We lucked out in picking the University of North Carolina’s Rameses as last week’s Monday mascot. The Tar Heels made it to the final game and they will face Michigan State in their almost home court of Ford Field in Detroit Michigan. So, in celebration of the underdog Big 10 making it this far, we will take a look at their mascot, Sparty. Good luck to both the teams tonight as we look forward to getting basketball out of the way in preparation of football. But for now, here’s Sparty.
It’s a slow slow week for the Crib Sheet and we’re scrambling to come up with something interesting. Basketball is all over the place so the college sports attention is clearly focused on that. We here at KCCGD are also .seriously resisting the urge of playing along with April Fool’s Day festivity. We almost expected to see something about Utah seceding from the Union and declaring war on the United States for allowing the BCS to continue. At any rate, here’s the news:
From two Heismans to a national title, Tim Tebow has already accomplished so much. Now a speech he said last year will be engraved on Florida’s new football facility. If he runs for president and wins, I’m leaving the country. He’s already being talked about becoming the new leader of the Republican Party.
Nick Sheridan for Michigan is out for the rest of spring drills due to a broken leg. Looks like the battle for QB up there is hobbled. Will it be enough competition to get the Wolverine offense ready for the big season two Rich Rodriguez turnaround?
Welcome again to Mascot Monday and as we weather another week of March Madness, we must say it’s disappointing that no Big 12 team is in the Final Four. We’ll try to fogoe those woes as we take a look at one of the surviving participants mascot. This week we will look at the University of North Carolina’s Rameses. We learn a little bit about tar, a little bit about rams, and all about why you shouldn’t walk on highway shoulders. This one’s for the KU (and Roy Williams) fans.
There’s not much in news this week as we have college basketball and March Madness to fight with. I’m also fighting a nasty food poisoning bit. That said, some news eeked by and we scooped them up. It’s short and sweet but will give you something to stare at besides all of the red ink on your bracket. Here’s this week’s news:
Charlie Weis is going old school and calling plays from the sideline for Notre Dame this season. Well if you’re gonna go out, you might as well do it swinging from the sidelines.
To no one’s surprise, Kansas State is looking to get out of a tougher schedules in Miami for the next couple of years. Looks like Bill Snyder 2.0 is alot like the 1.0 version.
The Senate is reviewing whether or not non BCS conference schools are at a competitive disadvantage when qualifying for a BCS bowl game. Hey guess what? Orin Hatch is leading the cause and he’s from Utah! They still won’t get over it. Jinkies.
Okay so it isn’t Monday, but the excuse is worthy. Let’s call it a double dose of food poisoning and checking out Ratatat in Columbia Tuesday night. At any rate, this week we’re are offering up some advice to all of the teams (including 3 Big 12) teams some advice. It’s getting down to the final whistle and we here at KCCGD think it’s time to remind the teams of what not to do. So this week we are gonna look at the Grays Harbor Community College’s Charlie Choker.
What is with the Crib Sheet coming out after major late night holidays? First it was Fat Tuesday, which prompted a cold, and now we have St. Patrick’s Day. The Hooley over at Lew’s Grille and Pub was rocking last night as the beer was flowing and the babes were showing. The traditional corned beef and cabbage was again very tasty but Disco Dick and the Mirrorballs disco sucked. The week of college football news did not suck, however.
It seems Colt McCoy is pulling a Tim Tebow and doing charity work in his offtime. This should help him out on his campaign for the Heisman Trophy this year. Although seriously, if Tim Tebow is coming back, there might be a chance the Tim will win a 3rd time in a row. Bolster those resumes!
Some smart folks over at the University of Kansas did a study about true home field advantages and discovered that Nebraska has the largest of them all. That makes sense considering the whole state goes to the games. My problem is, advantage or not, their home record wasn’t the best in the time of the study. Still, it’s pretty cool to play with numbers.
And a new four year deal hit the BCS with the four big daddys (Fiesta, Sugar, Rose, and Orange Bowl) agreeing to a four year extension. Expect to hear the sports media complain about it for a couple of weeks and then fall back on it, say, about the middle of the season. No surprises here.
Huzzah! An Ohio State Buckeye cheerleader, the captain nonetheless, is trying out for the football team. Looks like he can run fast. I bet he can jump pretty high. I’m thinking that the huddles might be a little too annoying. Maybe he can help them come up with better endzone celebrations.
Missouri finally settled with Aaron O’Neil’s family after his death on the practice field before the season started in 2005. I guess they had to wait a bit for the program to generate some money through the athletics before they could write them the check. Meanwhile, the family of a student, Erek Plancher, will file suit against the University of Central Florida after he collapsed and died on the field last year. It seems like the condition drills always take out some kids like that. The large heads of the coaches is the issue here. They don’t want thier kids to be soft and go the ultra pushy machismo way to do it. Maybe legal action should be allowed against the coaches in the scneario? Jail time possibly?
The Bryce Brown lottery is over with double B picking Tennessee. Okay so he had visits to the Vols the last week or so but was nice enough to keep Kansas State in the running. Don’t fret! It’s time to celebrate the last mention of Bryce for a long time.
March Madness continues here as we just got finished here at the KCCGD headquarters reading up on who got in and who bubbled out in the NCAA Tournament. In celebration of this anti-climatic event, we’ll turn our focus this week to a school which lacked success both on the basketball court and the football for a long time now. Cy the Cyclone from Iowa State has a major job in lifting the school spirit of a university who continues to fumble around its athletics. We learn some about Cy’s history and his recent success. We also wonder how amalgamations work in mascotdom.
Another week is rolling by and the Crib Sheet is on full tilt. We are doing our best to ignore the upcoming Juggernaut that is March Madness, until we get enough staff around the KCCGD to cover college basketball. In the meantime, there’s still some football news to cover. Spring practice is opening up and the recruiting carousal is about over. We’re still waiting on Bryce Brown to sign, but at this point the stock is almost completely gone. With that, here was the week in college football:
On a sobering note, Oklahoma redshirt freshmen Corey Wilson is paralyzed from the waist down from the accident he had last week. The worst part is he was a redshirt and didn’t get a chance to play. Let’s hope he recovers the best that he can.
The University of Texas President William Powers is scared silly about losing college football. Huh? Yeah apparently automatic enrollment for smart kids will fill up the school so much the dumb jocks won’t have room. Don’t worry, Boosters will take care of those kids under the table like we all know.
Flo’ Rida State lives up to tradition and gets probation for their players cheating on online tests. There will be some vacated victories and lost scholarships on this doozy. One on hand, you athletes cheating. On the other you have them taking ONLINE tests. It’s incredibly easy to cheat if you have facebook up with your playas and it’s multiple choice.
Jerry Jones’ new stadium in Texas will play host to 3 Big 12 games when it opens. It really has nothing to do with the news. I just wanted to mention that I’m drooling over this stadium and pray one day I can go down there to watch a game. Maybe even the K-State win the Big 12 there.
Tim Griffin tells us that the Houston Chronicle’s study on TV viewership for the Big 12 cities show that sports is king. As a matter of fact, Kansas City ranks second of the cities. No surprise here at the KCCGD seeing as the local schools are doing well and we’re so well mixed in KC. Somebody should start a blog on it…..
March madness is fully underway and this week again we check out a school that has some aspirations this year in the tourney. We also have the added benefit the mascot and school being more topical because of the news they created in college football for that last couple of months. That’s right, this week we are all about the University of Utah’s Swoop! There’s not much to chew on history wise, so we’ll write some up as we look at this fresh young entry into mascot-dom and maybe learn a little something about being big time.
Wow, we’re still feeling the effects from last week. As a matter of fact, last week’s festivities led to a nasty little cold. That’s better than some of the after effects some college football players ran into last week. Never fear, the Crib Sheet remedy is here! We’re dropping this in some Sprite and popping some NyQuil so hold on and go for the ride. Hopefully we’ll be 100% next week.
In the descendant department, Joe Montana’s kid Nick tackled some scholarship offers from Alabama, Flordia State, and Notre Dame. The son of a qb who’s a qb too might get better luck if he goes somewhere other than the Fighting Irish. The shoes would be too big to fill and so far the quaterbacks coming out of dome town aren’t living up to the past. Nick Cool doesn’t work, how about Nick Sweet?
Somehow Columbia, Missouri landed in the top 10 on Forbes list for top college sports towns. Well I guess Lawrence was too pretentious and Austin is more of a party town. Manhattan doesn’t even come close. I guess it’s cool that they are on the list, but they need to win a championship somewhere to deserve top 10 status.
The Bryce Brown saga continues after a couple of swerves. The NCAA is investigating Brian Butler, the mentor for Brown, to figure out if he’s more of an agent than a mentor. The former rapper has been representing Wichita football players and pimping them on his website. Not sure there’s much mentoring there. Meanwhile, some rumor mongering points to Oklahoma being on the sweepstakes for Brown. I’m not sure they’ll pull him in late, but the fact that Kansas State is on the list still is laughable. Maybe Brown will lose so much cred out of this that he’ll walk on to Wildcat territory, only to regain his rep. In my dreams. In my dreams.
Speaking of Wildcat territory, it seems some old friends are coming back to Manhattan to help Bill Snyder 2.0 out. Jonathan Beasley and Joe Gordon are coming back to fill out some spots left open by some movements. Thankfully, Bill is going to former players to help rebuild the tradition (however small it may be) of the Kansas State Wildcats.
So a Division II school in Newberry dropped their mascot name, Indians, under pressure from the NCAA. That’s fine and all, but where is the pressure for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish? If the NCAA is going to go with regulating names then it needs to be consistent across the board. Now Illinois dropped it, but Florida State got the write from Indians to use it. So is it really worth going after, or is it a PR stunt to make everyone feel good about themselves?
Let me tell you somethin’ dude, the Kiffster is gonna run wild over you! Well, maybe not that but one of the tactics he’s using at Tennessee is encouraging his coaches rip off their shirts a-la Hulk Hogan. So whatcha gonna do? WHATCHA GONNA DO?
What’s up with all of the footballplayersbeingarrestedin theoffseason. Yeah they’re young and in college, but they’re the leaders of the campus. There’s a time to party and a time to get ready for some football. The way I see it, the only players that can party now are the ones from Florida.
So we finally figure out why Andy Ludwig left Kansas State after 2 months to go back to Cali. His family all lives on the coast out there. I would call shenanigans if Tim Griffin didn’t point out that he’d be eating some salary in the deal (cost of living wise). Oh well.
We’re heading to the Big East this week and in the spirit of march madness coming, we here at the KCCGD are picking a traditionally powerful basketball school in the University of Connecticut Huskies. Even though their football program seems to be turning the corner, sharing a conference championship in 2007, the Huskies enjoy a dominant basketball team, with coach Jim Caple nabbing his 800th win last week. But we won’t check the facts about Jim and instead turn our attention toward Jonathan the Husky. The average requirements are covered with Jonathan, even though what the Huskies evoke are memories that are not too average.
Last night was Fat Tuesday and I’m still wiped out. The scene at the Power & Light district was much like a Baylor home football game. Desolate. The relocation to Westport served us right as we had our choice of primo talent floating around there. While we’re in the college football offseason, it seems some primo football talent likes to float around between commitments as well. But they all aren’t as floating as I am after inhaling the kalidescope of meds to make it through the day.
The recession is hitting everybody, including college football. Some schools won’t print media guides, some are taking the bus, and poor Ohio State’s coaching per diem went down from $65 to $45. I guess we all have to tighten our belts a bit and I look forward to seeing Jim Tressel grabbing a Whopper.
So Texas Tech and Mike Leach finally got it done. Leach will have to notify in writing about interviews with other teams and there’s no bank on the buyout. Good. Great. Rad! Wonderful! I was getting tired of writing about this.
Lou Holtz is turning Japanese and heading to Tokyo with a bunch of Notre Dame Legends to face an All-Japanese football team. Good luck to those guys, I hope they don’t break a hip or eat bad poi. This kinda reminds me of how Mick Foley went to Japan to help ressurect his career, if I may expose my wrasslin’ fandom.
Missouri’s Defensive Coordinator Matt Eberflus could be upgrading to the NFL in the form of linebackers coach for the Cleveland Browns. Um, the Offensive Coordinator I can understand leaving, but the Defensive Coordinator? Welp he’s not going to be an NFL coordinator so I guess I can see it. Still, Missouri’s defense is pretty weak.
We all know that Utah got hosed again this year, but the Mountain West Conference just won’t let it go. The conference commish rolled into Washington to raise awareness about how the BCS is flawed. Okay. We get it. But trying to use Congress in this economic time seems just a little too classless. Stop whiningn before you lose more precious cred that you just built up, Mountain West Conference.
In other coaching moves, Andy Ludwig was going to be the Offensive Coordinator for Bill Snyder at Kansas State, but after six weeks on the job, he took a similar position at California. Oh well, I’ve seen faster moves. Even Jolly clocks in at 3 days for a job. Hopefully the Wildcats will nail down a coach before spring practice.
But at least their schedule for the 2009 season is filled, as ESPN blogger Tim Griffin reports. Look out Tennessee Tech as your fearsome FCS status will be prepared to be rolled by Kansas State on September 26. Um yeah, actually this should be close.
The Mangino Baby makes a return as for some reason the Lawrence Journal World decided to do a follow up on the lil tyke. Basically, the kid was born huge and looks like Mark Mangino from Kansas. The picture itself is hilarious, but like all things Mangino, Kansas fans seem to embrace it and use it more as inspiration than poking fun at a fat guy. It usually helps when you win the Orange Bowl.
There’s some weird things going down in Nebraska. First, Patrick Witt’s transferring out of there because Bo Pelini couldn’t guarantee he could be the starter this year. To even things out, David Oku (a high running back recruit) enrolled at a school in Lincoln, Nebraska even though he supposedly committed to Tennessee. Welp a running back for a quaterback is not that bad but the way it happened was just plain ridiculous.
We’re getting close to some March Madness around here (even though we don’t cover basketball yet) and we hear at the KCCGD figured it would be a good time to check up on the Tourney perennials from the Missouri Valley Conference. After inadvertently chuggin some Pabst’s Blue Ribbon, rocking out to some Slayer, and working on an ’85 Camaro, we felt the Saluki from Southern Illinois was the way to go for this week’s mascot. A Saluki is a dog, but not just any ole dog. This one has bite and will bark about it on his way to the biker bar, brother.
You know, we here at the KCCGD figured that the college football off season would be dank with news but after this last week, we can say that there always something to talk about. We’ve got contract negotiations, run ins with the law, rule changes, and even where are they nows (or end ups). The biggest of the bunch being the Mike Leach contract talks. But we will never, ever talk about the Nebraska spring practice game. Here’s what happened in the last week:
So there’s a proposition floating around to make pre endzone celebrations penalized and points taken off the board. I guess the treat of points slipping from the board will make players think twice, but I would go with the penalty first and if that doesn’t work then hit them up with points.
Kansas coach Mark Mangino promoted a couple of coaches. When it rains, it pours. The success of the Jayhawks goes around for everybody on the staff. Although when it rains on Coach Mangino, I bet his feet never get wet.
In Big 10 land, Iowa re-upped Kirk Ferentz’s contract with more dough going into his pockets. A little rumor goes a long way. When the Kansas City Chiefs fired Herman Edwards, on of the replacements on the list was Kirk Ferentz. Kirk needs to send Scott Pioli a fruit basket.
The vaunted, Charlie Weiss led, Notre Dame Fighting Irish will now be more lead by Chuck as he’s taking over on offensive play calling. They had a bowl year last year to save his butt, but taking over on calls makes me a little worried. I’m gonna go dust off the clock on his hot seat right now.
Be ready for some Mizzou mania early on in the year on ESPN. They are playing the Big 12 opener against Nebraska on Oct. 8. Which means we get the game against Nevada and the season opener against Illinois on TV as well. The earlier the better, as this year will be an off one for the Tigers.
I’m trying really hard not to talk about baseball in any form, but when they are recruiting 12 yeard olds it gets to be too much to handle. Please oh please don’t be like baseball and take the fun out of the game at young age. Let the kid grow up some first before buying him an iPhone.
Ivan Maisel reminds us that the BCS won’t change for awhile. He goes on to talk about Jerry Jone’s mega dome and how it could be the potential home for the Sugar Bowl. That would make it more of a player than the other BCS bowls. Tune in next four years as the BCS turns.
Taking his ball and going home, Ron Prince will be named the new Associate Head Coach at Virginia. Welp he had a 3 year run as a head coach, ruined a program, and is pretty much right back where he started. Good luck and good riddance.
This week’s Mascot Monday takes us to the deep south of the Big 12 and the Baylor Bears. We’ll go over what keeps the weakest team in the South going spirit wise while taking a peek back at the history of the mascots. It’s not B.J. and the Bear or Hardcastle and McCormick, but Judge and Bruiser! Not really as seen on TV but close enough. Just don’t sit too close to the screen or you’ll ruin your eyes.
