FormerWildcat

It's not unprecedented for a band to miss state after making finals the previous year: I'd use Cedar Ridge a couple of years back as a reference. Gatesville had cleanliness issues early in the season, although they did get it mostly fixed by area time. Perhaps I placed Gatesville one or two spots too low, but this area is super competitive. I believe any band that made the top 16 this past year has a real shot at making state with the right show design and performer execution. If Gatesville is able to improve on last year, they should be fine.

Although people seem to see Area C as the hardest area for 4A, I definitely think B's the deepest. I would consider more than half of last year's lineup at least decent when a few years ago you'd be hard pressed to make that statement for a quarter of any 4A area's field. I think Panther Creek's two-year extended stay really motivated several bands to up their game: Stephenville and Aubrey in particular come to mind. WAY TOO EARLY PREDICTIONS [Hopefully 12 bands make it to finals!] 1. Panther Creek 2. China Spring 3. Aubrey 4. Krum 5. Robinson 6. Alvarado 7. Gatesville 8. Stephenville 9. Kennedale 10. Brock 11. Godley 12. Springtown Also in finals [even state with the right show] contention: Castleberry, Sanger, Lake Dallas, Southwest

In this state, you can't even bet on most professional sports, let alone any activities at the college or high school level. When my alma mater does bingo fundraisers, the students are locked out of the cafeteria. Although there is some talk of gambling regulations being relaxed, I highly doubt anyone under the age of 18 would ever be allowed to legally place any sort of bet. Additionally, marching band is an activity with the outcomes largely determined by subjective as opposed to objective reasoning. In football, most plays are not challenged by the referees, but there is plenty of discussion regarding bribes affecting reviews on the plays that are challenged. In marching band, every "play" is essentially a "challenge". There are already enough allegations of rigging contests [one area contest this past season comes to mind]. On a related note, the few times I have attempted to access the predictions page in 2024, it has not worked for me. I assume that it may have gotten shut down due to the possibility of betting.

1. Flower Hill 2. Sheepron 3. Endergrift 4. The Woodland Biome 5. Moocus 6. Witchta Ridge 7. Appleland 8. Hopper 9. Ronald Chicken 10. Spruce Ridge 11. Square Stone 12. Dripping Pigs 13. Grassland 14. Waxazombie

Looking at Accuweather, on Saturday most of the severe weather should stay west of Denton, while on Monday, Denton's right near the center. Apparently they're expecting 90mph wind gusts in some locations then. It should be clear on Tuesday, but I think it would be too late to tabulate the results at that point. I'm guessing they go ahead and do it on Saturday even if they aren't able to get finals in.

Kind of early for region, isn't it?

Kennedale got first place in 4A prelims, and from what I'm hearing first overall as well. Don't quote me on it, but I think the finals schedule may have been in placement order.

I think every band from region 30 moved to area B. I think the change was made to ensure no band had to travel 3+ hours to attend the competition.

Already at 5K signatures, close to double RR's total student population. I think we see some Austin area news coverage tonight regarding this situation.

Nevermind about the first part

Since no one appears to be updating I'll take a stab: For context I just missed Burleson. Midlothian Heritage: Like the overall theme, especially the plumes. Ballad with the red cape reveal was especially well executed. Could be a real threat in a couple years. Granbury: While some difficult passages were handled well, others struggled musically, like the trumpet quartet opening. Visually, I felt there were certain static sections where movement could have been added. Summit: Really clean overall. "13" set looked especially nice. I heard a couple of slight tears originating from the percussion. The storage of the uniforms on the luggage carts was an especially nice touch. Cleburne: Music was fairly good in terms of balance even though the complexity was lacking. Golden Hour arrangement worked great. Not a fan of some of the thematic choices, but that shouldn't mean much in terms of UiL. One thing I noticed about all four of the bands was that the visuals were often mistimed. Summit was very good through the ballad but I noticed weak forms in the closer. The other bands definitely had issues throughout stemming from clearly missed sets and missed visual moments. I suspect this week's poor weather might be a culprit.

Add Midlothian

To be fair CH did take three of the four captions. Gonna be a close fight between CH, Berkner, and LR for the gold.

Just did my predictions for all the DFW contests and BOA Austin. I have to say that the turnout so far has been phenomenal. As of now, there are 141 submissions for BOA Austin and 52 for the brand-new Melissa contest. Pretty impressive considering that it's the beginning of the season and there's almost a week to go. Also, I saw that about 20 new accounts were created over the weekend. That's gotta be some sort of record, right?

You have to remember that September 23rd is historically very early in the marching season. A lot of programs in the DFW area (especially the bigger ones) probably wouldn't be ready to start competition until the next week. Also, two additional competitions are scheduled within the same vicinity that day. Melissa (to be fair they completely booked that competition) mostly consists of smaller bands that wouldn't draw in much in terms of attendance and concession sales, but LE still misses out on the registration fee. I suspect many of the bigger programs that choose to compete this early elected for the Golden Triangle Classic, possibly due to a lower registration fee or easier access (LE's stadium is 20 minutes off of the DNT).

I've said it before, but NFHS is not some small startup. It is owned by Paramount Global, who you might recognize as the owners of Top Gun, Spongebob, Star Trek, TMNT, Mission Impossible, Rugrats, NCIS, South Park, Survivor, Loud House, and a countless list of other big IPs. They own CBS, which routinely broadcasts professional events including the Super Bowl and Final Four. That being said, Paramount has struggled mightily over the past year. I won't go into much detail here, but big media has generally seen massive losses stemming from a rushed transition from cable and physical media to streaming (hence the current actor's and writer's strikes). Paramount is largely thought of as the biggest loser out of them all. I wish that they could upgrade the production to a level that the participants deserve, but with all the financial issues I've mentioned I'm not sure if it would be in the cards.

Trying to outclass NFHS, I see

Dave609 has uploaded a lot of NFHS videos over the past few hours. I decided to watch the Vandegrift finals high cam. The video and audio quality were both horrendous. I've seen fan-recorded videos from the mid-2000s that look and sound better than the product NFHS is putting out. I could be somewhat forgiving of the poor quality if this was an independent startup, but this is getting backed by a multi-billion-dollar entertainment conglomerate. Unless some hero got past the no recording policy, I don't expect any footage from UIL State to appear on "best of 2022" compilation videos. An all-around embarrassment for the UIL.

Back when there were only 5 judges, if two music and one visual judge had a band in first place, that band would automatically become the state champion regardless of points. North Lamar won state by this rule in 2016. Not sure of the rules for this particular contest.

Probably the NFHS Livestream...

I forgot Viacom also owned The Big Bang Theory. Turns out Sheldon Cooper was a spy for them. I heard Viacom intends on sending a cease-and-desist letter to txbands.com tonight.

NFHS is actually a multi-million dollar a year business. I scrolled down and found out their parent company is CBS Sports. If this was an upstart I'd be more forgiving, but this stream is apparently being put on by the same company that owns Top Gun and Spongebob.

At the region level, if you get a penalty your grade drops one ordinal for each judge (e.g. Wakeland this year got 2-2-2 due to not finishing their show on time). I'm not sure how it works at the area or state levels, but I'd bet that any penalty that gets violated would constitute disqualification.

On the Danpod it said that they still drew for finals before the contest and the split is created right before finals.

Isn't UIL doing bottom 7-top 7 for the first time this year?