The Fab Five and the Final Four: A Twenty-Year Timeout

Posted on April 8, 2013 by AD

Ten Years After was a British blues-rock band centered around guitarist Alvin Lee, who died last month. Twenty years after his team played in the national championship, Chris Webber, the central figure of Michigan’s Fab Five, hasn’t returned from an infamous timeout that is an inescapable part of his legacy. Tonight, the Wolverines are back in the national championship for the first time in exactly twenty years, and while all five members of the Fab Five will be here in Atlanta tonight, as far as we know, only four of them will be inside the Georgia Dome to watch the game.

Last night, friend-of-the-site Jalen Rose laid out the situation and made a public appeal to C-Webb:

For anyone questioning the mix of coverage on this site: An authoritative, photographic edict of affirmation

Posted on April 4, 2013 by AD

For some reason, some people thought that a mere geolocational shift away from the siting of most of my favorite teams would lead to a sudden abandonment of lifelong allegiances. While that idea plainly is ludacris, I’ve always been interested in what’s happening within my immediate locality, so it’s only natural that I would want to xzibit that sort of content in addition to continued addressing of my non-spatially bound interests. These are concepts that can coexist in my mind and on this site, but you don’t have to take my word for it, because there’s photographic evidence of this unity after the jump.

View photo…

Auburn’s Tainted Title: Victims, Violations and Vendettas for Glory (via Roopstigo)

Posted on April 3, 2013 by AD

Mike McNeil can detail how the culture of big-time football works in a fast-growing community of 53,000 under the thumb of its major industry: Auburn University athletics. In an economic impact survey by the school in 2007, the report stated: “a conservative estimate of Auburn football’s direct visitor expenditures is more than $79.6 million during seven home events. That spending generates some $173 million in economic impact.” The university tentacles reach everywhere as the leading employer in Lee County. Chris Hughes, the judge who is scheduled to sit on the bench at Mike’s trial next week, is an Auburn University alumnus. According to his website, he once worked at the university coliseum and his sister is an Auburn University professor. The school is a massive construction zone these days thanks to public funding and the largesse of wealthy alumni, many of whom sit in luxury boxes at Jordan-Hare Stadium, seating capacity 87,451.

As part of the BCS-dominant SEC, Auburn athletics feeds off the more than $3 billion earned by the conference through network and cable TV deals and will be part of an incoming stream of millions more with the SEC TV Network set to launch in 2014. “They recruit you by telling you what you want to hear: You’re family; you’re like a son to me,” says Mike. “But the reality is your class schedule is planned around football, not the other way around. It’s a business and there are players on the payroll.”

McNeil is not alone in understanding how Auburn football operates as an underground society beneath the NCAA’s radar. “Auburn does whatever Auburn wants,” says Thorpe. In interviews with more than a dozen players from the BCS title team, a portrait emerges of a championship tainted by allegations suggesting a program going off the rails. … Read More

(via Roopstigo)

Bay of Cigs: WSJ throws a wet newspaper on the Tigers’ 2013 chances

Posted on April 3, 2013 by AD

Sometimes the Tigers can’t win for winning. Detroit opened the 2013 season on the road in chilly Minneapolis with a 4-2 victory, a win for ace Justin Verlander, and a save for closing committee chairman Phil Coke.

So you know it isn’t just me, independent sources call Verlander “the best pitcher in baseball.” Independent sources also have a way of being wet blankets, which is what the Wall Street Journal was when Continue reading →

Bubba Watson continues to be the best

Posted on April 2, 2013 by AD

The rules of golf coverage on ALDLAND are simple: keep it to things only tangentially related to the miserable game of golf, and feature people like Bubba Watson and Brandt Snedeker in those contexts whenever possible.

Watson is the defending Masters champion, and he’s a Georgia alum who, unlike his alma mater, has never had trouble maintaining his own, unique sense of style, thanks to things like his pink driver and homespun approaches to the game and haircuts.

As the internet discovered today, though, he really has ratcheted it up a notch in the leadup to his Masters defense:

What’s surprising is that this may not even be Watson’s most exciting vehicle.

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Previously
Bill Murray, a character on course
Brandt Snedeker, a presence at tailgates
Urban golfing in Detroit
Jungle Bird
Bubba’s other ride

More logo trouble for the University of Georgia?

Posted on April 2, 2013 by AD

One of ALDLAND’s first investigative reports involved the recognizable “G” logo that appears on the University of Georgia’s football helmets, among many other places. The symbol also appears on the helmets of the Green Bay Packers and Grambling University. As it turns out, it was the Packers who first started using it in 1961, and they subsequently licensed it to Georgia and Grambling.

Today, Georgia’s athletics department unveiled a “new secondary mark that Nike has helped us create.”

Perhaps coincidentally, Nike also sponsors Butler University athletics. Both schools’ mascot is the bulldo/awg.

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Related
Who first owned the G?

NCAA Tournament: Onto the Final Four

Posted on April 1, 2013 by AD

In terms of the success of pre-tournament predictions, this has to be one of the maddest Marches on record, right? Or, as you can see above, maybe it’s just me. Marcus maintains the first place position with the slimmest of leads, and with no points remaining on the board for him, he is barely clinging to that lead. Any of the top four entries could win it all, but WrckMTech has by far the best shot of winning it all, retaining three of his or her final four teams, both finals teams (the favored Louisville and Michigan), and national champion (the Cardinals). Brendan and Baddeus Thaddeus have identical brackets from this point forward, but neither of them likely are able to catch WrckMTech.

Click the image above to expand it, and review all the bloody details here.

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Upton Abbey: Episode 1 – Beginning, as we must, with Chipper

Posted on April 1, 2013 by AD

In addition to an ongoing feature on the Detroit Tigers– this year entitled Bay of Cigs— this season, with opening day at hand, it’s time to reveal a second series, Upton Abbey, to cover the Atlanta Braves.

Just as the 2013 edition of the Tigers feature started with a look at those who had left the team, this series begins with one of the most notable departures in franchise history, Chipper Jones, who retired after his nineteenth MLB season, all with the Braves.

While players with long, successful careers sometimes find themselves wanting to return to the game as the first season following their retirement, in Jones’ case, it was another team’s general manager who was trying to prod the star back into action. Continue reading →

Bay of Cigs: A Tiger is a Tiger is a Tiger

Posted on March 29, 2013 by AD

Buster Olney reports:

Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers have reached agreement on a new contract that could exceed $202 million, sources told ESPN’s Buster Olney.

Verlander’s deal, which would make him the highest-paid pitcher in the game, is for seven years and worth $180 million, sources said. A vesting option for an eighth year could push the deal to $202 million.
…
Verlander, who would have been eligible to become a free agent after the 2014 season, had recently said he wouldn’t discuss a new contract if a deal didn’t get done by the end of spring training.

Verlander celebrated with a baby tiger (above). Additional details are not known.

In other pitching news, the team sent relief prospect Bruce Rondon back to the minors and announced they’ll begin the season with a “closer-by-committee” approach. The seven-member committee reportedly does not include Rick Porcello, who was listed as part of Detroit’s starting rotation. As mentioned last time, I was a bit concerned that management might give him the relief job, but since then, Jonah Keri assuaged my fears about that prospect,

http://twitter.com/jonahkeri/status/316643566006972417

and yesterday’s announcement makes it look like that possibility will not come to pass. Still, it would be nice to have one go-to guy who is reliable, even if he isn’t quite the unicorn on a waterslide that was 2011 Jose Valverde. Look to people far more qualified than I to say whether GM Dave Dombrowski, a personnel master of the first order, can bring in someone capable of holding down the job. For now, though, I think Dombrowski has earned a weekend off after locking up Verlander for the meaningful future.

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Previously
Bay of Cigs: The Departed – 3/14

Sweet Sixteen preview: Florida Gulf Coast rides the Freedom Train into the Elite Eight

Posted on March 28, 2013 by AD

The first half of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament’s octofinals is tonight. Marquette-Miami. Arizona-Ohio State. Syracuse-Indiana. La Salle-Wichita State. Tournament darlings Florida Gulf Coast don’t play until tomorrow, but the number of profiles of their team already is growing at an exponential rate. I’ve criticized Jonathan Mahler before, but his latest for the still-mysterious Bloomberg View is fun:

If you’re wondering how Florida Gulf Coast University became the first 15th seed in the history of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament to advance to the Sweet 16, look no further than the ur-text of the school’s economics department: “Atlas Shrugged.”

Embedded in this long, ponderous novel — required reading for all undergraduate economics and finance majors at FGCU — is the formula for transforming your college from a bunch of trailers on a swamp into the most talked-about school in the country. It’s simple, really. All you need to do is practice what Ayn Rand called “rational self-interest.”

Don’t waste your time wooing Nobel laureates to your faculty or trying to recruit National Merit Scholars to a college they’ve never heard of. Do what any self-respecting entrepreneur would do: Devote your resources to building a first-class Division I basketball program.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but FGCU pulled it off pretty quickly. It might have happened sooner, were it not for that great bane of Rand and her acolytes: regulators. The Eagles basketball program started in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and had to apply more than once before being accepted into the National Collegiate Athletic Association — at the Division II level. Even after being granted permission to move up to Division I, the team had to wait three years before becoming eligible for postseason play.

Read the rest here.

Can the FGCU Eagles drive their freedom train into the next round? Tune in tomorrow night to find out.

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