Wednesday, February 21, 2007

How Not to Build a College Football Powerhouse


You know if we're posting a story about college football in late February, it has to be juicy. At the University of Arkansas, a story continues to unfold that seems more like it belongs in an Aaron Spelling night-time soap than in the SEC. For those of you who don't know, Arkansas' run to the SEC Championship Game came on the heels of one of the most highly touted recruiting classes in school history. Just how did the Razorbacks pull it off? Hire the head coach of a high school powerhouse as offensive coordinator, of course. Well, that and make promises they knew they couldn't keep. Before last season, Arkansas hired the head coach of Springdale High School, Gus Malzahn as offensive coordinator. This helped them land three prized prospects: Damian Williams, Ben Cleveland, and the nation's top quarterback prospect, Mitch Mustain. This is where the ridiculous promises come in. Head coach Houston Nutt allegedly told the parents of the Springdale trio that the team would adopt Malzahn's hurry-up, no huddle spread offense that would emphasize the pass and that the three freshmen to be would figure prominently in the new system. That didn't exactly happen. In the rough and tumble SEC West, there is usually little room for such gimmicky offenses, what with the likes of LSU, Auburn, and Alabama perenially trotting out three of the stingiest defenses in the nation. In circumstances such as that, it's best to know how to run the football, and run it well. The decision to stay with a more traditional offense apparently angered the parents of the three freshmen so that they felt the need to intrude upon Frank Broyles, longtime athletic director, and one of our favorites. They had a meeting with Broyles during which they inquired about the direction of the program, and whether Malzahn would be able to exert any more influence on how the offense is run, and how much the passing game would factor into that offense. This is the first time that we have heard about parents trying to strong-arm any college program, much less a powerhouse in the making in the SEC. In the wake of the meeting with Broyles, Damian Williams has transferred to USC, Mustain has been granted his release and will reportely visit USC in late February as he decides where he will play next year. Ben Cleveland will stay at Arkansas. Offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn has left the program and will coach next year at the University of Tulsa. This whole sordid affair, in our view, has brought about three things. First, Frank Broyles' tenure at Arkansas will come to a conclusion at the end of the school year. We believe that this development will eventually lead to the second, Houston Nutt losing his job. As good as his team was on the field last season, the Razorbacks were not so hot on the recruiting trail. Out of twelve teams in the conference, Arkansas' recruiting class ranked ninth. It seems to us that other recruits are now leery of promises made to them by Nutt, and rightfully so. Third, and most disturbing, an event like this serves to pull back the curtain on major college football as a business, while also showcasing how obsessed some fans become with their favorite team. Above is an email sent to Mitch Mustain by a crazed Arkansas fan (big thanks go out to Kenny for sending this along; and yeah, the image is illegible but if you right click it and open in new window, you can read it. Kind of a pain in the ass I know but it's worth it, trust me). The whole situation has gotten out of hand. Bad for Arkansas, bad for the kids, bad for the SEC, and bad for college football.

Friday, February 16, 2007

50 is the new 18

For some reason, great athletes are always wanting to return to their sport after retirement. With Scotty Pippen talking about wanting to return to the NBA and Holyfield returning to the ring, this got me thinking about other "Greats" that should return to their sports.

The great Hank Aaron is only 73 and with his record of 755 home runs being threatened to be broken, this is a great time to once again start swinging that bat. I know he has not hit a home run since July 20, 1976, but hitting home runs is like riding a bike, at first it might be a little hard, but once he gets into it we will see that record somewhere around 836. He now has some free time on his hands since he dropped a couple of his BMW stores and only owns one now, so he has plenty of training time. Bonds, with his track marks will have a hard time catching up if Aaron puts up those hits.

Magic Johnson can still be a dominant point guard in the NBA at the age of 47. He can bring the game to a new level with what he has learned from owning a couple Burger Kings and movie theaters around the US. He still can put the fear of god in someone when ever he posts up since he still has a small case of the hiv.

Football great Jim McMahon can come out of retirement and bring the Bears back and win another Super Bowl like he did in Super Bowl XX. With Grossman giving excuse after excuse, the Bears just need to pick up the man who made an outstanding cameo in Johnny Be Good, McMahon.

The Athlete that I will love to see return is the great Anna Kournikova because she is really HOT.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

More News and a Mid-Week Scramble

Since we have been light on posts ourselves, and since our recently assembled murderers' row of authors has been short on content as well, we have added another author to the mix. He will bring the L.A. perspective to the mix (that's Lower Alabama, not Los Angeles, y'all), presumably concentrated on football, baseball, and basketball. He is certainly capable and knowledgable, so we look forward to his contributions. Also, we are rolling out a new weekly feature called The Scramble. This will be a stream of consciousness type of round up hitting the high points on several sporting fronts. The Scramble will feature some news, some analysis, opinions, and other random thoughts that popped into our heads in the last week. Without further ado, here is the first:


The Scramble
College Basketball: Kevin Durant certainly looks to us to be a better player right now than Greg Oden. We're not saying that he will be better at the next level, but he's better today. In some local news, Georgia Tech bested Florida State Tuesday night for their first road win since the Millard Fillmore administration. Are the Jackets tournament worthy? We'll find out soon enough with upcoming tilts against UNC, Duke, Virginia, and Boston College.
Major League Baseball: Be on the lookout for the Atlanta Braves this season. After last year's disappointing showing, the Braves now feature arguably the best back end of the bullpen in the bigs. They also possess the best defensive outfield in baseball for at least one more year. If the starting pitching and Chipper Jones can stay healthy, they figure to have a say in which team will represent the NL in the World Series. Not saying they're winning the division, probably wild card, but they should make the playoffs.
Boxing: Watched Shane Moseley last Saturday night. He looked pretty good, but, then again, his opponent looked bad enough that we won't even mention his name.
NASCAR: The Daytona 500 is Sunday and our money, even though we hate to say it, is on Tony Stewart. He looked extremely fast in the Bud Shootout Saturday night, and, if he can keep his car in one piece through the Gatorade Duels on Thursday, he is probably the man to beat.
College Football: Here is some research we did last week. We couldn't figure what to make of it, so we decided to post it and let you figure it out. Normally we would have discarded the info, but it took so long to compile that we felt we owed it to ourselves to use it for something. Enjoy.
National Champions Since 1986 and Combined Records in the Following Two Years
2004 USC 23-3
2003 LSU 20-5
2002 Ohio State 19-6
2001 Miami (Fl) 23-3
2000 Oklahoma 23-4
1999 Florida State 19-6
1998 Tennessee 17-4
1997 Michigan 20-5
1997 Nebraska 21-5
1996 Florida 20-4
1995 Nebraska 24-2
1994 Nebraska 23-2
1993 Florida State 20-3-1
1992 Alabama 21-4-1
1991 Washington 16-7
1991 Miami (Fl) 20-3
1990 Colorado 17-5-2
1990 Georgia Tech 13-11
1989 Miami (Fl) 21-3
1988 Notre Dame 21-4
1987 Miami (Fl) 22-2
1986 Penn State 13-10
Editor's Note: Texas (2005) was not included as they have not completed two seasons since winning the National Championship. Co-champions are listed for 1990, 1991, and 1997 but not 2003 since the BCS Championship Game guarantees #1 vs. #2 with the winner being crowned the National Champion.

Thursday, February 8, 2007

The Simpson Curse

Well, the curse of O.J. Simpson has struck again. You remember the Juice right? He's the guy that most certainly did not murder his wife and another person. He's also the guy that wrote a book about how he most certainly did not murder those people but, if he had, here's how it went down. Yeah, this is one Heisman Trophy winner that's gonna burn in hell. Anyway, the members of his legal "dream team" are starting to pay karmic retribution for keeping Simpson out of jail. Robert Kardashian, one of the attorneys, is the latest affected. Apparently, his daughter Kim is best friends with Paris Hilton. As if that wasn't enough, she made a sex tape with the younger brother of R&B singer Brandy. If you try hard enough, you can find the beginning of the tape online. What other members of the "dream team" have been stricken by the O.J. Simpson Curse you might ask? Johnny Cochran. He's dead.

College Football Recruiting Wrap Up

Here are the top ten recruiting classes in the nation plus two local teams of interest according to scout.com:
1. Florida
2. LSU
3. USC
4. Texas
5. Tennessee
6. Auburn
7. South Carolina
8. Oregon
9. Pittsburgh
10. Michigan
14. Georgia Tech
17. Georgia

So what does this all mean? Nobody really knows. Recruiting is so much of an inexact science that no one really knows what they have for at least a year. Consider two local players of recent note: Calvin Johnson was a 3 star recruit that was told by UGA that he would have to sit as a freshman behind Fred Gibson. Cameron Smith was a 4 star recruit and considered to be one of the best running backs in the nation. He signed a letter of intent for Georgia last year. After leaving Butler Community College this past fall, Smith has enrolled in a junior college in Texas. Whether he will ever play football for UGA remains to be seen. Calvin Johnson is widely considered to be the best player in the NFL draft coming up in April. All this means is that nobody really knows what the hell they are talking about. These recruiting rankings only serve to give sports talk radio hosts something to talk about and fans something to brag about in the offseason. Another unintended but vicious side effect of all of this recruiting hype is that head coaches find themselves on the hot seat a little faster. Les Miles has certainly racked up some fine recruits for the Bayou Bengals this year. However, what happens if he loses again to Auburn? Or, heaven forbid, that he loses to Alabama and the hated Nick Saban? After all, he supposedly out-recruited both of those programs. Might the finger be pointed at him? Probably. This is just another ridiculous reason college head coaches get fired. Ask Bill Curry and Frank Solich.

How the Sports World dealing with the Death of Anna Nicole Smith?

Today, the world has lost Anna Nicole Smith. A women who popped on the scene in Playboy, then strutted across your tvs in Guess jeans commercials, and made a statement by showing the world that a 26 year old stripper can love a rich old man. A woman who showed cable veiwers everywhere that she was still around and living the good life after the passing of her husband. Then became an inspiration to everyone when she dropped the weight of a small country in Africa. After all this she faced tragedy when she lost the life of her son when giving birth to her daughter.

How can the sports world handle such a loss? I wanted to find out.

I first went to the news websites to see what was going on. CNN, Fox News, MSN, local news, etc. all had some type of breaking coverage. Even the front page of yahoo, and other online sites had coverage. So I ventured to the sports sites to see how they where handling it.

First, I went to the Cable 24hr Sport Superpower, ESPN.com, but nothing... There is something about the Cowboys and Dale Jr. wants to buy something, maybe a car or something like that. There was a banner ad of a hot girl holding a basketball, promoting the Road Warrior: Hardwood Sweet.

Then I moved over to Sports Illustrated website, SI.com, NOTHING. There is something about Prince, something from a Dr. Z about grading announcers, and a story about Wisconsin, but who cares about cheese at a time like this. But they do have something about the Swimsuit models.

CBS Sportsline only had a story about a guy named Wade and the Cowboys not confirming that he is the new coach and had a picture of another guy wearing a goofy hat. Dissappointing. Where are the reporters?

MSN Fox sports had a story about who will be number one in the NFL draft with my boy Brady Quinn. Like all the other sports pages nothing about the great loss America experienced today.

As fans of sports. We must make a stand for such of an outrage like this. It is the duty of a reporter to report what is going on. These sites should have covered how the sports world was dealing with the loss of Anna Nicole Smith.

Editor's Note: The Dom is one of the people we recruited during our week away. He will post whenever the hell he wants about whatever the hell he wants.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

New news and an explanation

Okay. We said we were going to post once a day. And we didn't. We're sorry. However, there is a pretty good reason (okay, excuse) for the obscene layoff. Between job interviews, meeting with real estate agents, and meeting with home inspectors, we've had quite a full plate over the last week or so. We did spend some of our time away from the blog doing some good old fashioned recruiting in the name of The Young Lefthander. Hopefully, we will soon be joined by a very carefully selected and talented group of misfits that promise to cause as much trouble as humanly possible. The end result should be more posts and more wide ranging topics in and around the world of sport. Some of these new posts will most certainly not have a thing to do with sports, but our world would be collectively sadder without them. So, we are back, and we look forward to bringing you another joyful way to waste time.