The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board Because that's our custom

Breaking: Dana, Slim Thug have met

August 1, 2013 by Mike Casazza

Earlier this week I was asking myself some questions about Charles Sims. In my attempt to answer them, to figure out how Sims and his once and future coach, Dana Holgorsen, have clicked in that past, I had to watch a lot of YouTube clips. That meant I had to subject myself to more Slim Thug than I had anticipated and than I ever had before. Seriously. (And good luck getting that out of your head today.)

I don’t know what it was, and I’ll allow for the possibility that it’s just me and just the way things go inside this head of mine, but the mind started to wander like a child in a department store.

Obviously, I will not be asking that question when Dana speaks to the media this evening.

“No, because that would be silly, Mike.”

Are you out of your mind? That would me amazing.

Also, I already asked.

Slim Thug, to me, is just sort of out there. He’s a rapper and I’ve heard of him and I’ve heard his music. He’s also made me laugh this summer with the way he’s involved himself with, ahem, Houston sports. So you can see, I hope, the way I made the connection to Dana. Well, let’s just say that between my tweets and my meeting with Dana yesterday, I received rock solid confirmation that Dana and Slim thug have indeed met. I wedged that into our conversation.

“I don’t know Slim Thug, but I’ve met Slim Thug,” Holgorsen said. “He’s always around.”

Aaaaand the season goes downhill from here.

“He was just always around,” Holgorsen said. “He’s a Houston guy.”

And he’s a University of Houston guy, one who jumped on the Cougars bandwagon years back and did the anthem I linked to above with Houstonians Bun B and Paul Wall — and if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to cross “Post about Slim Thug” and “Namedrop Bun B and Paul Wall” off the blog’s bucket list.

“He knows a bunch of pro people, NFL people, celebrity people,” said Holgorsen, who spends some of his free and family time in Houston. “If they go to Houston, they go to Slim.”

The point, and I promise there is one, is that UH of all places got a pretty nice rub with its association with Slim Thug and that anthem. It’s a useful and increasingly popular intersection of college football, hip hop and marketing. That doesn’t necessarily exist here. Sure, WVU can claim and woo Brad Paisley and there’s been nothing wrong the association with Taylor Made, but to really connect with today’s youth, Dana needs a rapper.

“We’re going to have to get Geno to get Jay-Z back to a game, or something like that,” Holgorsen said. “There’s not a lot of rappers, or guys like that, who spend time in West Virginia. The closest we came was Roy Jones, Jr. When Roy Jones came by, that gave me street cred. He was a great guy.”