This evening, Bubba Watson added an Augusta National green jacket to his personal collection, which already includes the General Lee, pictured above.
Watson also owns one of the best shots ever hit, thanks to his effort on the second and final playoff hole, where he spun the ball out of the woods and onto the green, setting himself up for the win:
What’s that you want? Some new music in this spot with a sports connection and a socially conscious tilt? Fine. Here’s a brand-new video from a current act named after a NASCAR driver that’s hip to sports and modern rock.
Bdoyk turned me onto these guys, and I’m becoming a fan of their personality as much as their music. Their new video, which features scenes from the city they call home, actually is a reworking of a 1977 Gil Scott-Heron bit described as follows:
The most popular cut on the album, “We Almost Lost Detroit,” which shares its title with the John G. Fuller book published in 1975, recounts the story of the nuclear meltdown at the Fermi Atomic Power Plant near Monroe, MI, in 1966. This song was also contributed to the No Nukes concert and album in 1980.
The Tigers almost lost their season opener against Bdoyk’s Bosox yesterday when the perfect-in-2011 Jose Valverde blew his first save opportunity of the 2012 season and ensured that reigning MVP-Cy-Young-winner Justin Verlander didn’t get his first opening-day win in his fifth consecutive attempt, but the home team pulled out the victory in a Gamecast-hindered bottom of the ninth by scoring on the much-touted (be real: what in Boston sports isn’t “much-touted”?) Alfredo Aceves.
Paragraph-long sentences. Hyphens. The Jam:
They say that the first Super Bowl preview show begins shortly after the prior Super Bowl finishes, and with the crowning of Kentucky as the 2012 national champs late last night, today is the perfect time to post the first preview of the 2013 Final Four. There’s already much to discuss, and we can be sure that the 2013 Final Four will look much different from the one we saw over the last few days.
For one thing, most of the top players from the 2012 tournament– including Kentucky’s Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Kansas’ Thomas Robinson, Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger, Michigan State’s Draymond Green, and Vanderbilt’s Jeffrey Taylor– will be gone to the NBA.
Another reason the 2013 Final Four will look different is that it will be played in Eastern Europe.
In one of the great moments of stealth marketing, the NCAA subtly announced during last night’s championship game that next year’s Final Four would take place in Alanta, Lithuania, a town of 464.
This is a sensible choice for basketball and non-basketball reasons, and it’s a great way to expand the NCAA’s brand abroad.
Lithuania has a strong, proud, and hip basketball tradition most notably marked by its 1992 Olympic team, known as “The Other Dream Team.” Led by Arvydas Sabonis, the Lithuanian squad represented their burgeoning democracy and their sponsors– Grateful Dead Productions– well, taking home the Bronze Medal by defeating Russia, their former overlords, in the Barcelona games.
After surviving a Napoleonic invasion and two World Wars, Alanta has displayed a ruggedness that deservedly caught the eye of the NCAA and shows that it is more than capable of hosting next year’s Final Four.
Last night’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament championship game gave us two champions. Most publicly, Kentucky’s 67-59 win over Kansas handed the 2012 national championship to the Wildcats.
Most importantly to readers of this site, John Calipari’s first national championship sealed Bingo_Bango’s victory in the inaugural ALDLAND Mad as a March Hare March Madness Challenge, a result even casual observers knew for weeks was a lock. A 99% accuracy rate is impressive. Bingo_Bango should email us at aldland[dot]com[at]gmail[dot]com to negotiate a worthy prize.
Here’s the rest of the top ten:
Honorable mentions go to mjpascha 1, who turned in a consistently solid second-place performance, and Goulbourne Supremacy, the winner of the best-entry-name division for the combination of nomenclature and performance.
Finally, dishonorable mentions to your two writer-participants, Brendan and I, who finished outside of the top ten.
Thanks to all of you for playing.
I was a Mike Leach fan long before Craig James took the helm of the mothership and got Leach fired from the head coaching job at Texas Tech. I think I first learned about Leach through an interview on Jim Rome’s radio show and was hooked by his deadpan demeanor and the facts that he has a law degree from Pepperdine and kept an automatronic pirate-skelleton in his office. I’m not even a pirate guy, but the random, dry sense of humor, and the nonchalance with which he carried on his job as a successful college football coach of one of the highest-flying offenses in the nation all combined to hit me just right.
When Leach finally landed his next coaching job, Washington State plainly had gotten a real steal, and though his tone of voice would never betray it, it appears that Leach has embraced his new home as well. From an interview posted yesterday on SB Nation’s WSU site:
Jim Moore: In a battle to the death among Pac-12 mascots, which animal or person wins?
Mike Leach: The Cougar absolutely. Let’s go through this a little bit. A cougar obviously kills a duck and a beaver. A cougar against a husky … that’s pretty well a massacre. A cardinal or whatever: I don’t know exactly what a cougar would either climb it or I wouldn’t want to think of what else he’d do on it. Now Golden Bears could be kinda tough. I think you’d want to be a little fast and loose with them. You don’t want to get caught by that bear. The Ute … you gotta dodge some arrowheads, but I still like the Cougar. Buffalo … I think the buffalo would be pretty tough to beat. Wildcat: Cougars are bigger than wildcats. Sun Devils, that’s mythical anyway. Trojans, they may be as well. I think you gotta look out for the Bruins and the Buffalo. The Golden Bear, Bruin and Buffalo .. I think those are the tough ones.
Moore: Why the Buffalo?
Leach: Do you want to fight a buffalo? I don’t know, those buffalo are big. You know, buffalo are significantly bigger than elk. I grew up near Yellowstone so I’ve been near buffalo. Buffalo are huge. And then the other thing I’ve always gotten a kick out of: When you play Colorado, there’s those buffalo dragging those six handlers around. Those handlers aren’t dragging the buffalo. The buffalo’s dragging him.
Ralphie’s not even a big buffalo. Ralphie pulls those people wherever he wants to.
More on the interview, including audio, is available here.
At the very least, Leach gives WAZZU fans a reason to believe they can climb out of the Pacific Twelve basement and the rest of us a reason to watch that miserable conference.
I woke up this morning without a Friday Jam in mind, but I was thinking about the fact that the Final Four gets underway tomorrow in New Orleans between two Midwest teams and two Kentucky teams, and then it come to me. It came like a flash; like a vision burnt across the clouds! I wrote it down, but I learnt right away that it wasn’t an Arlo Guthrie song.
What better than a newgrass tune from a Midwest band about Louisiana? And if you don’t like that, at least you can gawk at the people trying to figure out how to dance to it, or not, as the young gentleman’s preference may be:
Of course, what we really ought to have for you in this spot is a nod to the recently departed Earl Scruggs. Click here for a song and a brief tribute.
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Magic bought the Dodgers.
Media really loves this story,
forgets The Magic Hour.
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Previously:
Hollywood Nights: Z-Bo and Bishop Don The Magic Juan
It’s time for the Final Four in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. A whole lot of moving and shaking went down in the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight.
Looking at the current standings in ALDLAND’s Mad as a March Hare March Madness Challenge, North Carolina’s loss in the Midwest Regional final to Kansas appeared to shake up the standings the most. Out of our twenty-onetwo entries, here’s the current top ten:
Click here to see the full standings.
While Bingo_Bango managed to avoid heartache by persevering in the top spot since our last update, the Tarheels’ loss kicked WrckMTech 2 from a tie for third out of the top ten and dropped FBDOCameron 1 and lranthony1 1 from that position into a tie for eighth. Perhaps even more notable and as the secret formula predicted last week, SemiNOLA’s leveraged bracket collapsed, falling from sole possession of second place to a tie for seventeenth. Ditto for Can we Have Kemba Back?. Vpresben 1 also slipped, going from a tie for eighth to tenth.
All of this provided opportunities for lower entries– picking Kentucky to win it all appears to be the common feature amongst this group– to climb toward the top. Mjpascha 1 hopped from a tie for third into second place. Best-entry-name category nominees Goldbourne Supremacy (T-8 to T-4) and Escaped from a Tchiengang (T-10 to T-6) were two of the beneficiaries as well, and Ifartblackandgold 1 moved in concert with the latter. (Cf. Twombly v. Bell Atlantic.)
The big award of the week goes to Austin_Payne 1 who jumped from nowhere into a tie for fourth. Additional mention is due to our late-arriving, twenty-second entry, AndyGlossner 1, submitted by a frequent commenter on the site and stepping into an outright hold on third place.
Heading into the final two rounds, things look pretty locked up, although an Ohio State win over Kansas could allow AndyGlossner 1 and Austin_Payne 1 to unseat Bingo_Bango and mjpascha 1.
Finally, a nod to Bingo_Bango and Austin_Payne 1 for unorthodox picks (from the state of Kentucky) to come out of the West, although the former’s selection of Louisville now looks better than the latter’s selection of Murray State.
Enjoy the final two rounds.
Apparently we’re just posting pictures now. This one’s a little less self-evident than the last one, so here’s the accompanying explanation from Chris Ryan, writing about Sunday night’s Grizzlies-Lakers game in L.A.:
Staples Center celeb sightings were pretty fun, if random, last night, with Ashton Kutcher, John McEnroe, David Beckham, and Gerard Butler (gone blond) lighting up courtside with their wattage. But the best appearance of the evening went to a man who seemed to be cheering for the Grizz: Snoop Dogg compatriot Don Magic Juan. Don’t know if there’s ever been a better union of team and fan. Oh, and he seemed to have a preexisting relationship with Zach Randolph, because of course he did.
(via Deadspin)
(HT: @MitchOConnor)
