Cuonzo Martin on your Kansas City airwaves

On Tuesday afternoon, Cuonzo Martin was a guest on Blair Kerkhoff and Souichi Terada’s SportsBeat KC pod to talk about a little of everything: the newcomers, X & Dru, Jordan vs LeBron, his sneaker collection, the name & likeness ruling, and so much more! It was great, and I highly suggest a listen. Here’s some highlights:

On name & likeness and how it will impact college basketball in the future:

“We were on an SEC call with Greg Sankey with the SEC coaches, and the unknown is how the NCAA moves forward. What I think you want to do more than anything— you want every state to be governed the same way, whether the SEC governs everything. You don’t want every state to do different things. I think that’s where problems could occur. As long as everyone is in line.. it’s long overdue.”

Will it become part of Mizzou’s recruiting pitch? How will it be employed?

“I think so. I think for every school it will be. When you talk about something of this magnitude, it certainly will be for us. The NCAA is still working on how it’s going to be employed.”

“I’ll give you an example. Take Michael Porter Jr. He goes down the court and dunks the ball and he gets a hundred to a million views. Big time dunk and all that. With name, image & likeness, though, Mike can’t take that in and profit off that photo because of the branding- it has a Mizzou logo and Mizzou branding, He’d almost have to be wearing just a regular shirt...”

It will surely be interesting to see how the NCAA figures this all out, that’s for sure. Souichi also wrote about it for the KC Star, so you can check it out there as well.

Onto the links we go!

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Yesterday at Rock M

• Matthew J Harris did some EXTENSIVE research on this awesome piece about Mizzou’s pace, and how they should strive to be like Wojo’s Marquette squad. It’s long but WELL worth the time. Also, the photo choice for the top is perfection.
• Nate started out his weekly game previews with Mizzou’s first opponent- the Central Arkansas Bears. He’s got a new format to these, and I LOVE IT.
• IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: I wrote about diamond sports after taking in a YouTube Live event with Steve Bieser and Larissa Anderson, and Nate the Great conducted a recruiting investigation into Denver.
• COMING UP!!! In the draft that never ends, we’ve got ROUND 18 of the Mizzou Tiger Legends Draft!

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More Links:

Football & Hoops

• POWERMIZZOU/RIVALS ($$): Gabe posted some things he’s learned about what Mizzou will do to re-open its athletic facility doors to students. Sean Williams wrote about Matthew Alexander, a Georgia DT.
• RECRUITING NEWS&NOTES: 2021 FS target Jordan Lovett is set to announce his commitment at noon. We made 2021 safety Andrew Mukuba’s top 12 (number one safety in TX and part of the ESPN 300, apparently). We made Raheim “Rocket” Sanders’ top 5. 2021 6’10 center Logan Landers announced his offer on the Twitter.
• PowerMizzou: Mitchell Forde wrote about Mizzou’s most unbreakable records in hoops.
• Eastern Jackson County Examiner (via Columbia Tribune): Bill Althaus wrote (and shared a video interview) about Daniel Parker Jr and his mother, talking about his extensive and scary eye injury/infection and the surgery that saved his eyesight.
• FOX2 Sports Director (StL) Martin Kilcoyne chatted with Gary Pinkel about his time at Mizzou and his foundation on “The Kilcoyne Conversation.”
• Paul Finebaum talked with Mina Kimes (love her) on his podcast about college football’s road to return. (thanks to Producer Mitch for the share)
• Sports Illustrated: Ross Dellenger wrote about how schools are virus-proofing their facilities to welcome back players in June.
• Music City Miracles (SBNation): Justin Melo interviewed Mizzou fan favorite, and new Titans’ UDFA Cale Garrett.
• KCStar: Blair Kerkhoff talked with Chiefs OC Eric Bieniemy, who benefited greatly from the fifth down game when he played for Colorado, and now lives with it every day working alongside Andy Reid and Dave Toub, who were young staff members on that Tigers team.

Other Mizzou Sports News

• Eric Blum of the Columbia Tribune wrote about the official release of the Academic Progress Rate (APR) for all Mizzou’s sports teams. Max Baker of the Columbia Missourian also covered this.
• Owen Krucoff posted a Fast Five Q&A with soccer coach, Bryan Blitz.
• In the two newest First Pitches stories in the Missourian, Sports Illustrated columnist Pat Forde wrote about getting a wake-up call from former Mizzou coach Woody Widenhofer, who’d been unhappy with a series of articles he’d written about the fall of Mizzou football. Also, Bob Holt, Arkansas beat writer for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, wrote about a game of phone tag and some tough love by Stormin’ Norm Stewart.

Mizzou Sports Social Media News & Notes

• Welcome back home, X-Man? Sure sounds like it. (this makes me so happy)

• Jordan Wilmore highlights. Interested to see what this big man brings to the table since not a whole lot is known about him

• By Adam Spencer, writer for Saturday Down South, identified SEC football coaches as their Simpsons counterparts. WARNING: You can’t unsee it once you look.

• From Coach Drink:

• Hickman alum Trae Robertson is looking for a big 2021 season.

• Recent football commit Travion Ford showing the love (this is super cool):

Interesting/Non-Mizzou News

These are a few of the best sports stories & tidbits I found regarding some goings-on in sports and the world— Enjoy!

• The Ringer’s Zach Kram wrote about how the Bulls became a big ol’ dumpster fire after The Last Dance era was over.
• It’s GAME OF THRONES WEEK at the Ringer.com (a great website), and they’re celebrating all things Thrones a year after the series finale: Jason Concepcion examined what Bran Stark’s Westeros might look like a year after the GoT finale. Riley McAtee looked at where Arya’s adventures would take her a year later. Ben Lindbergh asked if a level of show like Game of Thrones could really happen in 2020 given how splintered TV culture is nowadays. Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion (the hosts of BingeMode) also did definitive episode ranking- woah. And finally, they made a parody of Taylor Swift’s song Lover about Cersei and Jaime’s forbidden love. It’s called... Brother. hahahahaha
• LeBron James told Uninterrupted (link to YouTube video) how he completely freaked out when he first met Michael Jordan at age 16 in a weight room pre-game. Completely understandable, haha.

• Fans of the comedian Patton Oswalt (he was brilliant on the tv show AP Bio, btw) can enjoy his new Netflix special, I LOVE EVERYTHING.

• This is fun. Academy Award winning director, Taika Waititi, is hosting a virtual reading of James & the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl, one of my most favorite children’s book authors, to raise money for Partners in Health. The first two episodes are up on YouTube right now and features a wide range of mega celebrities. Super excited about this, y’all.

• And I’ll leave you with this... Wow.

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