of-state fees to attend an SEC school; I know more than one guy who went there who unironically refers to himself as a "Southern gentleman"

Prairie View A&M (PVAMU) and Texas Southern (TSU) - sum up everything that is wrong with HBCUs: corruption, mismanagement and the soft bigotry of low expectations

THE UGLY
Texas A&M University (TAMU) - shame on them for helping turn the Big 12 into a zombie conference and making it harder for Baylor football to get any respect since our conference schedule now consists of joke schools and has-beens; the whole swaggering cowboy culture makes the rest of us roll our eyes

THE WHO?
Lamar University - I didn't realize until fairly recently that they were an actual university and not a community college or something

Houston Baptist University (HBU) - this place always confused me; it was only founded in 1960 and I get the impression that the impetus for its creation may have been some people who were upset that the public universities in Texas were desegregating; and yet none of the people I know who went there are remotely conservative or religious

[SATW]

Rice.

[YaBoyNY]

Cougars.

[Хahar 🤔]

Scatter bands are terrible.