1 - People are talking about football again, which means two things: a) the Tim Tebow Hyperbole is already in fourth gear (as is the backlash), and b) so is the "Big 12 North is too weak! Redraw the conference!!!1!" talk. No need to get into (a) right now, but regarding (b)...is there something that should be done about the Big 12's imbalance? (I bring this up because TB at BOTC had a nice post--and long comment thread--about it recently).
2 - So Mizzou did as well in the NFL Draft as anybody could have hoped...did anything surprise you, good or bad, about where the six Mizzou players fell in the draft?
3 - If you had to bet $1,000,000 one way or the other, does Mizzou Baseball make the NCAA Tournament at this point?
4 - What has the most of your attention right now: the NBA playoffs, the NHL playoffs, or Major League Baseball? Yeah, I've asked about 17 varieties of that question in the last 12 months...sue me...
5 - Name something in this world more insane and/or scarier than Al Davis.
The Beef: 1 - If there is no need to get into (a)…why bring it up? :-)
As for (b), it won’t ever happen because it makes absolutely no sense from any standpoint (travel, rivalry, etc…)
2 - Brown going in the 5th was certainly a surprise. I was a little surprised to see Maclin slide, though through none of his own doing. I was pleased to see Coffman still go in the third and happy to see Hood get taken in the 1st round, though I thought Indy would get him a couple of picks sooner. Everything else was about on par with what I thought.
3 - I’ll say sure…why not. They MIGHT be getting hot at the right time. 4 more games to go this week. Win 3 of the 4 and they would be in fine position to get the record where they need it to be coming down the stretch.
4 - NHL, even though my team choked quite hard last night
5 - Lord knows if I was hipper or paid more attention I could make some Buzz Bisinger comment, but seeing as I do not know how to spell his last name (or if that even IS his last name), I’ll say SWINE FLU!!!!
The Boy: 1 - I just had to bring (a) up because my wife is already in midseason, Tebow-hating form. It's fantastic. As for (b)...people are always wanting to overreact and change rules because of very recent trends. In the Big 12's 13 seasons, the Big 12 South has been better for about 7-8...and there was a case to be made that the North was better (or at least even) as recently as 2007!
That, and yeah...it would so horribly screw up rivalries that it would make no sense. Either you put the top two finishers in the championship game, which completely ruins the point of divisions (and if you get rid of divisions, then with a more open scheduling rotation, soon Missouri doesn't play KSU or NU in a season, which would be insanely stupid), or you break the conference up into East vs West, or just completely random, like the American and National divisions or something stupid...there's no smart solution, and it's really not even that much of a problem anyway, but it's already been written about numerous times in 2009...and the season doesn't start for another four months.
2 - Yeah, I guess you have to count Brown a surprise, since HE didn't even expect to be drafted then. Maclin was, in theory, a surprise, but you knew if he didn't go by #10, nobody from about #11-17 was going to pick a WR...plus, I was really hoping he'd fall to the Eagles anyway. Am LOVING the thought of what a creative offensive staff could do with both Jackson and Maclin...am just hoping the Eagles have a creative staff, since I'm fully on the Philly bandwagon now (sorry, rptgwb).
3 - I'm starting to actually believe in them, which is the ABSOLUTE worst thing I could do. Really, they only need to go about 8-6 the rest of the way, which isn't a given, but seems a lot more doable than the 20-10 or whatever that they needed to pull off a couple weeks ago...plus, they've won 5 of 6 conference games (and the opponents weren't pushovers--they took 2 of 3 in Manhattan from a ranked KSU team, and they swept a Tech team that had won 5 of 7), which is nice to see.
I mean...NO. No chance in the world. Huh uh. Nope.
4 - The NBA Playoffs have been fun as hell so far. Orlando-Philly hasn't been aesthetically pleasing, but the games have been close. Portland-Houston has been interesting (as a Portland fan, Houston was the single team I did NOT want them playing in the first round), and Boston-Chicago has been amazing. I keep up with MLB and the NHL, but I watch the NBA. Or at least, I keep it on in the background while I'm writing about random Mizzou football seasons and then unmute it at the end of the fourth quarter.
5 - Thundersnow.
ZouDave: 1 - No, there's no need to do something about the Big 12's imbalance, just like there was nothing to do about it 10+ years ago when Nebraska and KSU were the dominant teams in the conference and Texas and OU were mired in crapulence. 2007, despite having OU win the Big 12, was not a South dominated year. Mizzou and kansas were the story that year, and the teams combined to go 5-1 in the regular season against the South.
However, we do need to redraw the schedules. If for no other reason than just to change things up, but that's where your imbalance occurs. The teams that were good in 1996 aren't necessarily good now (A&M, Nebraska, KSU) and the teams that were not so good in 1996 are pretty good to great now (OU, Texas, Missouri, kansas).
2 - I am surprised Maclin lasted until #19, when Philly traded up to get him. I'm VERY pleased that he did, because he's playing for a contender immediately, but he was supposed to be a Top 10 pick and was flirting with being the first receive taken. So that's surprising. I was beyond pleased to see Ziggy Hood go in the 1st and go to Pittsburgh. They're going to get the absolute best out of him and he's going to be in the playoffs immediately. I'm pissed that the Chiefs didn't take Coffman in the 3rd, because we had the perfect opportunity to do so. I'm THRILLED that Colin Brown went to the Chiefs. That was fairly unexpected but something I had actually said could happen during the season (I predicted Brown would be a middle of the 2nd day pick and would be transitioned to a Guard/Tackle in the NFL and that's exactly what I think is happening). I think it's great Sulak was drafted, even if it was by the Raiders, and I hope he can stick. And Willy Mo already has a great following in Atlanta, and seeing as that's where Gonzalez ended up I now have a lot of interested in following the Falcons.
3 - Yes.
4 - MLB between those 3, but Champions League and English Premier League have the most of my professional sports attention.
5 - There's an Adjunct Professor here at Park University that came to our dept yesterday to "speak to the highest level person in ITS, immediately!". The reason he was in such a panic? It's because Park University is partnering with Google to become members of the Google Apps community and we will be turning over all of our student and faculty email system to Google to basically become GMail accounts (while still having the @park.edu domain), plus they will be given Google Apps accounts to use GDocs, Google Chat, and other services. Well, this guy came down to complain and warn us that we would be losing his services as an instructor if we didn't reverse our decision (mind you, this decision will save us around $150,000/year by getting rid of bloated, outdated systems and servers to manage the nearly 100,000 student, alumni and faculty accounts that we have in our University system). His complaint? Google doesn't support Human Rights in China. So by partnering with Google, we are siding with the Chinese government.
Oh the things you can learn from the insane.
The Beef: Think of the additional money saved by firing his crazy ass. WIN WIN!!
Doug: Way to go, Park University. I always knew there were a bunch of commies there.
Out of curiosity, what course does that professor teach?
ZouDave: He's a History professor.
Michael Atchison: I'll have to get back to you. I'm in a meeting pitching an idea for a reality series -- World's Most Shocking Ambiguous Twitter Posts By Undrafted Free Agents!
Sent from my iPhone
The Beef: I laughed hard enough at that one that I think Atch should just call it a day…I’m not sure he can improve on his contribution
Sent by a guy who now owns a Blackberry but who does not use it for Roundtable Emails
Doug: 1 - Yeah... I'll second Seth's smart-ass answer.
2 - Uh... no.
3 - Always take the fail on the million dollar bet.
4 - I'll go MLB then the NBA Playoffs, but once they reached the championship series, I'll pay more attention to the NBA, and you would have hold a gun to my head to get me to watch the NHL.
5 - In general... I would say any player unfortunate enough to play in Oakland will be that insane in very short order.
rptgwb: 1. Leave the Big 12 the way it is. Does this conference really need to morph itself into another version of the Pac-10? Isn't one version of the Pac-10 enough? Changing the conference is extremely short-sighted and extremely slanted to favor the division currently in power.
2. Didn't expect Maclin to fall that far. Ziggy and Willy Mo were right in the range I expected. Coffman was where I expected, even though I didn't agree. I had no idea Colin Brown would get drafted, and the Stryker pick kind of made sense to me.
3. I'll go ahead and say yes, providing they don't completely drop the ball in Lincoln. The offense is becoming far more timely than it was earlier in the year.
4. NHL playoffs. It ain't Spring without the San Jose Sharks tripping all over themselves.
5. Beef when he's pissed off at Ron Prince.
rptgwb: Also, I feel we need to discuss this site visit from yesterday.
Does this mean mission accomplished, especially since it came from Google News?
Doug: I don't know. Was anyone talking about swine flu yesterday?
The Beef: Rock M Nation…picking off European countries one google search at a time
ZouDave: Austria?! Well, g'day, mate! Let's put another shrimp on the barby!
Michael Atchison: I’m back. Network bought the idea but wants to limit it to players drafted in the first four rounds.
You guys have said most of what there is to say. I have a friend in Philadelphia whose twelve year old son is already asking for a Maclin jersey. I think Colin Brown is an interesting pick. Obviously, the size is amazing, and you have to wonder where he is on his progression as a player. Five years ago, he didn’t merit a scholarship. Now he’s in the NFL. That’s an impressive upward trajectory. If he can maintain some of it, he’ll be a steal for the Chiefs.
As far as current sporting events go, the answer is watching Zack Greinke pitch. Hitters are swinging at ghosts right now.
And finally, a new Rock M meme. Chad Dukes – an intemperate, insufferable, or otherwise unpleasant character, especially one who overestimates his own importance or the quality of his ideas. As in “dude, really, we were having a good discussion here, and you had to go and be a Chad Dukes.”
ghtd36: Good morning, darlings. You know it's Wednesday when I log on to my computer and find a dozen e-mails pertaining to The Beef and swine flu.
1 - I don't think there is anything you can feasibly do about the Big XII alignment. It's the type of thing that ebbs and flows. For example, ten years ago, if I told you that Mizzou had to go to College Station to play the Fightin' New Dallas Cowboys QBs ZOMG It's So Ridiculous Because He's Terrible, you'd probably count that as an automatic loss. Now? I wouldn't even flinch. The point is that when you start messing with it for the sake of balancing it out for two years, you open up a can of worms. What about in five years, when Baylor is a powerhouse? Are we going to readjust it then? Just leave it the way it is.
2 - As you may have noticed from my Twitter page on Draft Day, I was absolutely floored that the Raiders passed on Maclin. I thought it was a lock for JMac to be suiting up in the silver and black. Aside from that, I'm a little surprised that Stryker Sulak was drafted, but not so much that I'll wax poetic on it. It was a good draft for Mizzou; let's just leave it at that.
3 - If I had to bet $1,000,000 on Mizzou baseball, I'd fake my own death, move to Cuba and spend the money on cigars and baseball teams. Just like Tupac.
4 - Right now, it's a tossup between NBA playoffs (because watching the Mavs beat the Spurs never, ever gets old) and MLB (holy hell, the Rangers are .500!). If someone other than Versus were broadcasting the NHL playoffs, I'd be all over it. Or if the Stars were in it.
5 - The fact that there is an NFL general manager that thinks Pig Brown can be an NFL-caliber safety. Gee, Ted Thompson, which of Pig's 62 career solo tackles impressed you the most?
I'm sorry. I like Pig. I really do. But this has gotten ridiculous.
rptgwb: Ted Thompson was ready to give Greg Paulus a tryout, and you're complaining about Pig?
The Boy: I think ght just said that because a) he doesn't realize how many people get "tryouts" (seriously, if you had an agent, you could probably arrange one too), and b) he wanted to make rptgwb make this face:
ghtd36: At least Greg Paulus started an entire season in a sport in college.
rptgwb: So, using ght's logic, Pig deserves a shot with the Milwaukee Bucks?
ghtd36: Sure! After all, Pig was in the starting lineup for the same number of full seasons of the Mizzou basketball team as he was the Mizzou football team.
ghtd36: Hm. GMail's acting up. Sorry if this is a double- (or triple-) send.
ZouDave: God damn Chinese government!