89 DAYS TO FOOTBALL SEASON.
89 days and counting. Get excited or Tamba Hali will annihilate you in the parking lot.
June 4, 2007
NYT COMPARES BEAR BRYANT MUSEUM TO STALIN MUSEUM
The NYT’s Frugal Traveler column rolled into Tuscaloosa, Alabama this past week, and ohohohoho boy did they have some fun at the Bryant Museum.
Sketching out a map on a piece of poster board, he directed me first to the Waysider (1512 Greensboro Avenue, 205-345-8239), a hidden-away diner where I feasted on ham, eggs, grits and tiny, bouncy biscuits ($11.36 with tip), and then, of course, to the Paul W. Bryant Museum (300 Bryant Drive, 866-772-2327, www.bryant.ua.edu; entry $2), a temple to the legendary Bama coach better known as Bear Bryant. With its litany of sports stats, a replica of the coach’s office and utter lack of historical context, it reminded me of the Joseph Stalin Museum, in Gori, Georgia (the country, that is).
Wait, wait. The Joseph Stalin Museum has sports stats? GLORIOUS 1933: IRONMAN STALIN KILLS 600,000 UKRAINIANS, 2,000 UNASSISTED WITH PISTOL AT LUBYANKA PRISON!!! We’ll be sure to look for that the next time we’re in Gori, along with the photos of Stalin pulling down a nice header for a deciding goal against the Whites in the soccer game ultimately deciding the Russian Revolution.
Matt Gross–whoever that is–says the museum “lacks historical context,” which is surprising considering the whole thing is in chronological order, sits in the middle of the University of Alabama’s campus where Bryant coached, and is a few beer can’s tosses away from Bryant-Denny stadium where Alabama plays.
In all fairness, the whole comparison may have been sparked by the Golden Flake ads both did during their time as leaders of large, fanatical organizations. After all, this one…
…does look a lot like the one in the Stalin Museum… (more…)
FULMER CUP SCOREBOARD: HENRY MELTON IS LOOSE, CALL ANIMAL CONTROL
This week’s Fulmer Cup Scoreboard is in the books. Apologies, errata, and outright stupidities follow. As always, complete standings may be found at the SAS Wiki page for the Fulmer Cup, manned by the best minds of our generation.
Notes:
Florida bumps up a few points thanks to the admirable and sadly illegal thievery of a dreaded UPD boot from Dorian Munroe’s car by one Dorian Munroe. (more…)
WE PROMISE FRIENDLY ATMOSPHERE, GREAT COMPENSATION…AND ONE FREE KIDNEY EACH.
Before we celebrate the more ominous, seedy side of collegiate athletics with a Fulmer Cup update, let’s remind people that sometimes people do really, really extraordinary things for each other because of the connections they develop in the course of their work in athletics. Because unless donating a kidney is a mandated policy in the HR manual at Oregon State, this truly is an act of grace:
Oregon State offensive coordinator Danny Langsdorf donated a kidney to offensive line coach Mike Cavanaugh’s wife. Laurie Cavanaugh, 48, had living-donor kidney transplant surgery on Tuesday at Portland’s Oregon Health & Science University Hospital.
Cavanaugh has autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, an inherited condition usually dormant until the patient hits their forties of fifties. Almost all patients experience renal failure before they hit the age of sixty, however, and the morbidity rate is nothing to scoff at: before dialysis and transplants, most patients died within ten years of the onset of symptoms.
Mike Cavanaugh, Laurie’s husband, was understandably overwhelmed.
“When you work as closely as a coaching staff does, you develop some really deep and solid friendships — I guess you could say this is the ultimate in friendship,” said Mike Cavanaugh, who like Langsdorf is in his third season with the Beavers.
Langsdorf will likely have to seriously curtail any beer-drinking he might have been doing prior to surgery. That, sir, is friendship. ONE HUNDRED COCKTAILS of a non-alcoholic variety for you, Mr. Landgsdorf.
Cavanaugh and Langsdorf, post-op.
UM, WE, UM…RETRACT THAT.
That whole “this is sparta” business?
Um, we retract. Welcome back, Billy. Didn’t mean to kick you down the well just yet.
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