Whew! Another close one for the Big 12. I swear, the Big 12 is the greatest thing since MTV’s The Real World. If you want to talk about the best conferences, then the one with the best drama factor definitely is the Big 12. Yeah, they are staying together but we really don’t know for how long. So while they hold hands again and tell everybody that things are cool, let’s focus on some actual football. This week’s Pick It an Stick It kind of reflects the noise off the field. Like the Big 12, most of the great games are stuck together around 2:30 Saturday. That’s fine for me and my barspotting trip, but how will it fare for the picks? Continue reading Pick It And Stick It 2011 Week 04: Sticking Together→
It’s the hustle and bustle of college football. At the beginning of the year, everyone is tied 0-0. Slowly and weekly, the winners bubble up and the losers peter out. We’re getting into week 3 and it’s still crowded. We haven’t yet hit the real bubbling point. Apparently it’s Road Test Weekend so we’ll more than likely get the cauldron cooking real quick. Speaking of being crowded, I’m planning and surfing the flesh at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Granted I have Sunday tickets so it won’t be too bad, but Saturday’s at Third Base Sports Bar. Let’s hope people don’t bubble up vomit and I don’t peter out.
That’s right, I’ll be on a plane shortly but I want to get the picks up for the week. It’s hard to stay focused with the Big 12 in legal gridlock. You know, I thought professional wrestling was soap opera for guys but now I know that college football realignment is the real deal. No offense to the WWE, but this stuff is way better than the scripted stuff I used to watch. So as the conference turn, get your picks in and hope for the best.
It’s another week of Mascot Monday and we’re heading up to the Great North…West! The Washington Huskies looked to be competitive last year with mega-stud quarterback Jake Locker at the helm. The season fizzled early with a beatdown from Nebraska but they totally redeemed themselves with a win over the Cornhuskers at the Holiday Bowl. This week we bring the freshness as both the live and costumed version of the mascots recently went under some improvements. We’ll also question why some universities don’t give enough love on their websites to mascots. Bring a coat, it’s gonna get just a tad bit chilly.
Here we are in the middle of bowl season. I got some good gear for Xmas and I hope you got some too. The bowl action was light in the last week, but we are now ramping up into the meat of the schedule. Most of the Big 12 schools will be playing this week and there will be ample action in between. Meanwhile, I Bowl Pick It and Stick It standings are out are some peeps jumping out of the gate quick. Let’s look at that first:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Happy holidays from KC College GameDay! It’s bowl season and I’ll do a couple of recaps in the next couple of days as well as run down some bowls I’m in to. In the meantime, we have a fat Crib Sheet so let’s get to it:
Meanwhile, the Nebraska Huskers suspended defensive tackle Baker Steinkuhler for getting a DUI last week. He’ll be out of the Holiday Bowl and the Husker’s rematch against Washington.
Even though I think Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany is evil incarnate, I do agree with him on holding back the college football playoff. His reasons come from a wealth of ego. Delany says that the Big Ten sacrificed enough by letting other conferences play in the Rose Bowl. There’s enough ego around other commissioners that there would be no way a playoff would bubble up.
Let’s take a look at how some Big 12 coaches voted in the final coaches poll of the year. Interesting stuff here, especially the one where Bo Pelini ranked his Cornhuskers #8 even though they lost to Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship Game.
Speaking of coaches, the USA Today has a break down of some interesting contract provisions for some of the coaches out there. Bill Snyder 2.0 gets a free ride and tickets to basketball games. If Mack Brown resigns, he’ll be reassigned to another a part of the school. Mike Sherman gets a cool $100K for appearing or being named a national champion.
Keeping with Bo Pelini, he had to shoot down rumors of taking the Miami job that’s up for grabs now. Usually, when rumors like that happen, it means that something is ticking. It makes sense, too. Miami got rid of an upstanding Randy Shannon because he wasn’t winning games. Shannon did turn around the program in terms of class act athletes. Bo Pelini coaches the opposite way.
The Big 12 used to be known for high scoring shoot outs. This year sees a return to defense as either the stars moved away to the NFL or schools coached up their kids. The only two top 10 offenses in college football this year that come from the Big 12 are Baylor and Oklahoma State. Guess who happens to play each other tomorrow? That game will be a shootout and is for the top spot in the Big 12 South. This year is turning out to be majorly weird. Don’t let that vex you as we set you up for this week’s Pick It and Stick It.
Yesterday was the first Halloween at the new place and I have to say that the trick or treater representation was mega weak. Me and my lovely lady had two big ole bags of variety candy and we only about 5 kids show up. As of right now, we are through one bag. I’m not sure I can make much more as the thought of gnawing down another Charleston Chew is starting to make me sick. There was plenty to be sick about for college football around the Kansas City area as well as the Pick It and Stick It sets so let’s bring a glass water for this
It’s that time of the year people! No, not when we break our backs raking leaves, but the time when the BCS Stadings start coming out! For those of you that follow the blog religiously know that we like to take some time out of the heated Pick It and Stick It Standings to go over the BCS fight as well. We’re in week 7 of the picks and there’s a large gap between #2 and #3. Will it grow or shrink in the weeks to come? Meanwhile, the first BCS Standings show that computers are way smarter than people and they also like surprises too.
The big game last night didn’t end up so well for this Kansas State fan. Hey, that’s okay. We tooled to Aggiveille and hit up the Hibachi Hit, which later lead to the vaunted Hibachi Butt. Maybe it was the mixture of great cajun food and the Carbomb we had at O’Malley’s Alley. Who knows? But it was great to see the old stomping grounds, even though the Wildcats were run over by Taylor Martinez and the Nebraska Cornhuskers. More on that with Monday’s post. Until then, we have some picks for the weekend we need to go through. The healing process begins with pickens.
The only other thing this week’s Crib Sheet needs is bacon. Grab some and check it out:
Notre Dame’s Dayne Crist played the rest of the first drive of the game against Michigan with blurred vision out of his right eye. It was just enough blurry vision to keep him out of the rest of the first half. It was a great game and we wonder what the score would be like if he was healthy for the whole game.
Much like Wrigley Field of baseball, the Big House will get permanent lights for night games. Will we ever see the docket of Big 10 games go well into the night? Since the Big 10 Network is around you can bet on the conference trying to expand all of its games throughout the day and weekends.
Speaking of stadiums, the Richmond Spiders will actually get to play a home game in their own stadium for the first time in 82 years. It seems the city owned the place they were playing at and it wasn’t even on campus. This should help Richmod realize its full potential and become a powerhouse in football for years to come.
We see some players go from college football to major league baseball but it’s rare when the other way happens. Welp it happened with Nick Doscher. He’s playing at quarterback for Wagner College after a stint as catcher in the farm system for the Kansas City Royals. This guy must be able to manage the game because of his catcher status. If he was a pitcher we would guess he would throw all over the place in a passing attack.
Phil Fulmer put the full frontal audible attack on Lane Kiffin last week. He used to be Tennessee head coach before Kiffin came on. He’s wondering how Kiffin uses his mojo to get the cush coaching jobs. It’s a good thing he used his smack talk on his now current CBS analyst gig. Let the media war begin.
The Chick-fil-A Kickoff will now have two games starting in 2012. We already knew that Tennessee will take on N.C. State but now Auburn will take on Clemson, too. All this does is make me more hungry for Chick-fil-A sandwiches.
Here’s a lesson: When you talk with an ESPN reporter, more than likely you will be on record. Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian learned the hard way when he talked about Reggie Bush and not apologizing for the Heisman/eligibility problem. Serves Sarkisian right. He was an offensive coordinator during this debacle and he should get some negative rub it too.
Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio was so thrilled about his overtime fake field goal for the win against Notre Dame last week that he had a heart attack. He’s okay, but we think he needs to lay off the coffee a bit. Notre Dame’s not looking to good this year anyway.
Houston, we have a problem. (I’ve been waiting so long to say that!) The Cougars quarterback Case Keenum and his backup Cotton Turner are out with season ending injuries. Keenum has a bum knee and Turner has a broken collarbone. Houston lost to UCLA in a blow out and they probably won’t recover from these damages.
Missouri defensive end Aldon Smith is out two weeks with a broken leg. A broken leg? That sounds like more than a two week thing. Is this guy some kind of cyborg or something?
Colorado head coach Dan Hawkins was so pumped about the Buffaloes games against Hawaii that he head butted a player and cut himself. They needed that emotion to come from behind and win but we’re not sure if it will save the Hawk’s Big 12 campaign.
The olny Ohio player to show some emotion and gusto against Ohio State was the mascot. He jumped Brutus Buckeye and now he’s banned from being a mascot again. It also turns out that he planned to do it all along. Now that’s some mascot grudge.
Here we go rolling into another week of Pick It and Stick It. The games are fresh this week and we are stoked about the upcoming Farmageddon happening right in Kansas City’s backyard. Kansas State is a 3.5 point favorite over Iowa State and we can imagine that Daniel Thomas is the reason for the line. Will we see the same outcome as last year? Hopefully it will be just as exciting. So far, Farmageddon delivers on quality. Here are the picks:
It’s amazing to think how long we have been doing this blog. Three years. That’s dedication, homes. One of the very first places we barspotted was The Other Place. It was a great time and now it’s time again to head back over there. What better place to watch Farmageddon other than Arrowhead than deep into one of the few Iowa/Iowa State bars in the area. Yeah, we could go to Kite’s or Lucky Brewgrille for the Kansas State side of things but The Other Place is so much better and it’s been a long time since we’ve been there. So let’s re-live some good times and meet us out there Saturday to watch Farmegeddon blow us away.
Cinco de Mayo not only brings the Mexican in everyone, but it also brings out another week of the Crib Sheet! We’re going to celebrate by munching some nachos and busting open a pinata or two. No cervesas here. It’s a school day. Or more importantly, it’s not a college football primetime night or a Saturday chock full of football. On to this week’s Crib Sheet:
Mark Emmert is your new NCAA president, starting November 1. He’ll have to deal with all of this expansion hullabaloo from the Big 10 as well as television and money deals. This came as a shock to everyone as the former Washington guy is more progressive than the other counterparts considered for the position.
Speaking of the NCAA, they are making the schools come up with detailed plans on handling concussions after they recommended that they sideline players for the rest of the game if symptoms show up. It’s great that they are being proactive on this medical issue now they need to put forth some effort on sickle cell disease.
In the case of blogging gone wild, the local Missouri run news crew let slip last week that Missouri to the Big 10 was a “done deal.” The only problem, it was based on a 3rd person recount of talk overheard from a Pac 10 AD. On a podcast! Okay, so this expansion thing is going to rule the rest of the summer and we’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Our thoughts about it will show up here eventually, but in the mean folks try not to jump on every little rumor.
Joe Montana’s son, Nick, was looking good during Washington’s spring game. Is it genes or head coach Steve Sarkisian? Welp the coach is the former offensive coordinator during the national championship run of USC. We’re going with coach.
Big East coaches are putting the pressure on Notre Dame to commit fully to the conference. The basketball team plays there and now they want the football team. The Fighting Irish is the pivot in the expansion talks. They are the ones with their own national tv contract. If the Big 10 was smart, they would pick up the national exposure and double down on the title game on NBC.
Welcome to the final Pick It and Stick It standings for the year of 2009. It’s been a wild year and we learned a couple of things from it. Forgetting a week is killer and next year, we’ll set it up so we can knock off the lowest scoring week. This will help out and maybe even save some things from the holidays or championship week. We also learned a little bit on how to play against the spread. Our recommendation to whoever wins the league (we’ll find out after the break) is to take that winning style to a bookie and spread out some small cash around next year. That is, if you are the gambling type. Speaking of which, we’ll also go over the prize and how we are going to deliver it (or not). Continue reading Pick It Standings: Final 2009→
