1 - Is Ben McLemore worth the trouble? (Background here.)
2 - Blaine Gabbert...successful pro? (Define "success" however you want.)
3 - Curious to know what you guys thought of the Iowa high school wrestler. The one that refused to wrestle a girl. i won’t state my opinion on it, just so as not to have it on the "table" (hehe) before the ‘table. If anyone doesn’t know what I’m talking about go here.
4 - Do you care if you own physical media anymore? I find between Pandora (no more music CDs), iTunes (the same), Netflix (no more DVDs) etc. that I am much happier with on demand online services than having to hold a physical object.
The Beef: 1 - Without having seen Ben play, I don’t know that I can REALLY answer the question (just as I could not REALLY answer it had it been about Tony Mitchell at this time last year). The thing is, few will likely say we should step away from this young man given his recent troubles, but if we do end up swinging and missing again, it wont look great. Yes, he and Mitchell would represent the highest profile recruits we have been in on in some time (along with Porter), but missing on both for roughly the same qualification reasons (though obviously not identical situations) would not look great to the untrained (and therefore, most of the media) eye. It is certainly a little more defendable given he is a STL kid (not that Mitchell wasn’t defendable either at the time), but some low-level grumbling would likely start if we miss out on him and don’t fill the scholarship.
2 - I think Blaine is going to need a good situation in which to be successful in, and the labor unrest is not entirely likely to give him one. First off, he may not have the training time in OTA’s some rookies get. Also, because no one knows if they can get a QB in FA this year, he may go to a team who may need to put him right in. I think he would greatly benefit from some clipboard time, but he may not be likely to get it.
3 - Back in 1993 when I wrestled, I refused to wrestle a girl actually. It was towards the end of the year at some innocuous JV tournament, and I did not feel comfortable doing it. I told my coach and he supported the decision, but told me I had to tell her personally. I told her I respected what she was doing, but I would not feel comfortable wrestling her given the physical nature of the sport. She said she understood, and that I was the only wrestler she had been pitted against who told her he was defaulting to her face. I believe she maybe won a match or two on the season in actual competition, though I believe she won a number via default. I probably won 5-6 matches on the season…so it probably would have been close J
4 - It has been some time since I have purchased a CD or DVD, but I don’t download them either…but I still own all of what I had previously….so who knows.
ZouDave: 1 - Probably, but it would be pretty crappy if, for the 3rd straight year, our top basketball prospect doesn't qualify. Losing him to another team is one thing, but winning the race and having nothing to show for it is wearing thin. You think about how different Missouri could be right now with Keith Dewitt, 6'10" 215, and Tony Mitchell, 6'8", 200 and it's pretty crazy. To have 12 players that can go every night, all of them talented, and you'd have 6 truly legit big men (well 5, with Safford probably getting to spend more time on the wing if you had Ratliffe, Bowers, Moore, Mitchell and Dewitt inside).
I've never seen McLemore play, but from what I understand he's pretty damn good. And since he's from St. Louis, you can't afford not to spend time on him. But this is becoming a worrisome trend, and not worrisome in that I think Anderson is targeting the wrong guys just worrisome in that it's becoming harder and harder to figure out who we're going to be able to get. Football recruiting doesn't seem to have this same problem, and I don't get that.
Also, I wouldn't include Sheldon Richardson in this list of "trouble". He, like many other football players, went to a Juco and ended up re-signing with Mizzou. I personally heard Coach Pinkel say Richardson will be with the team in June, so that's good enough for me. 5-star talents from the home state, always worth the trouble.
2 - He'll be a successful pro because I don't think there's any way he doesn't stick in the league for at least a few years so he's going to make a crapload of money, be on a roster at least as a backup and probably get a shot at starting at some point. It's RIDICULOUSLY hard to have a career in the NFL, and he's going to. That's a successful pro. But I have no idea if he's going to be able to be a long-term starter or not. So much of that depends on him getting to the right team and getting the right coaching. Physically, there's nothing holding him back. But he better learn how to make more than 2 reads and he better learn how to scramble in more directions than his right or he'll be nothing but a career backup.
3 - I'm not sure what I would do in that situation, or what I'd hope a son of mine would do in that situation. I understand her desire to wrestle, and I certainly support her right to wrestle, but I also more than understand her male opponent's desire and right not to wrestle her back. It would be incredibly uncomfortable during the match, and then when the match is over I doubt you're going to feel good about it either way. You won? Well congrats, you beat a girl. You lost? Oh, dude. It's a tough spot, because there's not anywhere close to enough interest to have girl's wrestling as an official sport (official because there's plenty of other girls wrestling that is interesting, but the girls who want to be wrestlers are probably not the girls we want in the unofficial wrestling). Something like this isn't likely to happen on a football field. If a girl is good enough to be on the starting O-Line and I'm playing Defensive End, I'm going to have no problem giving everything I've got to swim move around her and plant the QB on his ass. Totally different situation, though.
4 - I was never much for buying music even before digital music came about. I bet I owned less than 50 CDs in my life. I always wanted to be able to just buy the one or two songs from an album that I liked, and I used to buy the crap out of cassette singles in high school because of that. When I first discovered MP3's in 1997 (a friend brought me like 10 songs on a Zip Disk) I knew then and there this was the wave of the future. I obviously had no idea how distribution of these things would become wide-spread, but I knew digital music was going to replace physical copies. An easy call to be sure. I can't remember the last time I bought a CD for myself. I think the last CD I ever bought was as a Christmas gift when I was dating my now ex-wife, back in probably 2001.
Movies, on the other hand, took me awhile to come around. I liked to collect DVDs. I own over 200 movies on DVD and have a nice cabinet to store them all in. But you just can't deny the awesomeness of digital sharing, and when you know where to look on the internet everything is free. I go see movies I think are worth paying for in the theater, and my favorites I will buy on DVD or BluRay to continue to support good movies. But the rest? Well, let's just say uTorrent is my friend.
I don't read enough to justify a Kindle or a Nook (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK), but I have purchased 3 books already in 2011 so maybe I'm on my way. Still, I don't get into novels at all. I almost exclusively read non-fiction (the book I just bought and will be starting soon is Civil War on the Missouri-kansas Border). My dad is an avid reader, probably goes through 15-20 books a year, and will never give in to digital media. Of course, he also still refuses to get a cell phone.
The Beef: No cell phone? That’s why we love the Admiral.
ZouDave: He told me on Saturday while we were watching the Mizzou vs ISU game that he thinks he should cave and get one, but he only wants one that makes phone calls and does nothing else. I told him it will probably be the same price, starting a new account, to get one of the smart phones. His response was simply: "Well then screw it."
I don't know which way he was leaning at that point.
ghtd36: I can't wait to be older, when I can just say "Well then screw it" and be lauded for it.
ghtd36: Hola, amigos del Internet!
1- I'd want to know more about why he was dismissed from Oak Hill before I made a decision one way or another. That would go a long way toward ultimately swaying my position. And in the end, I fully trust CMA's judgment. Look at, for example, the character of this current squad. Aside from a random Mike Dixon suspension -- we never found out what it was, did we? But considering it was just for two games, I can't imagine it was anything particularly serious -- the program is clean. Think about that. Think about what a contrast that is from other regimes...yes, even the one before Quin wasn't perfect. CMA seems to have a way to strike a balance between talent and character, and I'm just glad that I don't have to make the decision on McLemore.
2- It depends on the situation. I think it was NFL Network's Mike Mayock who said that Blaine Gabbert would be a disaster in Arizona because they don't have an offensive line. He'd get killed back there, and wouldn't be able to utilize his best weapon, which is his laser rocket arm. In the end, I think Gabbert's got a bright future as a pro if he's put in the right situation.
3- People are trying to find some sort of fault in this story, but I think this is one where everyone did what they believe is right and it worked out beautifully. The kid didn't feel comfortable wrestling a girl due to the physical nature of it; that's fine by me. The girl did not feel disrespected or demeaned; that's fine by me. The coaches and teammates let the duo handle it on their own terms; that's fine by me. What's the big deal here? I think I heard someone say that he was afraid he'd lose to the girl, which is about the dumbest thing I've heard this week. Lighten up, Francis: the kid did what he thought was right, and I salute him for it.
4- Now that the Netflix subscription is in full bloom, my physical media consumption is about to bottom out. I own CDs, but haven't bought one in the past two years, and Internet radio is my primary source of music. I own DVDs and use the ones I get from Netflix, but streaming is becoming My Leader and I don't foresee myself purchasing a DVD anytime soon. In the words of the songbird of a generation, it's virtual insanity.
ghtd36: Oh, I should mention that I still purchase (or at least borrow) books and magazines. I, uh, however, um, do not, um, subscribe to the newspaper.
ZouDave: Well Mizzou certainly never announced specifically what Dixon's suspension was, but I heard from 3 independent sources that [ANSWER REDACTED BY EDITOR BECAUSE WE'RE NOT GOING TO GO THERE].
Bill C.: (I don't think we'll be including this part in the roundtable...)
ZouDave: Sissy
ZouDave: The more approved version:
Well Mizzou certainly never announced specifically what Dixon's suspension was, but I heard from 3 independent sources that Dixon was involved in *beep* on a *beep*. Where the details get lost is whether he was *beep* (1 person says yes) or if he was *beep* (the other 2 say this). I lean towards the latter, because it makes more sense why there wasn't as much *beep*. If he was actually *beep*, I'd expect to have been a bigger deal *beep*.
ghtd36: This is me distancing from ZouDave's comment.
Michael Atchison: 1. It completely depends on the nature of the trouble he’s having. As a talent, he’s completely worth it. Honestly, though, I don’t follow recruiting nearly as closely as I once did (I think the nonsense these kids have to put up with at age 17 while trying to make a momentous decision is deeply unhealthy), so I don’t know what the other options are, either. Unless the problem reveals a deep character flaw, I think he probably is worth it.
2. I’ll give a qualified yes. The measurables are all there. I don’t know if the accuracy, especially downfield, is, and that’s one thing that’s hard to teach.
3. That’s a personal thing, and in his case, it sounds like a religious thing. In that sense, I’m not going to judge him. On the other hand, it’s some deeply antiquated thinking. Trying to pin someone to a wrestling mat isn’t the least bit sexual. And I hope that fear of losing to a girl isn’t at the root of stuff like this, but I suspect it is at some level for some kids.
4. I’m older as you all know, so I still like having the physical manifestations of my interests around me. I download music, but I still buy CDs, too, and there’s something reassuring about looking on the shelf and seeing Marshall Crenshaw’s first album or one of Michael Chabon’s novels. It’s a constant reminder of the things that have shaped you. But I’ll confess, it’s also a boatload of clutter. I can see hundreds and hundreds of CDs and books from where I’m sitting at the moment, and I suspect life would be better with less.
The Beef: To me, the issue was not entirely around pinning a girl to the mat, but it was where my hands needed to go to get that done. And while I respect and acknowledge that she was comfortable with it, I just wasn’t. And I was not going to be able to wrestle her effectively either, since if she had made any sort of struggling sound, I would have instinctually jumped off of her.
ZouDave: You also instinctually would have said "I'm sorry, I swear that doesn't usually happen."
The Beef: Ref – "Son, the match is over"
Me – "Crap…"
Ref – "You won"
Me – "But I was so close…."
ghtd36: This is me distancing even further from Beef's comment.
ZouDave: This is Greg:
ghtd36: I'm as hurt as Adam Wainwright's elbow.
The Beef: Yeah…STL is getting crushed with that one if it ends up being TJ surgery (like most believe)
ZouDave: and the Cards will still finish 20 games above the Royals.
We're going to be Cleveland Spiders bad this year.
ghtd36: Oh no you won't!
Doug: 1 - A game of basketball can be so impacted by one player, that frankly, if you think McLemore is a guy who can change a game with his skills, then he's just about worth all the trouble. That's why the Knicks did whatever was necessary to get Carmelo Anthony (and, no, I'm not equating the two as players), because when you can get your hands on a superstar in basketball, you do it.
2 - Super Bowl champ? Probably not. Long-term pro who makes a positive impact wherever he is? Probably yes. So much of a drafted quarterback's fate is where he winds up. (Stunning analysis, right?) And, I don't know if Gabbert could withstand the beating if he winds up in Arizona, San Francisco or some equally crappy team.
3 - Kudos to him for sticking to a belief system at an age when many of his equals are, how shall we say, more flexible with theirs. I'm actually kind of surprised this hasn't happened before.
4 - The only physical media I still purchase are video games for the 360 and books. And, that second one might be changing soon. We bought my parents a Kindle, and now I kind of want one. Which kills me, since I love holding a book, leafing through the pages, even the aroma. But, I figure if a guy like my dad, who literally had a library in the bathroom, can want to use an e-reader, then so can I.
ZouDave: Echoing Doug's statement on #3 a bit, I still buy physical copies of 360 games because there's rarely another option. Newsflash to anyone new here, I'm a gamer. I've been a video gamer since I was 6 or 7 years old and it's not likely to change. I play games on both my 360 and my PC. Can't remember the last time I bought a PC game at the store, because there are just too many places (like Steam, or Direct2Drive.com) that you can buy them digitially. SO much better.
Microsoft has already talked openly that whenever their next-gen system comes out to replace the 360 (720?) the distribution of games is likely to be primarily digital.
The days of cartridges and game discs are coming to an end very soon. I doubt any of our children (Atch excluded since his kids are, like, in college or something) will even truly know what it's like to have to find a disc to play a game/song/etc.
ZouDave: Hey in other news I'm making my first ever trip to Manhattan, ks, this weekend and the trip includes going to see the Mizzou game against KSU.
Doug: Not much else it can include.
ghtd36:
SleepyFloyd7: 1. I think CMA, his staff, and the "family environment" built around this program would be enough to counteract any minor character issues with McLemore. So, bring him on if he can get qualified. Marcheta Anderson will take care of the rest.
2. I really like Blaine, such a level-headed kid who has that hunger to be the best he can be. But I think he needs the right spot in the NFL - clipboard-duty for 2 years, and thousands more reps with NFL coaching. If he is handed a starting job this year, I think the margins for success become much smaller.
3. BRING IT ON! I'd go Mojo Nixon on her and put her in a figure-4 face-lock. And If she beat me? Well, I'd have that memory for later in life when that part of me has almost gone dormant.
4. I work in a job where I have access to all the CD's I want (still). So that remains the medium of choice. My problem is with storage and sharing. I'm waiting until there is a cheap solution to aggregate all of my media in a centralized location - a 10TB server with wireless distribution to whatever playback source I want. It's coming. Netflix Instant is great, and I will probably cut the cable when I get Hulu+ and get better sports streaming on-line. I also just downloaded my first e-reader for library books. Pretty cool, but I still like me some paperbacks.
ZouDave: Spencer you can accomplish most of what you're describing with your wireless media catch-call right now, so it's way closer than you think.
That includes a 1TB HD, and with the USB port you can attach other storage to it so when an external 10TB drive exists just plug it in. It has built-in network capabilities so just attach it to your home network that includes wireless and voila, you have wireless shared media.
This device will play any audio/video format on the tv/stereo you have it attached to. In my home, I've got it attached to my big screen TV and stereo receiver so whether it's music or movies this thing handles it. I have a the 1TB internal storage, plus another 1TB USB HD plugged into it, but it can also see any media I have shared over the network so all of the movies/audio that are on my computer this thing will access as well.
So basically what you want exists, it's just not overly cheap and doesn't quite yet meet your storage requirements and it only attaches to one TV right now. Soon I'm sure these devices will come with 2, maybe even 3, HDMI outputs so it can be plugged into multiple TVs at once as long as you can run the cables from this device to your TVs.
SleepyFloyd7: Thanks, Dave. Yeah, I need it cheaper.
Also our Digital Photo archives are a MESS! 3 different computers with 4 different filing systems. My wife is a librarian, and I deal with media, but neither of us likes to take our work home with us.
The Beef: So what you are saying is you are both too cheap and too lazy to deal with your issues.
SleepyFloyd7: Yes, and Yes.
Bell Biv DeVoe on Fallon tonight - favorite hip-hop/R&B song from the early 90's? GO!
ZouDave: Paperboy - Ditty.
The Beef: Return of the Mack – Mark Morrison
Bill C.: Either BBD "Poison" or Mary J. Blige "Real Love"
God, that whole Poison album was great. At least to my 7th grade ears.
SleepyFloyd7: Heavy D and the Boyz - Now That We've Found Love
Michael Atchison: Naughty By Nature, "O.P.P."
ghtd36: Yep.
Bill C.: NBN actually had four of the best song of the '90s, really -- OPP, Ghetto Bastard, Uptown Anthem and Hip Hop Hooray. That's not a bad track record.
SleepyFloyd7: Tepper, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to.
ghtd36: RIP, Left Eye. An exceptional singer and an even better arsonist.
SleepyFloyd7: Did Adam Wainwright's elbow pop the SBN servers?
Bill C.: Actually, I think it was my posting of 112 Bell Biv Devoe videos this morning.
ZouDave: So nobody has named "Baby Got Back" as their favorite? That's moderately surprising.
SleepyFloyd7: 2 sides of the same coin
ZouDave: The Humpty Dance was released in 1989, thus it can't be chosen as a favorite from the 90s. Ass.
ZouDave: Hmm, and so was "Just a Friend". Both were released in 1989.
SleepyFloyd7: Fine! How about this great one from '91?
Doug: Way to trend "dead", Spencer. Nicely done.
ZouDave: Looks like Lady GaGa's lyric sheet to Bad Romance.
TA! RA! BOOM DE AY! ROMA, ROMA, MA! GAGA, OOH LA LA! WANT YOUR BAD ROMANCE
The Beef: Huh…and here I was thinking she was just remixing the Hari Krishna song….learn something new every day
(Two hours later...)
SleepyFloyd7: HEY! WAKE UP!
The Beef: What we should do is really pile it on as Bill is going through trying to compile it to post. He loves when we do that.
ghtd36: AAAAAH OK I'M UP I'M UP I'M UP.
I went to the gym this morning to swim, and I determined that there's only one thing creepier than swimming laps in a completely empty pool.
Swimming laps in a pool with exactly one other person.
ZouDave: Maybe if we all start giving our thoughts on the Middle East?
How 'bout that Civil War in Libya, huh?!
SleepyFloyd7: Swimming laps in a HOT TUB with exactly one other person.
ZouDave: Swimming laps WITH Hot Tub?
ghtd36: I'm both bothered and amused by the turn this roundtable has taken.
(An hour later...)
ZouDave: I want to respond if for no other reason than I am using swype on my EVO for the first time. Tremble in fear at my awesome powers.
Sent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint!
ghtd36: Tell me what Swype is in painstaking detail.
ZouDave: No.
Sent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint!
The Beef: How much time did swipe save you when crafting that response?
ZouDave: Seconds. Precious seconds.
Sent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint!
Doug: I guess we should do entire Round Tables from now on using Swype if it would save us precious seconds.
The Beef: Mine would probably look like this…pofrdvnjmk scewdscdv
ghtd36: Whatever would we do without Swype?!?
Sent from my desktop computer upon which I can type roughly 70 words per minute