Hanging out at or near home on Christmas Eve (like me)? Traveling and using the fancy new SB Nation App on your phone? With very little actually going on in the sports world, let's have ourselves a Christmas Eve live thread! Here are some possible topics for discussion...
September 8, 2012: Georgia At Mizzou
The Trib (Dave Matter): "Report: Dawgs coming to Columbia"
KC Star: Independence Bowl buzz
As we've seen in links posts and fanshots, it appears that the SEC has begun to finalize the schedule, and it should be out next week. Supposedly, Mizzou's first SEC game will be a visit from the Dawgs. This, by the way, will cause a friend of mine's head to explode -- he is a Mizzou grad, but he long ago adopted Georgia as his No. 1a team, partially because he never had to worry about Mizzou and Georgia playing. Whoops.
Anyway, the rumors are also swirling that, instead of Ole Miss (as rumored a while back), Mizzou's first rotating West rival will be ... Nick Saban's Alabama Crimson Tide. That would be huge for attendance ... and um, just slightly less of a likely win. If Alabama comes to Columbia too, as rumored, that would mean that Mizzou would be heading to A&M for the third consecutive year. And I'm not going to lie: I'm totally fine with that. In the end, I assume they will make sure that doesn't happen and send Mizzou down to Tuscaloosa, but there's still hope.
Just 55 Hours Until The Independence Bowl
The Trib: Pinkel, Tigers bothered by recent bowl defeats
The Trib: MONDAY'S GAME: Missouri vs. North Carolina
PowerMizzou: Man-to-Man: Mizzou vs North Carolina
And don't you worry: you're still going to get your enormous Indy Bowl BTBS Preview. It just might not happen until Monday morning.
From the first Trib article above:
From 1969-89, the Michigan coach was inexplicably just 5-12 in bowl games and 2-10 in the Rose Bowl. In his 1989 autobiography, "Bo," the late coach titled a chapter, "Why my bowl record stinks, and other thoughts." In it, he wrote: "Jonah had his whale. Captain Hook had his crocodile. And I have January 1."
Pinkel’s recent fate hasn’t sparked that sort of self-deprecation. But his frustration is still fresh. Monday’s game might not register on the national radar — especially if it goes long and viewers flip channels to the Falcons-Saints Monday Night Football game on ESPN — but Pinkel called the game "mammoth" for his program.
"I’m just really disappointed," he said. "Last year I thought we played well but just didn’t finish. The year before, I don’t think we played well at all. … I’m just frustrated because we come out of the" 2008 "Alamo Bowl and we’ve won three of our last four bowls at that point. Then we lose two in a row."
"You know how I am," he added. "I want to win. So it’s really important to us."
Bowls are a big deal to me until the moment they end, and then I move on to the next season, win or lose. I am constantly reminded I am in the minority on that -- you occasionally still see a particularly virulent strain of fans still complaining about Missouri's clock management in the 2006 Sun Bowl, which I find both awesome and terribly depressing. Regardless, let's just win on Monday. Sound good?
Another L'Damian Washington Article You'll Want To Read
Fox Sports MW: Washington playing for brothers at Mizzou
Really, really, really easy to root for this guy.