The sports isn't going so well for Casa Croucher as of late. How bad is it? Well, let's just say this: We're losing more than we're winning -- and it's not even close. But there's no single number, no weighted average that can fully explain the totality of sports misery currently parked above our household, like some dark cloud of sports fail ever-raining down missed opportunities and broken plays.

At least, not until now.

It is with great displeasure I introduce the Croucher Sports Misery Index (CSMI). The CSMI measures the amount of misery felt at the Croucher household each week based on a weighted average of all the terrible going on in our little slice of sports purgatory.

Each week, a team’s performance is assigned a number between 1 and 10 based on the relative misery inspired by their performance. A rating of ‘1’ would mean it wasn’t that miserable at all – a common rating for most winning situations. A rating of ‘10’ would therefore mean the team’s performance more closely resembled a flaming dumpster parked in the middle of the Lake of Fire. So… pretty miserable.

There are of course exceptions to standard rating practices. If I were a Cowboys fan, I might still assign a high misery rating to their win over Philadelphia, as Romo was lost for half the season due to a broken leg shoulder or something?

At this point in time, we’re primarily interested in four different teams: the Texas Longhorns, the North Texas Mean Green, the Houston Texans, and the Houston Astros.

Since scores alone do not always tell the entire miserable story, I’ve taken the liberty of adding an Intangible Misery section, which allows me to rate and factor the otherwise unmeasurable situational sadness that entirely encapsulates the peril of multiple pitiful performances.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at this week’s poor performances.

Houston Texans (0-2)

The Texans still don’t have a QB, going on 13 years, so Sunday’s performance (or lack thereof) shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Worse still, the defense – thought by many to be the team’s strong point – hasn’t yet done much of note. I don’t think anyone expected this to be a playoff-caliber team and so I guess the team is actually living up to the lack of expectations. But this town loves its Texans and losing is miserable.

Misery: 10

Houston Astros (79-71, 2nd AL West)

The Astros started the week atop the AL West. They finished the week a game and a half behind the Rangers after figuratively, not literally, being swept out of Arlington. While no one would blame the Astros for being unenthusiastic about a four-day, all-expenses-paid trip to Arlington, TX, the road team seemed determined to make the worst of it, dropping four straight games of broom-sweeping misery when it mattered most. Sure, they salvaged the week with a couple of nice wins against a salty Oakland squad, but the Rangers own the Astros in 2015 and there’s little evidence to suggests anything to the contrary will take place at the end of this week when the Rangers come to town.

All hope is not lost, but it’s currently taking its final gasps above water as the ship goes under. Miserable.

Misery: 8

North Texas Mean Green (0-2)

Well, the band sounded great.

Misery: 10

Texas Longhorns (1-2)

I saved this one for last -- mostly because I didn’t know how to write about it.

I’ll say this: We had a great time at DKR this past Saturday evening. For a quarter and a half it was a hell of an exciting game for Longhorn fans. For two more quarters it was mostly miserable and Texas found itself staring down the barrel of 45-24 deficit. At some point in the third quarter I climbed out on a limb in frustration and declared the game ‘over’.

And then a star was born.

Redshirt freshmen QB Jerrod Heard took over the game, amassing a total of 527 yards of offense – the most in the history of the program, eclipsing that of the Undisputed Touchdown Jesus himself, Vince Young.

Hope was alive.

Until it died, both abruptly and unexpectedly.

After a blistering 45-yard TD run by Heard, Nick Rose missed the extra point that woulda coulda shoulda sent the game into overtime. Texas lost by a point. In a way, it was a win. The much-maligned offense came to life – even if it was against a decidedly average-to-awful defense – and the yearly questions about the QB position appeared to be settled for the rest of the 2015 campaign. Or at least until next week. The defense was mostly M.I.A. through three quarters, but that’s not entirely surprising, given a pair of true freshmen took most of the snaps in the defensive backfield opposite a legitimate Heisman candidate in senior QB Jared Goff. It finally tightened up in the final quarter, paving the way for the comeback.

Still.

Moral victories are actual losses. And losing is miserable.

Misery: 7

Intangible Misery

This week’s Intangible Misery is basically just a sum of all things miserable:

The Texans are winless and still don’t have a QB. The Mean Green are winless and still don’t have a QB. The Longhorns appear to have a QB, but a tremendous comeback effort was wiped out by a *EXPLETIVE* MISSED EXTRA POINT. The Astros may back into the playoffs with a wild card berth, but that’s not much consolation for a team that led the AL West for the majority of the season.

Misery: 10

This week’s Croucher Sports Misery index: 90.

That means only 10% of the sports week wasn’t miserable. Thanks for that, Jerrod. The rest of you need to get it together; we’re crying over here.