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11 January 2010
I'll spare you the details of the STF visit, and simply share this video I found this morning via UTSports.tv
I do find it odd that Chism is the one directing the cheers and the "hey-pay-attentions." This is the same guy that wore a Bert and Ernie hat to the SEC Tournament first round games last year.
Anyway, this is fun.
This appears not to be as fun.
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08 January 2010
We'll be tied up for the next three days trying to keep this dude out of jail, pounding blue shit, and watching nachos disappear (and hoops). Let's hope we all enjoy our weekend as much as this Romanian truck driver.
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06 January 2010
Can somebody please explain the baseball Hall of Fame to me?
No, this isn't a "who should be in" argument, because bascially, for the most part, I couldn't care less who is in the MLB Hall of Fame. Sure, it's neat to see guys like Tony Gwynn and Rickey Henderson get in- I grew up watching those guys play. But a great deal of the plaques in Cooperstown mean nothing to me. Seriously- look at some of the members. There's Hugh Duffy and Edward Delahanty in the vaunted 1945 Class. Can anyone tell me anything about either of them without looking it up? What about Albert Barlick? Amos Rusie? Burleigh Grimes? Or my favorite - Henry "Heinie" Manush? Any of those ring a bell?
Doesn't matter. Because that's not the point. The point is that the entire Hall of Fame election process is greatly flawed, at least to me. Because, to me, Hall of Fame voting should be easy. It should be reserved for players who were undeniably great, and if a player is great, it should be obvious to everyone with an understanding of the game. Chances are, if you have to make an argument that a player deserves to be in the Hall, he doesn't. If there's a debate over whether someone was a great player, than in most cases, he probably wasn't. And if he wasn't great enough to get the votes five years after he last picked up a bat or glove, then why would he be any better 10 years later?
Babe Ruth. Mickey Mantle. Sandy Koufax. You mention those names to a baseball expert, and their eyes glaze over as they fondly recall the heroic exploits of these legendary players. There's no discussion about home run to strikeout ratio, no talk about WHIP or any of the other countless statistical measures we use today. Those guys were great players - plain and simple. There's no argument that can be made against them.
So with that in mind...why are players allowed to be on the Hall of Fame ballot so many times? Not to pick on Bert Blyleven, who is probably already having a rough day, but if there's enough debate to keep you out of the Hall for the 12 years through which you've been eligible, then you may not deserve to be in there. The same goes for many of the other players who find themselves falling short of the required votes year after year. If there's enough questions about your greatness, then maybe you weren't all that great.
Now Blyleven was a good pitcher - no doubt. But it's the same song and dance every year. He just makes the talk-radio rounds, touts his statistics, and hopes for the best. But why? If he wasn't good enough in 1998, or 2003, or 2008, then why would he think he's good enough in 2010? He hasn't taken the mound or struck out any more batters since then. So why would he be better in 2010 or 2011 than he was in 2003?
That's where the flaw lies. At this point, it's becoming less and less about Blyleven's statistics or skills, and more about his lobbying ability.Essentially, he just has to get a few more baseball writers to change their opinions, and then BAM! - all of a sudden he's an elite player to be remembered by hundreds of future generations, instead of a good player who might be best known to our generation for using two obscenities during a live broadcast as the Twins announcer.
But does he really want to get into the Hall now? Does he really want to get in based on his ability to lobby writers and promote himself, rather than his pitching ability? Because that's what the system allows right now. First, you have to be good enough to get consideration, which Blyleven certainly was, and then you have 15 years to plead your case for being great.
Maybe I'm being too harsh, or too short-sighted. But my general view of athletes is that you shouldn't have to tell someone how good you are. It should be evident from your play. And if it isn't, if there's room for debate, then maybe you weren't quite as great as you think you were.
But hey - best of luck to Blyleven in 2011 as he takes another year to try to prove how good he was. For his sake, I hope he finally gets in. But for me, I'm not buying it.
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06 January 2010
Since the bowl games are so bad, I figured you needed some entertainment. I am back and trying to be better. Let's make fun of people...
- There has never been a worse slate of bowl games. Take away the team you root for and tell me how many games you thought you needed to watch from start to finish. I will answer for myself: zero. These games are second-class. That is, in part, because college football is so down this year, but also because of some of the matchups. Who wants to watch two second rate teams like Boise State and TCU defensively struggle against one another? I'd rather watch two of the girls from Jersey Shore talk about who invented the poof. Or how about that "golden" matchup last night between Georgia Tech and Iowa? My TV told me there was too much yellow on the screen and forced me to watch He's Just Not That Into You. Again. People love to hate on USC, Michigan and Notre Dame, but at least they're interesting to watch.
- Rich Brooks was a good coach at UK, but is undoubtedly overrated. People will throw a lot of things at you about how great Rich Brooks was. He beat #1 LSU, he beat Auburn and Georgia on the road and he won three straight bowl games which had never been done before at UK. He should get congratulations for the first two, but the three straight bowl wins is what really irks me. This year, there were THIRTY FOUR (34) bowl games. No coach that coached before Brooks had as many opportunities to get to bowl games. The Music City Bowl, which Brooks won twice, had its first game in 1998. Brooks' bowl wins also came against Clemson, a depleted Florida State team and East Carolina. Those three teams aren't exactly a murderers' row of college football. He was also winless against Florida and Tennessee.
- Speaking of football coaches named Rich... How does Rich Rodriguez still have a job? He's a terrible football coach. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt when he came to Ann Arbor and had a bad football team in 2008. I was going to let him bring in, "his players." Apparently, his players are not as good as the ones Lloyd Carr was bringing in. Rodriguez was going to be bringing in stud players to get Michigan back on top. Well, Rivals currently has Michigan with the 18th best class for 2010 (no 5-stars, five 4-stars, eighteen 3-stars, one 2-star). It's possible to win in the Big East with 3-star kids like RichRod did at West Virginia. Ohio State will continue to beat Michigan if all they can get is those types of kids. Also, I don't mean to pick on a high school kid, but the 2-star kid that's committed is a white defensive back whose only other offers were from Bowling Green and Kent State. My good gosh, be better.
- John Wall is good at basketball. Just making sure you knew. I didn't know if you'd heard of him. He has a dance.
- Tiger Woods sent Christmas cards to: Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton, Mike Leach, Jim Caldwell and the Indianapolis Colts, every person who plays Fantasy Football, Jesus (a birthday card may have been more appropriate) and roughly eighteen women.
- Your racist grandfather should watch Purdue and Wisconsin play basketball this weekend. It will remind him of simpler times, when there wasn't as much scoring. And when there were more whites on the court than any other race. Everyone who likes good basketball will be watching any other game. Hell, I may fire up He's Just Not That Into You (on every minute of every day on one of the HBO stations) instead of watching that garbage. (Sidenote, how about Gage's first post? I didn't know it was possible to ejaculate through fingers while typing. I am pretty sure JaJuan Johnson filed a restraining order against him last night. Purdue will get respect when they get a legitimate win.)
- Jason Bay's contract with the Mets will be one of the biggest disasters since the Titanic. CitiField is enormous. Jason Bay is a power hitter. Manny Ramirez thinks Jason Bay is bad in the field. New York fans are unforgiving. Tell me how this ends well?
- Knoxville needs to build an indoor climbing wall. Seriously, the student athletes need something to occupy their time.
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04 January 2010
Here it is, my first post for Stadium Drives. I can tell by your silence that you've been on the edge of your seat in anticipation of my particular pearls of wisdom. So, how do I plan to endear you, the reader, to me? By demanding your respect.
More precisely, demanding you give some respect to the 2009-10 edition of the Purdue Boilermakers. Even more precisely, this is me complaining that nobody seems to give a crap that my alma mater is 13-0 with wins over Tennessee (before their players were in prison), Wake Forest (11-2 after a win over Xavier) and most recently West Virginia (the fighting Bob Huggins have been a top 10 team all season long).
I had the good fortune to escape from Holiday Family Time on New Years to watch the second half of the Purdue/WVU game. It was a beat down. I didn't catch a single WVU player's name, I was too busy giggling with glee.
Of course, then I tuned into see Temple get emasculated by Kansas the next day, just to hear the ESPN knucklehead announcer (apparently the A through D teams were busy that day) mention how "no disrespect to Purdue" but the other three undefeated teams (KU, UK, Texas) are all contenders. Excuse me while I write a letter to Awful Announcing...
more after the break...
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04 January 2010
Just over seven years after taking the head football coaching job at the University of Kentucky, Rich Brooks handed the reins over to Joker Phillips earlier today. Coach Brooks took over in late December of 2002 and rebuilt a Kentucky team that was mired by NCAA sanctions at the time. Many people (including this writer) weren't sure about the seasoned Brooks upon his hiring. My how wrong we were.
Brooks' first three seasons at Kentucky were predictably underachieving. UK football's combined 2003-2005 record was 9-25. Fans were sure there had been a hiring mistake and that Rich just didn't have the magic that he once found at Oregon (leading them from a broken program to the Rose Bowl in 1994). The 2006 season was just the start of things to come. Kentucky finished 8-5 and played in their first bowl game since 1999 (winning their first since 1984).
Kentucky continued to post winning records over the next three seasons, finishing 30-22 over Brooks' final four seasons at the helm. This included a nearly unprecedented four straight bowl berths. Brooks' bowl record while at UK stands at 3-1.
The only mar on Rich's record while at UK is the continued ineptitude against Tennessee. Considering the success the team has seen during his tenure, Kentucky fans can hardly complain. What Coach Brooks brought to this program was a dogged attitude, an incredible work ethic, and for the first time in years, the belief that they could play alongside, and beat, elite teams in the SEC. The 2007 defeat of (then #1 ranked) LSU may be Brooks' most enduring win.
No one could have expected Coach Brooks to have the type of success he has had in his seven years as Kentucky head coach. While many UK fans feel their team should compete yearly in the best conference in the nation, it took Brooks to make this a reality. While he did not by any means get UK to the top of the conference, he knocked off several of those perennial powers and moved Kentucky out of their usual cellar-dweller role in the East.
Brooks also brought along, and continued to add to, a very strong set of assistant coaches and coordinators in his tenure. All signs say Joker Phillips assuming the role of head coach will be a move that will continue Brooks' string of success in the Bluegrass. If so, UK fans will laud Phillips as a great coach, but they need to forever remember the man that turned the program around and handed off a much improved product to Coach Phillips upon his departure.
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29 December 2009
Kentucky football fans missed the magical four-peat on Sunday night. The Wildcats fell to the Clemson Tigers 21-13 in a tough, if somewhat uninteresting, bowl game in Nashville. It was a tough loss for Cats fans, as they have gotten used to winning mid-tier bowl games by close scores. No matter how many fans argue play calls and decisions by the coaching staff, in the end the Blue and White just didn't have as much talent on the field as the Tigers.
UK can't feel too bad about their season even after the bowl loss. They just finished with a winning record for the fourth consecutive season. Kentucky hasn't done that since their run from 1946-1956. If you are a UK fan, let that soak in. Your football team hasn't had this level of sustained success in more than 60 years. You're living in good times.
With that said, we'll take a look back and see how the season unfolded.
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29 December 2009
ESPN has released its annual "Quotes of the Year." Here are my faves. Yes, Ozzie Guillen makes a few appearances.
Full list here.
"It's not good when you light up two Marlboros at the same time at 3 a.m., washing it down with a glass of chocolate milk. You know you have a lot on your mind when you do that."
-- Tigers manager Jim Leyland
"One of our players 'broke wind' and only the referee heard it and he booked the player."
-- English soccer manager Ian Treadwell, explaining that one of his Chorlton Villa players received an "unsporting behaviour" yellow card for flatulence
"Because our fans are not stupid like Cubs fans. They know we're shit … Wrigley Field is just a bar."
-- White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, on why his team's fans won't come out to watch a bad product but Cubs fans will
"Before you say anything, just know I am the most powerful man in this building."
-- South Florida football coach Jim Leavitt
"It was 2½ hours of satisfaction and then 2½ hours of horseshit baseball. Go and ask them. I don't have any more quotes, seriously. What the fuck am I going to say? [Are] they horseshit? Yes, they are."
-- White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen
"Cheech and Chong would have had a hard time smoking that much."
-- Butler County (Ohio) judge Craig Hedric, on former NBA player Corie Blount claiming 29 pounds of marijuana were for personal use
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23 December 2009
There is yet another bullet-point in a string of seemingly endless secondary violations in the news today, and it involves football and Tennessee. But rather than the Vols, it is everyone's smart kid brother Vandy in violation. We can debate the perceived intent vs. accident and recruiting advantages gained all day long, but what the Commodores did here was host a somewhat famous juco quarterback (Jordan Rogers, brother of Packer QB Aaron) in an official visit... during the dead period.
The excuse?
"The coaches were unaware of [the dead period rule]," Rodgers said, according to the report.
Why is no one taking shots at Bobby Johnson from the peanut gallery like they did for Kiffin.
This violation is pretty black and white. We're not talking about smoke machines or questions about when someone can or cannot call a player. We're talking about an official visit when no other school was ALLOWED to host players. That's an advantage over all 119 other teams.
Vandy's athletics powers-that-be didn't exactly have much to say about it either. Says David Williams, VU vice chancellor (since, you know, they don't have an athletic department anymore),
"Do we have secondary violations here? Sure, we've always had them. I think the NCAA takes the position that pretty much everybody is going to have secondary violations. The important thing is that you report it right away."
Just like when you accidentally get hammered at the bar and make out with that slutty girl from Orientation. As long as you tell your girlfriend first thing in the morning, no harm, no foul. Right?
Maybe they're getting a pass because they're, well, Vanderbilt. At any rate, what we do know is that if the Big Orange Brother had done it, you wouldn't be reading about it on StadiumDrives.com or buried in ESPN's lower quarter. It would be in the New York Times.
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21 December 2009
The Drexel University Dragons are all that stand between the University of Kentucky Wildcat basketball team and 2,000 wins. No other team in NCAA Division One basketball has attained that number of wins yet. For UK fans, it's supposed to be a big deal. There will likely be some celebration after the game, and for two or three weeks UK fans will be able to add "we're the only team with 2,000 wins" to every argument in which they would use the phrase "we've got seven national championships." The big question tonight is does this really matter?
Tradition has meant a lot to college sports. Twenty years ago every kid wanted to play basketball at Kentucky, North Carolina, or Kansas. At that time every young man wanted to play football for Notre Dame, Southern Cal, Michigan, or Tennessee. High school student-athletes wanted to play for these teams because they were good. They also wanted to play for these teams because they had been good for as long as they could remember.
Past and present success isn't the only reason kids attend a specific college. Another big reason, and one that only started to be prominent in the past 20 years, is exposure. In 1991 you could attend many of the big name schools for football. You could go to Michigan or Tennessee and play in front of 100,000 people a week. Things changed a bit that year when kids started hearing that you could go to Notre Dame and play in front of 2 million people a week. When NBC signed that contract things changed a lot. Notre Dame, who was never lacking for a recruiting pitch in the first place, immediately had another edge on other programs. They were still pitching tradition at that point, but in 1992 they could start telling recruits they would be playing on TV every week.
What happened at Notre Dame is actually very interesting. They signed that big TV contract and twenty years later they're still hanging on to it. The problem for Notre Dame is that every other major program in the country is playing on national television weekly as well. In fact, after ESPN and the SEC signed a huge contract this past season you're now able to watch teams like Ole Miss, Kentucky, and South Carolina several times per year across the nation.
Now things have changed again in college sports. Notre Dame no longer has the edge in pitching television coverage to recruits. Like Kentucky, Kansas, and North Carolina in basketball, they can't fall back on their tradition to pull in every top recruit. This is because the elite high school recruits in 2010 want to know what you can do for them. What can you do for them that USC can't? What does you university offer that Florida doesn't? Can you offer something that Duke doesn't in college hoops?
If your answer is "we've won two of the last national championships in football because we have elite coaches and great players to play alongside you," then that's hard to turn down. "Our coach has sent the last two point guard prospects he's coached to the NBA as lottery picks," is a good way to recruit point guard prospects. "We've sent at least 5 kids to the NFL every year for the past 10 years because we have good position coaches and top-rate facilities." Quotes like these get elite recruits to attend your school. Elite recruits win ball games. Winning ball games puts you on television more, gets you more top recruits, and creates a positive feedback system of success in your program.
Unfortunately, "we've won seven national championships", "our tradition is unlike any other", and "we won seven straight titles from 1967 to 1973" don't hack it in the recruiting world any more. Hell, Wyoming has won a national title in basketball. This information was contained in the broadcast of the Tennessee vs. Wyoming game the other night. It's doubtful that Tyler Smith would have transferred to Wyoming if Heath Schroyer would have phoned him up and said "we won it all in 1943!" Instead he chose to go play for a school close to his home, a coach who was charismatic and hot on national coverage at the time, and at a program with very nice facilities including a revamped arena.
There are obviously some kids who like the idea of playing for a big-time national power. Many even say "I like the tradition at Kentucky/North Carolina/Kansas." I call bullshit. Most kids don't give two shits about tradition. They really go to those schools because of Coaches Calipari, Williams, or Self. They choose their schools based on system, facilities, and exposure.
Recruits don't want to know how many titles you won before they got there. They want to know how many you'll win once they get there. Kids these days don't care who Dan Issell or Clyde Lovellette were. They want to hear about Michael Jordan, Paul Pierce, and Derrick Rose. Young men don't care about becoming the leading scorer in the history of your program. They just want to get to the NBA as fast as possible to have a chance at become the League's all time leading scorer.
These are all general arguments, but if you want concrete proof that kids don't care about tradition look inside the numbers. The following are UK basketball, Notre Dame football, and UCLA basketball records from recent memory. If tradition were still the king, none of these schools would have these type of down times.
Kentucky Basketball: 2007-2009 40-27 (0.597)
Notre Dame Football: 2005-2009 35-27 (0.565)
UCLA Basketball: 2009-2010 3-7 (0.300)
Kentucky goes for win 2,000 tonight. They may beat Drexel by 17 and kick off a mess of confetti and a gaggle of bloviating fools talking about how great it all has been. On December 22nd will any of that matter? Not to me. Only 7 of those 2,000 are really that important to me, and having 2,027 at the end of the year won't matter to me either if the last one ends up being an "L."
