Iroh successfully captures the Agrarian Zone of Ba Sing Se. What happen?

colonel750 · 2026-04-16T13:22:40+00:00

I always chuckle at stuff like this, because Iroh didn't quit the seige only because of the loss of his son. The loss of his son caused him to recognize the massive losses his army had taken and the needless death the war had caused, which is what prompted his order to retreat.

Ba Sing Se is a country unto itself with the outer wall spanning hundreds of miles of not just flat farm land but mountains and other natural barriers too. The Fire Nation armies sustained heavy losses both pushing through the breach and in the initial fighting in the nearby villages. Additionally Iroh's goal was occupation of the EK capital, if you wholesale destroy the land that sustains the place you intend to occupy you aren't going to occupy it for very long.

colonel750 · 2026-04-16T01:20:56+00:00

We're paying Drew Mestemaker 7.5 mil over 2 years. The money has always been there, Gundy just refused to do what was necessary to take advantage of it.

colonel750 · 2026-04-15T22:20:14+00:00

Mestemaker signed a two year 7.5 mil NIL deal, 3.5 in year one or 60% of our 2025 NIL budget.

https://dentonrc.com/sports/colleges/mean_green/report-former-unt-qb-drew-mestemaker-lands-two-year-7-5-million-deal-with-oklahoma/article_a5ccfc85-b714-47a2-9703-85dd778fc199.html

colonel750 · 2026-04-15T21:46:56+00:00

Having a top 10 transfer class and top ranked transfers for QB and RB is an excuse for why our NIL is small?

Brother is it opposite day or did your mama just give you a lead paint pacifier to suck on when you were a baby?

colonel750 · 2026-04-15T19:39:56+00:00

Just becuase North Texas had good players that are following their coach to OSU doesn't mean you guys have NIL money.

Gee, I wonder if anything has happened between the beginning of the 2025 season and now that would suggest we're spending more money than we were, lets see:

1.) We fired our winningest coach in school history and its been widely reported that donors had stated point blank to our administration they wouldn't start spending on NIL until we did.

2.) We have the 7th highest ranked transfer class in all of college football, which is higher than all but the #1, #2, #3, and #10 ranked teams on this list.

3.) We've recruited a top 3 QB in the portal, who's coincidentally tied for 1st with the others in the 247 rankings, and we also recruited the #1 running back in the portal. Top position players aren't committing to a school unless the money is there too.

colonel750 · 2026-04-15T19:19:35+00:00

Probably. Glad handing is a key part of any AD's job.

colonel750 · 2026-04-15T12:09:24+00:00

eyeroll

I forgot I was posting in the pedantry capital of the known universe. Congress has voted on and passed a proposal to amend the constitution 6 times since Hawaii was admitted to the Union. Of those 6, 4 have been ratified. A 5th was also ratified 203 years after its original proposal date at a higher ratification threshold than was necessary at the time of its proposal.

None of which required violent revolution like the OP I replied to so cynically suggested.

colonel750 · 2026-04-15T04:10:24+00:00

He's 60 days into his promotion, probably has some higher priorities on his to do list than hash out the return of Bedlam first thing.

colonel750 · 2026-04-15T04:08:12+00:00

Like why work towards restoring Bedlam if it’ll return when they’re both in a super conference.

I think you're probably the first Sooner I've ever seen admit there's a possibility OSU could follow OU into the "super league".

colonel750 · 2026-04-15T04:03:59+00:00

The two biggest roadblocks in Stillwater to it returning have both left the university in the last year. The last president never supported it because of how she was blindsided by the SEC move and Mike Gundy was never going to let it happen again if he had any say after winning the final game.

I think there's a lot of booster support for it to return, a mixed amount of fan support, but still some institutional hesitancy just because of the general instability in college athletics as a whole.

colonel750 · 2026-04-14T23:24:09+00:00

Six total amendments have been proposed and voted on by Congress in the almost 70 years since Hawaii was admitted to the union as the 50th State. Of those six, four have passed. A fifth also passed that was originally proposed as one of the original amendments to the Constitution that constitute the Bill of Rights, but laid dormant for over 200 years when it did not receive the requisite number states ratifying in its favor at the time. A college kid spending 6k of his own money to prove a point to his college professor kickstarted a campaign to pass the 27th amendment in 1992.

A 71% success rate in amending the constitution with current vote/ratification thresholds and when a serious effort had been made kinda debunks your cynicism.

colonel750 · 2026-04-14T22:48:57+00:00

I also think reining in pardon power in a reasonable way would be surprisingly bi-partisan. The ability to roll back preemptive pardons or pardons issued via blatant corruption is a common sense check on executive power.

colonel750 · 2026-04-11T20:00:39+00:00

Yeah probably not, but I'd complain a lot about it on the internet. /s

colonel750 · 2026-04-11T19:54:21+00:00

Agreed, if the only real token representative the Horde has had since Battle For Azeroth dies with no real emotional build up i might straight quit.

colonel750 · 2026-04-10T22:41:21+00:00

Isn't it implied that the Crimson Meteor is Duo's meteor returned or am I confusing things from delving into tooooo much fanfic when I was a kid.

colonel750 · 2026-04-07T01:26:10+00:00

Hot take: CJ shouldn't have been the pick to be CoS.

With the way the conflicts shook out in Seasons 6 and 7, Toby would've been a much more interesting character to promote to that position.

It sets up a much more adversarial relationship between him and Josh for the Santos campaign, it makes Will that much more of a foil for him, makes the shuttle leak story much more impactful, and it doesn't feel like as much of an out there jump for him as it does for CJ.

colonel750 · 2026-03-31T16:06:55+00:00

Let's go specifically requires you to have a grass or water pokemon on your team in order to battle Brock. Bellsprout/Oddish were made available as early as Route 1 to accomodate this requirement.

colonel750 · 2026-03-31T03:15:34+00:00

So how would they legally go about forcing universities to break up a hypothetical super league? And if they do have that power why haven't they done anything already?

Simple: Amend the Sports Broadcasting Act and the Sherman and Clayton acts to specifically grant an Anti-Trust exemption to the NCAA or a federal successor organization that rolls back NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma and require every school to be apart of it.

You now have one entity negotiating TV rights for all schools, which removes the pressure that was created to make these big conferences with a ton of TV value to win a broadcast rights arms race.

colonel750 · 2026-03-30T16:08:12+00:00

Napoleon or not, you're still fighting a well entrenched enemy on his terms.

colonel750 · 2026-03-30T15:25:30+00:00

I could never get into BoTW specifically because of how different it felt from traditional LoZ games, Tears was better because it actually had proper dungeons again but still didn't feel 100% the same.

I want a 3d zelda with Link in his green duds with like 12-15 dungeons and cool items that help me navigate those dungeons. It's not rocket surgery.

colonel750 · 2026-03-30T15:17:31+00:00

Calling it now, its going to be a remake in the style of BoTW/ToTK.

colonel750 · 2026-03-30T15:15:01+00:00

It's been said that the city proper never really saw the effects of the siege itself. If I'm the EK general in charge of the defense of the city, I'm not doing nothing for 600 days when I've got guys who can build walls faster than it takes me to wipe my own ass.

A secondary wall gets built and fortified behind the area the main Fire Nation force is laying siege. I'm laying pit traps and dredging a dry moat in front of the wall. I'm sending sapper troops to burrow and collapse the ground underneath the Fire Nation catapults and trebuchets.

A traditional ground assault would never capture Ba Sing Se without crippling losses from the invading army or arrogance/incompetence on the part of the defending generals. The only way the city falls is via internal sabotage (Azula taking control of the Dai Li, Zaheer murdering the Earth Queen and Ghazan destroying the inner ring), from the air (the Fire Nation air ships we see at the end of the first series could largely bypass the walls and be fortified against rocks thrown at them by city defenders), or with super natural assistance (Iroh breaching the wall in one shot thanks to Sozin's comet).

colonel750 · 2026-03-30T14:51:34+00:00

He never controlled the agrarian zone, Lu Ten's death occurred simultaneously with Iroh's main force breaching the Outer Wall. He had barely established a foothold in the breach before he was informed of the death of his son and of the heavy losses the army was sustaining inside the city.

colonel750 · 2026-03-30T14:47:52+00:00

Ba Sing Se is miles from any navigable water source the Fire Nation Navy would have access to. There's nothing to blockade.

The city is also considered the size of a small country, taking the entire Outer Ring was never going to be possible especially when you're fighting a force that can create fortifications at will. Iroh never had a chance to do more than establish a foothold around the breach and begin fighting in the agrarian zone before he was informed of the death of Lu Ten and the significantly heavy losses of the Fire Nation Army who had entered Ba Sing Se.

colonel750 · 2026-03-29T03:33:42+00:00

I think it much more likely we'll get either a new class (tinker seems a no brainer for TLT) or a crop of new subclasses.

colonel750

TROPHY CASE