The Mother Plucker’s Ramblings

If there is one thing I have learned is different between The South and living in Texas, it’s that Texas is not the South.  Now people in Texas may think they are Southerners, but in reality, they are a whole other breed of person. You really can’t find someone like a Texan anywhere else in the country.  In many respects, that’s what makes Texas so great because so many people are proud of Texas tradition.  However, there is one argument we have with our native Texas friends that is really not a matter of opinion, but just in general our Texas friends are wrong.  That argument is that football played in the Big 12 and in the state of Texas is as good as the football played in the SEC.It is amusing to me that people even think this is worth arguing, but I’ll try and settle this debate once and for all.  Let’s look at few key statistics that would determine who the better conference is: 

Depth of Conference:  The Big 12 definitely has quality talent in the top 2 programs in Texas and Oklahoma, but what other school in the conference year in and year out has a shot at playing in a BCS Bowl?  Better yet, how many teams in the conference have a legitimate shot to even win the Big 12 without a fluke win?  Sure, Kansas is undefeated and Missouri is looking pretty good right now, but they would both be at least 7 point dogs to OU in the Big 12 Championship Game.  Since the decline of K-State and Nebraska, the Big 12 North has become the least relevant division in college football.  Hell, Texas beat Colorado by 67 points in the Big 12 title game two years ago.  Does anyone really think that Kansas is a legitimate football team anyways?  Who is the best team they have beaten?  Oklahoma State who lost to Troy by 24 points?The SEC has 6 teams almost every year that have a legitimate shot at winning the conference.  LSU, Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee are all teams almost every year that would have a shot at winning the national title if they played in the Big 12.  Unfortunately, they beat each other up every year and it makes it almost impossible for one of those teams to escape unscathed from their conference. 

Non-conference wins, National Championships and Bowl Games:  Well, the first head to head test would be the Cotton Bowl where the Big 12’s 2nd best team matches up against the SEC’s 3rd or 4th best team.  Guess what?  The SEC has won the last 4 Cotton Bowls.  How about National Championships?  Since 1979, the SEC has won 7 National Championships by 6 different teams.  The Big 12 has fared well with 6 titles but by only 4 different teams. What was the Big 12’s best non-conference win in 2006?  Texas over Iowa in the meaningless Alamo Bowl?  How about 2007?  Oklahoma over a bad Miami, FL team?  Now let’s look at the SEC…Florida destroyed Ohio State in the BCS Title Game, LSU destroys a top-10 Notre Dame team in the Sugar Bowl, Georgia beats Oklahoma State by 21 this year, LSU beats Virginia Tech by 34 this year and so on.  It isn’t even close.

NFL Talent:  Another great indicator of the level of football being played is how many players are drafted by the NFL.  In the 2007 NFL Draft, the SEC sent 11 players - in the first round!  The Big 12 had 4.  The SEC traditionally has 10-15 more draft picks than any other conference.  The Big 12 has had good talent, but nowhere near the level displayed in the SEC.

Atmosphere, Tailgating and Attendance:  The most important factor though as a fan comes with how much fun you have at a game.  I can count on one hand the number of home Texas games the crowd was really into since I went to school here in 1991.  If you want to talk about atmosphere, here is where the SEC blows away not only the Big 12, but everyone else in the country.  The SEC has 7 teams with football stadiums larger than 80,000 people.  In the Big 12, there are only 4 stadiums as large.  Now you might say that size isn’t all that matters, but spend a Saturday in Baton Rouge where people are tailgating at 8am for a 7pm kickoff or an evening in the Swamp where the Gators have been virtually unbeatable since the Evil Genius Steve Spurrier took over the program in the early 1990’s.  Or how about 150,000 people tailgating this year for the Georgia - Alabama game in Tuscaloosa.  Every SEC school save Vanderbilt and Mississippi State is an unbelievable place to tailgate and watch a game.  How many of you dream about going to watch a game at Baylor, Oklahoma State, Iowa State or Kansas? Hopefully, I have settled this argument once and for all, but if you are interested in seeing it for yourself, come on down with us to a game in The Deep South.  You will be a believer as well.

I don’t know about all of you, but to me, there is nothing worse for sports fans than late-June to late August. Although I am not a rabid NBA fan, watching Lebron and the Spurs was somewhat interesting and as the only NHL fan in Austin, sports pretty much ends for me after the Stanley Cup finals are over. Growing up, I could name the starting lineup, batting averages and RBI totals of every MLB team, but after the strike in 1995, baseball pretty much lost me. Add to the fact that the Sosa-McGwire home run race was nothing but a farce and that is why I sit here as a depressed sports fan in mid-August.

The great thing is that the college and NFL seasons are right around the corner. One of the best things about Pluckers is being able to go into one of our restaurants and make it your own private sports bar. Since we carry like every game in the football universe, there is nothing like sitting down with one of our spicy Bloody Mary’s Sunday morning and gearing up for a big day of NFL football. If you haven’t visited the South Lamar or Lakeline stores, we have taken watching football to a whole new level. When we plan the layout of the restaurants, Mark, Sean and I actually sit there and make sure that every guest can see all 8 NFL games from almost any seat in the house. People ask why we have so many plasmas and the answer is because we would never want to be the guy that can’t see all the action. Sure it costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars, but we think y’all are worth it.

For fantasy geeks, the NFL launched a new red zone channel last year for Sunday Ticket subscribers and now you can literally bounce from game to game watching all of the scoring as it happens. Combine that to free Wi-Fi at Pluckers and our stores are a fantasy GM’s utopia….the wings are bad either. So let the countdown begin until the first college game on the August 30th at 7pm when Rutgers hosts the mighty Buffalo Bison!

Ok, we’ve never done this before in a public forum, but here’s your chance to ask any questions that you have about Pluckers and we’ll be happy to answer them. Whether it’s about your favorite recipe, an urban legend you heard about Pluckers or something else, feel free to ask it and we’ll respond to your post. Remember, there are no stupid questions….only stupid people. Hope to hear from you soon!

It’s only been a week and a half, but it looks like the new Lakeline Pluckers is going to be an institution in Cedar Park. Ever since we started our training shifts, the people in the neighborhood have been great to us. It’s nice to open a restaurant and have hundreds of people telling you how happy you are that you opened near them. We’ve come a long way from the days where no one in Austin knew who we were.

If you haven’t had a chance to make it out to the store, I am going to say it is the best layout of any Pluckers thus far. We have a great indoor/outdoor air conditioned bar area where you can play Guitar Hero and other X Box games for free. We have pimped out this Pluckers with 35 plasmas, so watching football is going to be amazing at the store this Fall.

I would like to thank everyone in the Leander/Cedar Park area for coming out and supporting us. Everyone has been really nice and we look forward to serving you for years to come.

I was picking up my car at Custom Sounds on South Lamar today when one of the guys who works there asked me a question I get all the time. “Why is your hot sauce different levels of heat some times?” A perfectly legitimate question that I get asked all the time so I figured there were several other common questions we get at Pluckers that we should answer for you.

OK, so the answer to the hot sauce question is that because we make all of our wing sauces from scratch, there can be a slight taste difference when making large batches. We use fresh cayenne pepper in our Buffalo sauces and similar to jalapenos or habaneros, cayenne peppers can be different levels of heat at different times of the year. Unfortunately, there isn’t a cayenne pepper heat level machine…well, actually there is a machine that does that but we’re too cheap to buy it. Anyways, we put the same amount of cayenne into the sauce and if the pepper is hotter, the sauce is hotter. So if you are afraid of the heat, start with the Medium and then move up to the Hot. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

What did the “MD” stand for in your old name “MD Pluckers” and why did you change it back to “Pluckers”?

A few years back, we got a letter from some outfit called Cluckers in San Antonio. For some reason they thought that our name sounded “deceptively similar” to their name. That is legal jargon for “change your name or I might sue you!” Being that we only had one restaurant at the time and very little money, we figured it was easier to find a way to change our name a little than to risk a lawsuit. So we came up with what we thought was a clever way to avoid any problems, just put our initials in front of it….get it? MD is short for Mark and Dave. As the creepy little Guinness guys say “Brilliant!”. One problem, we were too stupid to think that M.D. is short for “doctor”. So for the next few years, people would ask us who Dr. Pluckers was. After awhile we realized that we didn’t give a shit about Cluckers or their lawsuit and that MD Pluckers was stupid, so we changed the name back once and for all to Pluckers.
Is the story on the back of the menu really true?
If you are a loyal reader of this blog, then you already know the answer. If not, check out an earlier post to read some Pluckers history.

Do you Pluck your own chickens?

This may sound like a dumb question, but people ask it all the time. The answer is obviously no. However, when we first opened, Mark and I bought a chicken wing cutting machine and would cut all of our wings by hand. We thought it was a good idea to buy this 17-year old circular saw looking thing for $300 and to save money cutting our own wings. For the uninitiated, all wings have two joints, one that is called the drummette or drum and the other is called the flapper. You have to cut the two apart to have what people typically think of as one chicken wing.

Looking back on it, it was amazing that one of us didn’t lose a finger. It took us about one day to learn that we couldn’t trust an employee with this machine and it took us almost a year to realize that our own fingers were worth more than 5-cents extra a pound when we were exhausted working 18-hour days.