BLOGTOBERFEST: INTERNET CLICHE EDITION
by Orson on Mar 1, 2007 1:38 PM EST
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PrintBlogtoberfest: because there's simply not enough regular summary posts on sports blogs these days.
Brian Cook will stab you in the face, fat man. Brian, meet Stewart Mandel. Again.
30 seconds later...
pWn3dzx0rZ, n00b!
Calvin Johnson would like to clear up the whole shoe thing. Though he did in fact use his own legs and lungs to run a 4.35 at the NFL Combine, Calvin Johnson did not use someone else's shoes. In yet another display of almost embarrassing goodness, Calvin used his spare time not spent building clean water projects in Bolivia and turning Reggie Ball into a 47 percent passer to help out a fellow combiner.
"There was a quarterback there who was running with his tennis shoes on," the former Georgia Tech receiver said Wednesday. "I told him, 'Man, you need some cleats.' We both wore the same size, 15, so I let him borrow mine. Then I had to put them back on before I ran."
Size 15? It's good to be Calvin Johnson.
Little known fact: owls are size queens.
NASCAR Meets College Football, and wins?
According to the eagle-eyed Pinfall Marks, this may be precisely what to expect now that NASCAR is part of the devil's brew parceled out by ESPN/Disney/Cthulu Inc.
ESPN2 has nine Busch series races during the college football season this fall — taking away time slots that normally would have been filled by college football in the past. Eight of the nine ESPN2 Busch dates fall on Saturday. . .
ESPN would be bumping college football, a sport with an estimated average rating of a 2.2 share for Saturday night games, for Busch Series racing, a sport whose highest average ever is a 2.5. (And that was for a Bristol night race. For those unversed in NASCAR, this is to racing what a night game at LSU with 1996 Keith Jackson announcing and a nude Salma Hayek '98 doing the sideline work.)
Odder still: remember rule 3-2-5-e, and the current round of rules designed to shorten games? CBS was fingered as the main culprit behind these rules, but ESPN certainly had a stake in making programming more predictably sized in terms of minutes eaten. If they thought football was a thorn in the ass, wait until they begin dealing with the Russian Epic qualities of your average NASCAR race. Interminable yellow flags and crashes can drag races out to the five and sometimes six hour mark. It's certainly bad for the person on the couch, but it's worse for the highway patrolmen/women of the surrounding municipalities who have to burn through breathalyzers in an futile effort to keep a pittance of the drunk driving population off the roads after they've had two hours of delays to "top off" an already impressive day of boozing.
Perhaps ESPN/Disney/Cthulu see more upside, or are just willing to eat the marginal loss for viewership they're picking up now in the dire waste of the football offseason. Either way, it's going to shove more programming over to ESPNU, which no one has, and fewer people actually watch. To the programming maestro who merely suggests we pester the local cable provider to add ESPNU as standard programming (making it the fifth or possibly sixth ESPN channel on the dial...)
Wal-Mart looks like the Black Congressional Caucus in comparison: Lawsuits may begin flying around the room if more black coaches don't begin appearing in NCAA football. Only six out of 119 coaches are black, and in case you didn't notice, there's a lot of black people playing college football and coaching it, too. Around half the playing population is black, while exactly 2.4 percent of the coaches are black. Lotsa black players. Not a lotsa black coaches. Inequality there. Yup.
Yet no one's willing to meet the problem...
...except the worst possible suspects. By that we mean fans of easy math. And it's easy math like that that attracts the lesser minds of our nation--in other words, Congress. Myles Brand in a written statement did his minor league Allen Greenspan impression by disparaging the idea of Congressional intervention while simultaneously disembodying his own role in the whole thing by saying:
The will to hire minorities for top positions in college athletics is "just not there right now," NCAA president Myles Brand told Congress on Wednesday.
Poof! It's just gone! Brand later mentions that the push for minority hires needs to be "actualized," which presumably happens after consultants militate to proactively act as change agents in collating and reassessing organizational protocols in order to construct a positive and compelling new mission statement for the NCAA. (Consultant speak brought to you by EDSBS consulting. Leave $1500 donation for this work in the Donation Button up top, please.)
We'll leave it to the readers to decide who the 0.4 percent African-American is. Some suggestions:
--Fisher Deberry, noted Afro-American?
--Pete Carroll, soul brotha number one?
--Dan Hawkins, the Ric Flairish and therefore black-compatible head coach? (It's a well-acknowledged scientific fact that all black dudes love Ric Flair.)
--Bronco Mendenhall (His name is Bronco, after all.)
--Chuck Amato (the shoes, the pecs)
--Ed Orgeron
--Les Miles (a black dude of the Carlton variety, perhaps?)
Amato: conceivably 40% black.
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Comments
The 2 Live Stews definitely get giddy talking about The Nature Boy
by nixforsix on Mar 1, 2007 1:50 PM EST reply actions
Size 15 shoes? Of course CJ can run a 4.3…the man’s obviously got three legs.
by Gator KK on Mar 1, 2007 2:26 PM EST reply actions
The Brian Cook article is outstanding, but misses one thing. This whole Troy Smith/Drew Brees comparison is ridiculous. Unlike Smith, Brees was an incredibly accurate pocket passer in college. To say comparing these two is like comparing apples and oranges is a disservice to . . . um . . . apples . . . and oranges (wtf?).
Anyway, while I think it is nice that sportswriters are attempting to branch out and aren’t simply calling Smith a “short Vince Young,” this whole Brees/Smith comparison has to stop.
by JD on Mar 1, 2007 2:33 PM EST reply actions
Nature Boy Trivia:
Did you know that the Nature Boy’s son (I forget his name) dated Ms. Kiebler? eeegaaadddd!!!!!
by Stacy Keibler Loves Me on Mar 1, 2007 2:35 PM EST reply actions
Re: NASCAR
ESPN wanted to get the NASCAR races badly, but NASCAR probably stiff armed them into purchasing the Busch races as a package deal. They will take a hit on Saturday nights when they put a race on instead of a marquee football game. But they will more than make up for it on Sunday when they broadcast the NASCAR race instead of bowling.
by Mike on Mar 1, 2007 2:36 PM EST reply actions
NASCAR vs. Bowling:
What it the EDSBS official view of NASCAR?
Going around in endless circles for 3 or 4 hours waiting for a crash is not my idea of real sports. (It is just better to see the highlights of the crashes at the end of the race.)
Now Bowling, now there you have better athletes, with more skills. Getting those splits is tough!
by Stacy Keibler Loves Me on Mar 1, 2007 2:55 PM EST reply actions
Tyrone Willingham is the .4% black guy, right? still too black for ND, but whacha gonna do?
by adam on Mar 1, 2007 2:55 PM EST reply actions
I’m confused- it looks like Pinfall Mark posters are making fun of people for being rednecks, yet the site appears to be centered around West Virginia football, implying that those questioning the sophistication of NASCAR fans live in West Virginia.
Is this some sort of 21st century irony that is just too cutting edge for me?
by Chg on Mar 1, 2007 3:02 PM EST reply actions
It appears that after a noon game the Deuce may have no college football for the day leaving that channel as dead to me as Oxygen or Lifetime (without even a heartwarming story of a woman overcoming an abusive relationship).
by letsplaytummysticks on Mar 1, 2007 3:08 PM EST reply actions
Well, JD, Troy Smith did complete 62.7% of his passes in his collegiate career. (420/670)
Super-mega-accurate Drew Brees completed 61.1% of his. (1026/1678). He also played in a basketball on grass style offense that looked more like Texas Tech than the NFL (ever see a TTU’s QB stats?).
Smith also finished wth the #1 all time career passing efficiency rating for the Big Ten.
So even though I don’t necessarily expect Smith to have a Brees-like effect in the NFL, you can’t say that this is based on anything they did in college.
by Pants McPants on Mar 1, 2007 3:39 PM EST reply actions
One quote from the Mandel article caught my eye, where Stuart takes issue with pro scouts who say Troy Smith is really nothing special (“just a guy”) and that what happened in the MNC tarnishes his image:
“Because he’s ‘just a guy,’ Smith was unable to escape oncoming Gator pass-rushers/freight trains Jarvis Moss and Derrick Harvey as they routinely plowed through Smith’s blockers like they were made of cellophane. As we all know, JaMarcus Russell or Brady Quinn would have spun free of those defenders and completed 70-yard passes.”
Um, Stuart, have you ever seen JaMarcus Russel play??? He did stuff like that five or six times a game! Florida’s defensive ends would’ve hit him and collapsed on the ground in a heap, and He Who Cannot Be Sacked would have looked down at them with cold indifference, stepped over them, stumbled slightly, then righted himself enough to complete a 65-yard strike to one of LSU’s running-back-looking receivers. Anybody who follows SEC football has seen JaMarcus do this to his or her team repeatedly over the last couple of years.
by glacialspeed on Mar 1, 2007 3:42 PM EST reply actions
Oops, that was supposed to come immediately after #9.
by maskedavenger on Mar 1, 2007 3:43 PM EST reply actions
Wrong.
Les Miles is a black guy of the Fred McGriff variety.
by Kecalf Bailey on Mar 1, 2007 3:44 PM EST reply actions
That cat is even more badass with a pair of nunchucks.
by SeaTrojan on Mar 1, 2007 3:46 PM EST reply actions
As an alum of a fine institution where the only color that matters is Maroon, I’d like to offer the services of Sylvester Croom to the highest bidder……….
by lance on Mar 1, 2007 4:19 PM EST reply actions
- - I think you meant to say ‘complete a 65-yard strike to one of the other team’s defensive backs.’ Unless said other team is ND, Vandy etc. He might also choose to confound expectations by ‘stumbling slightly and then’ inexplicably dropping the ball, preferably deep in the red zone. Turnovers > sacks (thanks, big guy!)
by peachy on Mar 1, 2007 4:23 PM EST reply actions
re #20
he sits around counting his money when not trying to eradicate offensive mascots
by NDTom on Mar 1, 2007 4:47 PM EST reply actions
Thankfully we are (for now) one of the few households with access to ESPNU, so I’ll still have access to whatever games they do put on. But still, it’s bad enough to channel surf on a Saturday afternoon and find the 3rd round of some random golf tournament — Nascar may cause hurlage of the remote.
by Mark on Mar 1, 2007 5:41 PM EST reply actions
ESPN will be moving games from ESPN2 to….you guessed it. ESPNU. Which about 5 people get. It is all part of the evil plan.
by George P. Budell on Mar 1, 2007 5:45 PM EST reply actions
We’ll leave it to the readers to decide who the 0.4 percent African-American is.
I’ll give you a hint. It ain’t some uptight white coach.
by Phil K. on Mar 1, 2007 6:03 PM EST reply actions
I didn’t see where anyone else posted this yet, so I hope I’m the first, but . . . congratulations to Orson!
by T. Kyle King on Mar 1, 2007 6:25 PM EST reply actions
Chan Gailey has a black great great grandmother.
by Sherlock's Sidekick on Mar 1, 2007 6:30 PM EST reply actions
Aw, you just ruined my Calvin Johnson story. You mean he was PREPARED to kick ass? I guess after three years of having Reggie Ball throw to you, or at least your general end of the field, you’re prepared for anything.
by barbie on Mar 1, 2007 7:42 PM EST reply actions
I’ve missed an NAACP meeting or two, but who the hell is Ric Flair?
I suspect the .4 negro is Orgeron. Let’s look at the facts:
1) Lives in Mississippi
2) Overweight due to consuming extrodinary amounts of barbecue
3) Nearly unintelligble (that could just be a southern thing)
If he has a thing for big asses, white women (or, better still, white women with big asses) or drives a Cadillac then it’s a lock.
by Harris on Mar 1, 2007 7:49 PM EST reply actions
I turned down the Alabama coaching job and I’m hung like a black man. Maybe I was the one that threw off the number.
by Out of Conference on Mar 1, 2007 7:55 PM EST reply actions
Since there aren’t that many black coaches, I think it was very generous of ND to share Ty W with Washington. His three years there are almost up—-who wants him next???
Ty could be like the one and only one fruitcake in the history of the world, that just keeps getting passed around…
by farley114 on Mar 1, 2007 8:07 PM EST reply actions
Kyle,
Great catch – and yes, 3 cheers for O.
Drinks are on me October 6th.
by Southern Papa on Mar 2, 2007 12:00 AM EST reply actions
#28…I can only award you points 1-3, plus the fondness for white women and partial credit for the ‘Lac.
It appears that Kelly has anything but a thick ass. (And I mean that in the most complimentary of ways, Mr. Orgeron! Please don’t kick my ass!) Thank Erik for the pic.
While it’s not a ‘Lac, Coach O’s vehicle of choice is the Hummer, which could qualify just as well.
by Aerobab on Mar 2, 2007 8:22 AM EST reply actions
Ric Flair = most charismatic wrestler of all time.
by Hook'em Tide on Mar 2, 2007 9:37 AM EST reply actions
Orson’s ranked higher than Brooks, the guy constantly surrounded by boobies. That’s resume worthy.
by HFS on Mar 2, 2007 10:03 AM EST reply actions
From reports out of South Bend – Corwin Brown makes Ty Willingham look like Andy Warhol.
by Atlantadomer on Mar 2, 2007 10:14 AM EST reply actions
San Jose State did what Myles Brand now wants the rest of the NCAA to do – hire a coach primarily because he was more reflective of the team’s , er, racial composition.
The result was taking a 7-5 team that was averaging 15K in attendance per game and, after four years, leaving SJSU averaging 6K per game with a 2-9 record and the university seriously discussing dropping football.
Dick Tomey took a big percentage of those kids left behind by Fitz Hill and, in two years time at SJSU, has attendance back to 18K per game, with a 9-4 record for the 2007 season.
Cause? Effect? We report, you decide.
Oh, well. At least the folks out here in San Jose got a chance to see the Grambling Marching Band. So we didn’t entirely lose out on the deal.
As a rule, college football is extremely intolerant of social experimentation solely for the sake of social experimentation.
by The other JD on Mar 2, 2007 10:17 PM EST reply actions
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