1 - Name an even less exact science than drafting football players (paraphrasing).
2 - With all this discussion of the Sacramento Kings moving to Anaheim...what professional sports team would you move if you were commissioner, and to where?
3 - What's the best grilled thing you ever ate?
4 - Speaking of food ... we're headed to see my parents in OKC this weekend, and Friday we will be making our first trip back to the Oklahoma Arts Festival since I actually developed tastes that ranged past burgers, pizza, hot dogs and lasagna. Here's the menu. I will be trying at least 10 things from this list (with help from Bill C's Mom and Pregnant Mrs. Bill C.). Offer me at least five candidates (not counting the Indian taco, which is a lock for inclusion).
The Beef: 1 - Japanese Nuclear fusion….what? Too soon?
2 - I’d move the Phoenix Coyotes to Winnipeg and call them the Jets…what? That might actually happen? Well there you go…
3 - The first steak I grilled this season. Came out a perfect rare to medium rare and the switch to some vinegar in the marinade made it lovely.
4 - Banana Split Pie
Cuban Pork Crepe
Prime Rib Sliders
Drunken Fries with Cheeseburger Sauce
Hot and Spicy Chicken Gyro
Doug: 1 - Apparently ending the NFL lock-out is an impossible task as well.
2 - I would move or just plain get rid of every NHL franchise in the south-east and Arizona. They'd either have to move to any city north of St. Louis, or fold. The California and Dallas franchises are in big enough markets where you can find people to support the teams, but I don't think anyone in Florida gives a crap about the Panthers or the Lightning.
3 - My Weber smoked turkey during Thanksgiving. I highly recommend it.
4 - Drunken Fries w/ Cheeseburger Sauce (I think I'm in love), the Peking Fried Meat Dumplings (you know, go international), and the Chopped Brisket Potato (because sometimes potatoes need a little bit extra) and for desert: Tequila Bread Pudding, with ice cream.
Michael Atchison: 1. Getting Ross to participate in a roundtable (now that he’s been on television, we’ll never get him back).
2. I’d move the New York Yankees to Hoxie, Kansas.
3. There’s a place that used to be around the corner from where I lived that made eggplant steaks. Sublime.
4. Shaved ice-small, shaved ice-medium, shaved-ice large, Gopurum package, chocolate cabernet soufflé.
Bill C.: 1. Getting my dog in her crate when it's time for us to go to work.
2. Seriously, Beef? You passed on an opportunity to make a Hartford Whalers/Brass Bonanza reference??
3. Not sure about "ever," but in the last year or two, the wife and I have made two unbelievable grill-based recipe discoveries -- a "cowboy steak" that uses coffee in the dry rub (I figured it would be good, but it was so much better than I imagined) and a grilled gyro that knocked me out.
Seriously, it's only a matter of time until Rock M's tagline becomes "A Blog For Ol' Mizzou. And Food."
4. Right now, the leaders are as follows: Cuban Crepe, Indian Taco, Drunken Fries, Indian Taco, Stacked Beef Enchiladas, Indian Taco, Hot & Spicy Gyro, Indian Taco, Tequila Bread Pudding, and Indian Taco. My wife's top ten choices, meanwhile, are ten Strawberry Newports.
The Beef: The thing about Hartford is…they’d just end up moving again. I know the same will likely be said about Winnipeg, but nobody ever NOT supported a team and then claimed to miss them as much as the people in Hartford. I went to a playoff game up there once against Les Habitants in around 1193 or 1994…only because we got an afternoon paper at our house which said some tickets were still available for the game. I called my father, he said OK, came home and we got on the road to Hartford (which took much longer to get to than NYC). We got up there, bought two seats, walked into the arena as the national anthem was playing to find….eh…about 5,500 people. At a playoff game. Only Atlanta Braves fans show up less to playoff games.
And in the end…there is nothing better than the White-out in Winnipeg. I don’t know if they are the originator of the (insert color here)-out, but they always did it the best.
Michael Atchison: Glad you clarified that it’s not realistic to go back to Hartford, because realism is what we’re going for here.
The Beef: Ah….except mine is actually realistic :-)
ZouDave: 1 – Drafting baseball players. They have, what, 50 rounds? And sometimes guys taken in the 12th round become the best player of the last 25 years and guys taken first overall throw batting practice to the Cleveland Indians twice in one week.
2 – OKC Thunder…drop the O, you’re becoming the KC Thunder (or some other name, possibly having to do with being in charge of a tribe, system of government or whatever). Not that Oklahoma City isn’t doing a decent job supporting that NBA team, but KC REALLY wanted that franchise to anchor the Sprint Center. Of course, there’s about a 0.00001% chance I’d EVER consider season tickets to anything besides Mizzou football, and I don’t really care about the NBA at all, so I don’t care.
Maybe on second thought I’d move the Tampa Rays to a city where they’d get the support they deserve. Let’s move the Tampa Rays to Kansas City (yet we get to keep the KC minors system) and move the Royals to…Montreal. I don’t care. Whatever.
3 – I know that I love eating my grilled steaks, especially ribeyes. No marinades, no rubs, just salt and pepper beforehand and sometimes, only sometimes, a small smear of butter as it approaches completion. Mmmmmm.
4 – Jumbo Turkey Leg (because you have to)
Drunken Fries w/ Cheeseburger Sauce (this sounds…interesting)
Hot & Spicy Chicken Gyro
Fried Swiss Cheese Sticks
Chocolate Meltdown (unless it looks like it was prepared by the Japanese…at least I wasn’t the FIRST to make a Japan and meltdown joke in the roundtable)
(45 minutes later...)
Bill C.: New question: how in the HELL do you choose from this list? This is like picking among your seven children...
The Beef: Eh…every parent lies when they tell you they love their kids equally. It is against human nature…everyone has their favorites
ZouDave: My first vote in this list is easy, and it’s Martin Rucker. He deserves more credit than he gets for Mizzou’s surge starting with the 2005 Independence Bowl through the end of the 2007 season with the Cotton Bowl victory. His leadership set the tone. His play set the tone. He was a steadying hand as well as a homerun threat. As Bill said in the write-up, he did whatever the team needed. He personified "make it happen" as well as any player I think we’ll ever see. Need 4 yards? Got it. Need 20 yards? Got it. Need a path cleared for J-Mac on a reverse? Got it. Need a different look so we’ll line up a TE in the Wildcat formation? Got it. Need an emotional lift? Got it. Need a (then) record for receptions in a season? Got it. Need me to split time with ANOTHER All-American TE and still be an All-American? Got it. Need me to hoist this trophy? Got it.
Martin Rucker is an EASY choice, for me.
It’s the next two that are giving me fits. I have it narrowed down to 3 names that I can’t leave off. But there’s only 2 spots. So who loses between Willy Mo, Spoon and Danario? I have no idea.
SleepyFloyd7: Hey fellas, sorry I'm late. I had 1-st grade Dad Day this morning. We walked around the track for 20 minutes, then decorated flower pots for Mothers' Day. I'm exhausted!
1 - Determining the "Best Burger In Columbia".
2 - To piggyback on Atch's answer - while we're at it, let's move the Mets to Menlo, KS, and then build a subway between these 2 thriving metropolitan areas.
3 - October 6, 2007, Lot C at Memorial Stadium - Marinated Quail wrapped in Maple Bacon and grilled. The perfect fuel for a 41-6 rout of Nebraska.
4 - Coxinha/Pastel (Shrimp)/ Feijoada Rolinho (Black Beans & Rice), Fried Pickle-Os, Street Tacos Al Carbon, Banana Nutella Crepe, and The Wedgie because I have to know what that is.
As for your additional question - Give me Denario. That kid overcame SO MUCH in his time at Mizzou, and turned in one of the greatest seasons I've ever seen in his senior year. I'd take his performance in the K-State game on the road over just about any single game performance up for nomination.
ghtd36: Hi-dely ho, Internet-arinos.
1- There isn't one, which makes me wonder why people put so much stock in Mel Kiper and Todd McShay...OK, well, at least in Mel Kiper. I mean, let's set aside the implications that he is working for certain agents (which, by the way, has he ever really addresssed?). The man said of Jamarcus Russell -- yes, that Jamarcus Russell -- that "three years from now you could be looking at a guy that’s certainly one of the elite top five quarterbacks in this league." Back in 1995, he called William Henderson -- the guy who blocked for as many 1,000-yard rushers as Lorenzo Neal -- the worst pick in the draft. Kiper read the riot act to the Colts for passing up Heath Shuler to draft Marshall Faulk. Just look at this: he correctly projected seven of the first 31 picks in the first round of the 2008 draft. SEVEN! Why do we listen to him? Why does anyone pay attention to him?
So, no, I do not enjoy the work of Mel Kiper.
2 - I've long held that there should not be hockey south of the Mason-Dixon line. And I think you could trim the NHL down to 24 teams (there are 30 now) and have a far more competitive league with a higher level of skill. You'd divide the 24 teams into four 6-team divisions, with two teams from each division making the playoffs, thus making the regular season mean more. So, basically, Tampa Bay, Carolina, Atlanta, Florida, Phoenix, Anaheim, San Jose, Los Angeles and Dallas would be on the chopping block. If you've never won a Cup, you're contracted (bye Atlanta, Florida, Phoenix and San Jose). So now we have two spots for five teams. I move one of them to Winnipeg, and one of them to Seattle. And this is why I'd never be NHL commissioner.
3 - Much like Ron Swanson, gimme bacon-wrapped shrimp.
4 - Homemade Banana Split Pie sounds like a winner, as does Chicken-on-a-Stick (I'm a sucker for food on a stick). "Drunken Fries w/Cheeseburger Sauce" gets the nod on name alone. Famous Fried Peaches sounds delightfully terrible for you. And, oh, I don't know, let's go with the Garlic Chicken Burrito.
ZouDave: I understand the vitriol towards Mel Kiper and Todd McShay. They just say a bunch of crap but are never (meaningfully, not to take away from Greg’s rant) held accountable for when they’re wrong (either wrong in predicting where a player will go or wrong in predicting how good a player will be). They change their mind enough over the course of 3 months between end of college season and NFL draft that they can point to some piece of film or print and say "Well, I said *that* about *that guy*." Yeah, but you also said the exact opposite.
They take a very Glenn Beck-esque approach to saying things without ever saying them. "Is Blaine Gabbert falling down team’s boards? Are teams afraid that the spread offense has done nothing at all to prepare him for the NFL? Are we hearing that Blaine Gabbert molests collies and has been known to stare longingly at posters of Evander Holyfield?" The answer to all of those questions is unequivocally "no", but they’ll say crap like that just so they can, if pushed, point to a piece of film where they say they doubted a guy. But if pushed to say they doubted a guy that didn’t need to be doubted, they’ll say "No I never said that, I just asked if that’s what teams were saying." It’s stupid.
So I get that.
But I don’t get why Joe Lunardi and, for that matter, Phil Steele aren’t also held to that same fire. Lunardi releases a different bracket every week, sometimes more than once per week. How is that helpful? And how can he claim accuracy when doing something like that? As it gets close to Selection Sunday (and I believe it was Bill C that already broke this down, maybe it was RPT but since he’s NEVER HERE TO TALK ABOUT ANYTHING I’ll just give credit to Bill C) Lunardi will claim something like 97% accuracy in his picks. Well, yeah, almost half of the field gets guaranteed bids and then another 10-15 teams are absolute no brainers so you’re being spoon-fed like 75% of the field without having to know anything other than how to read standings. He claims accuracy because he predicted Missouri would get in, and they did, but he didn’t have our seed right. And on the chance he DID have our seed right, he didn’t have our opponent right. So what is he really predicting? Should the NFL guys get to claim accuracy in predicting the draft because they predicted 185 of the 250 players that get drafted? That’s a 75% accuracy! Yeah, but you said this one guy was a 2nd round pick and he went in the 4th. You had another guy slated as a 5th and he went in the 3rd. "Still, I’m 75% accurate. I rule."
Phil Steele has a reputation of being untouchably accurate in predicting college football results. You’ll even hear fans of teams make claims like "Phil Steele has predicted the exact finish of the Big 12 North 7 of the last 10 years and was damn close in the other 3." I went through this a couple of years ago on Tigerboard (the posts are archived now so I can’t link them) but from 2000-2009, Phil Steele only predicted just the WINNER of the B12 North 6 times in those 10 years and those were in years the winning pick was a very common pick. The BEST he ever did in those 10 years in picking standings 1-6 in the North was 50% and he only did that 2 or 3 times. But he somehow has a reputation of knowing exactly what is going to happen, because people often only seem to remember the picks he did get right and then extrapolate that to "well, he must have been right about other things."
It’s a sweet job, if you can get it.
The Beef: And that’s the way it is….
ZouDave:
The Beef: This man disagrees.
ghtd36: Is that Sam Waterston?
ZouDave:
ghtd36: One of the great forgotten SNL commercials.
And when they grab you with those metal claws, you can't break free. Because they're made of metal. And robots are strong.
ZouDave: I saw some behind the scenes thing from SNL where they talked about this particular bit, and I guess the writers/directors were getting on Waterston for his delivery because it was so blasé and dispassionate. Waterston told them something like "Since you’re having me portray myself in this, you have to consider that a celebrity endorsing a product like this would obviously only be doing it for the paycheck so they’re going to show up, read the cue cards as fast as possible, and get out in as few takes as possible and not waste their time." So they said "Yeah, go with that."
Apparently Sam Waterston is pretty awesome. He’s the Chelsea Thomas of acting.
ghtd36: Don't be silly. Nobody is the Chelsea Thomas of anything. Chelsea Thomas is the Chelsea Thomas of being Chelsea Thomas.
SleepyFloyd7: Even if Sam is not quite Chelsea, he could still strike me out on 3 pitches.
ZouDave: So could Rick Allen.
SleepyFloyd7: Dave, the metal ones will come for you one day too.
Doug: So could the "First-Pitch Robot" from the Phillies game.
ghtd36: So could I.
/gauntlet thrown
SleepyFloyd7:
(Four hours later...)
SleepyFloyd7: Bill - when this gets posted, you should make it a softball live thread.
Chelsea 9-up, 9-down with 7 K through 3
The Beef: Heads to the top of the 5th…K’ed 10 of 12 batters so far
The Beef: And Nottelmann will pitch the 5th with the Tigers up 10-0 and on the verge of run-ruling SIU-E
The Beef: And that’s the ball game.
Mizzou wins 10-0 (5) over SIU-E. Thomas and Nottelmann combine to throw a perfect game, striking out 12 of 15 batters. The other three batters fouled out, flied out and grounded out.
(Chelsea Thomas: too efficient for the roundtable.)