So the wife and I found another way to bond last night: watching American Gladiators, baby!! Granted, anything involving talking (either by the hosts, or the competitors, or the Gladiators) was more painfully awful than I remembered, but there's just something about watching somebody's body revolt against them. The Eliminator was even more long and amazing than I remembered. Anybody else watch? Hit 'mute' anytime anybody's talking, and it's quite enjoyable...
New football commit! No idea why nobody else was in on this kid--his stats were unbelievable--but hey...nobody else was in on Danario Alexander, Sean Weatherspoon, or Stryker Sulak either. Lots of diamonds-in-the-rough to be found in TX...hopefully this is one of them. And for more recruiting news--well, rumors more than news I guess--check out last night's PowerMizzou chat recap.
So Blaine Gabbert and Andrew Jones played for the West Team in the Army All-American game Saturday. Gabbert looked pretty solid...I'm not going to make any major judgement from just a handful of snaps, but my initial impressions are that he's pretty elusive and has a freaking cannon for an arm. If there's any problem--and I'm not saying there is--it's that he might not be amazingly quick-thinking, but we'll see about that. I was happy with what I saw from him in an all-star game setting, especially since he got the flu earlier in the week and was questionable to play for a bit. As for Jones, didn't see a ton of him, but PowerMizzou talked to him after the trip.
The Trib had a nice Sunday feature yesterday, summarizing Mizzou's breakthrough season as a whole, with MVPs, newcomers, etc. The KC Star and Post-Dispatch did pretty much the same thing.
Lookie! A basketball article! The Star's Michelle Voepel takes a look at Mizzou's defensive struggles against major conference competition. The turnovers flow like water against little teams, and while we still force more than the average team most of the time, bigger teams are able to post impressive enough FG %'s to overcome any turnover disadvantage.
Future Tiger hoopster Steve Moore of Truman HS looked okay on Saturday at the MFA Shootout, scoring a 12-11 double-double but only shooting 4-for-13 against Rock Bridge's Jordan Dressler. He's been considered a project all along, and that pretty much confirmed it. He does look the part, however.
The Missourian has a couple of wrestling articles up, the first one summarizing Mizzou's easy win over Bucknell, the second one featuring third-ranked 165-pounder Nick Marable.
So I guess there's a little bit of June Jones-related drama emerging. We've all heard about the insane please-make-us-relevant play SMU made on Jones over the weekend--almost $2 million a year--but Hawaii has responded...with pleas and affection. Jones is a fantastic mid-major coach--I don't see him succeeding at the highest level, but his system can make (guess I should say 'has made') smaller schools relevant, and I can't imagine what he's going through right now. He has a chance to make an insane amount of money, but with that comes higher expectations than what await him on the Hawaiian islands. Money or love?
So I guess we've got a national title game tonight? Stewart Mandel talks about the staggering number of injuries LSU has overcome this year...didn't realize it was this prevalent actually...I still have the sneaking suspicion that this game is shaping up well--in both expectations and style--for Ohio State, but it just seems like LSU is too good. We'll see.