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Editors Note:  This article is written by guest blogger Daniel Durany.  Daniel is a graduate of TCU in Communications Studies.

If you asked most people, what major city in Texas is located in Taylor County? The majority of people would probably say Lubbock, Austin, Houston, San Antonio, or Wichita Falls as the main city for Taylor County. Actually, Abilene is the major city for Taylor County. If you knew Abilene was the major city for Taylor County, then you most likely didn’t know how Taylor County became originated.

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Today is 9/11.  We will always remember this day that way.  After what happened 8 years ago, we still remember it and the sting and pain we feel from all that happened.  For me, 9/11 has a face.  It is a beautiful face.  It is the face of Sara Low who was a flight attendent on American Airlines flight 11.  Sara grew up and graduated from the same high school in the same small town that I did; Batesville, AR.

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Arkansas State at Nebraska

In the middle of the 1980’s, I was growing up in Batesville, AR.  We all, of course, were Razorback fans.  Ken Hatfield had shown up, and he was in the middle of rebuilding a great tradition at Arkansas, but over in Jonesboro, AR, a guy by the name of Larry Lacewell was building his own tradition.

The Arkansas State Indians (ehem) Red Wolves were emerging as one of the best teams in Division I AA football, uh, I mean the Fooball Chamipionship (played on the field) Subdivision.  Lacewell, was running the wishbone at st-A-te (we called them ASU, but everyone else didn’t know that, so they referred to Arizona State as ASU), excecuting the triple option with precision behind the quarterback Dwane Brown.

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Here are the top four results from week on of the DFW Pickem hosted by Collegefootballtopten.com at Fun Office Pools.

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Editors Note:  This article is written by guest blogger Daniel Durany.  Daniel is a graduate of TCU in Communications Studies.

Texas A & M was 4-8 overall and 2-6 in the Big XII Conference in 2008. For the Aggies to be a better football from last year’s record, they must improve in three categories: an effective running game to take the pressure off their quarterback and their defense, while stopping the opponents in the running game and improving their turnover margin.

The Aggies running game was ranked last in the Big XII Conference with only 2.9 yards per carry as they barely had over 1000 total yards rushing. In addition to the flaws in the running game from last year was stopping the opponents running game. The Aggie run defense gave up 219.3 yards rushing a game, with 34 touchdowns and 140 first downs which all ranked dead last in the Big XII.

Their third flaw and most important in football is turnovers. The Aggies coughing up the ball 27 times compared to forcing only 17 turnovers with turnover margin of -10 last year. Only the Nebraska Cornhuskers had worse turnover margin than the Aggies in the conference and out of 119 NCAA Division I-A teams last year, the Aggies were ranked 88th in the number of turnovers they coughed up, and tied 104th in turnover margin.

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Editors Note:  This segment of the Texas Tour was written by guest blogger Daniel Durany.  Daniel is a graduate of TCU where he studied journalism.

For the 2009 Texas Longhorns football, their one remaining goal left to accomplish is winning the National Championship. Even though the Longhorns felt snubbed last year in the opportunity to play in the BCS national championship game, they have plenty of momentum to build on for the upcoming year.

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Texas A&M University-Commerce athletic director Carlton Cooper announced today that Rayfield Wright, a former member of the Dallas Cowboys from 1967 to 1979 and teammate of Lions great Harvey Martin, has agreed to serve as the keynote speaker during the luncheon at the Harvey Martin Classic on Thursday, September 10 at noon. There will be a reception prior to the luncheon at 11 a.m.

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I am publishing a 2009 Fall E-zine through Dfwfootball.net.  Ah yes, the Fall football season is almost here!  I hope you are excited as I am!

The E-zine will be available (with figures crossed), on Friday, August 28, 2009.  All you will have to do is go to Dfwfootball.net, and click on the link that will be front and center on the home page.  The E-zine will be published in a pdf format, so keep that in mind.

The E-zine incldes articles from our friends at SpitbloodTCU.com and GoMeanGreen.com.  So, if you get a chance, navigate over to their sites and tell them thanks!

In the future, I hope to have an article from Adam Jones of JonesTopTen.com previewing the Texas-OU game.  I am also looking for other guest writers, so if you would like to write an article at Collegefootballtopten.com about your favorite team, or anything college football related, drop me a note.

We will begin are Texas Tour next week.  I hope to have an article on Texas and Texas A&M, and we’ll see what else we can come up with.

For the preview article on TCU and UNT, check out the E-zine.

Fun Office Pools

Last year, we hosed a CFTT Pick’em.  The pool is hosted by our friends at Fun Office Pools, and they are nice enough to consider us a partner.

Therefore, if you joined last year, or if you wold like to join this year, just head on over to Fun Office Pools and join our group under the Partners section.  Of course, you will have to register with Fun Office Pools to use the site, but it is a ton of fun!

Last year’s winner, Grayhound, has signed up and looking for a back-to-back title.  Can anyone keep him from going for two in a row?  Or will he create a dynasty?

Fantrax.com

If that is not enough for you, then you can play fantasy football.  At my site, dfwfootball.net, I am hosting a fantasy football league through Fantrax.com.

We already have two teams in the league, and we need to finish setting it up because we will have to have a draft since the season starts soon.  I changed my league to a public league, so all you have to do is sign up at Fantrax.com and find the dfwfootball league.

Have fune.

My two sports reporting worlds collided the past two weeks.  I run Dfwfootball.net which is mostly about semi pro football in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and I cover college football for Pegasus News in the DFW area as well as run this college football blog.

Fort Worth Avengers semi pro football team

Fans of major college football program do not think about semi pro football.  I don’t think there is any disagreement to that, but fans of semi pro football usually watch all football.  And, for a few players, there is the hope that he will one day play big-time football, whether it is in the NCAA or the NFL.

Rarely, however, does this move actually happen.  Mostly, the best these guys will do is move up in to a league that has a little more status.  Maybe they can get in to an indoor league where they might actually get paid something to play the game.  Thus, semi pro football has its pay-to-play leagues and the play-for-play leagues.  Even the play-for-play leagues pay very, very little.

The chances of making the NFL is so slim that it prompted one semi pro football owner to tell me that guys looking to get to the NFL should just go to college.  They should walk on if they half to, because, as he said, “If they have it, they will make the team.”  Nevertheless, there are the rare exceptions of guys moving up the ranks because of their play in semi pro football.  Oklahoma linebacker Mike Balogun is one of those exceptions.

Balogun played in the North American Football Leauge (NAFL), which is one of the largest semi pro football leagues in the country, although, it appears he may have played in another league as well.  I am unsure of the entire story, but the question is whether or not Balogun played past his 21st birthday in semi pro football.  That will cost a player elgibility.

I first learned this back in the Spring when it happened to a player at Florida State, who as turns out, seems to have blown the whistle on Oklahoma.  How nice of them!

So, normally, the college football fan wouldn’t think twice about this vagabond existence of traveling football with little money involved, but this year, when Florida State and Oklahoma take the field, it will most likely be on the minds of their fans and the college football community as a whole.

For you college football fans, when the Spring rolls around, and it’s “off season” time, look up the local semi pro football team, and go make a game.  The team in your area might just be really good.  You might enjoy the football.  They still wear helmets, not leather, and they still play on a football field.  Some even have dancers!

Most of these teams have websites, Myspace and Facebook sites and Twitter accounts.  The owners are usually local, and they are not looking to build a $2 Billion dollar facility on your dime!

It has been said that, “any news is good news.”  This might be true for semi pro football, and most likely, the NAFL.