Author Archives: AD

News clips

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Spending all day on the road meant I got to hear all the daytime sports radio I could handle. Thrilling, I know. I did pick up a few interesting nuggets, though:

– If Johnny Manziel wins the Heisman Trophy this year, as experts now expect, he will be the first freshman to do so. He won’t be the youngest winner, though. That distinction belongs to Mark Ingram, Jr.

– Apparently there’s some sort of adderall flap surrounding the Philadelphia Eagles and other NFL players. All the obvious issues aside, ProFootballTalk.com’s Mike Florio said that he thinks the adderall story is a cover up. Because the NFL has a policy of not commenting or elaborating on players’ positive drug tests, the players are free to say whatever they’d like about the test. Florio thinks that adderall is the convenient cover story du jour for players who actually tested positive for a more controversial substance.

– Kentucky hired Florida State defensive coordinator Mike Stoops to serve as Joker Phillips’ replacement at the football head coach position. While Kentucky local sports talk radio listeners generally approved of the hire, citing the successes of the Stoops family and Mike’s own rapid improvement of the FSU defense, no one mentioned the only factor that matters right now for the future success of UK football: program funding. Don’t forget that the UK athletic department just spent more on a preseason basketball pep rally than it did on an entire year of football recruiting. For Stoops’ sake, I hope he negotiated a substantial increase in funding for the football program. If not, his pedigree and resume will be irrelevant.

– Before leaving Army for Duke, Mike Krzyzewski interviewed at Vanderbilt but didn’t take the job because the VU athletic director at the time, fearing media exposure of an ongoing search, wouldn’t let Coach K visit the campus.

Rutgers and Maryland to join the Big Ten

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Rutgers and Maryland have joined the Big Ten conference.

From the Big Ten perspective, what a stupid idea. What an obviously stupid idea. Just because everybody’s jumping off the sinking Big East ship as fast as possible doesn’t mean the Big Ten needs to act as a refugee camp for below-average escapees. Already in a bad spot heading into this fall, the Big Ten has made itself worse this week, and no comment about “Maryland basketball” or “Rutgers and the New York market” can change my mind.

ALDLAND college football weekend update, part 2

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After the aforementioned noon games, Tennessee visits Vanderbilt for a 7:00 pm (eastern) game in which the Vols will try to get their first SEC win of the year. UT is 0-6 in conference, while Vandy is 4-3 and already bowl-eligible.

In fact, Tennessee’s only SEC win in the last two years was an overtime win over the Commodores in Knoxville that absolutely should not have ended the way it did. (In case you’ve forgotten: https://aldland.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/moonshine-hangover-what-happened-at-the-end-of-vandyut-last-night.)

For the Commodores, a win over their in-state rival always would be sweet. A win tonight also would guarantee Vanderbilt winning overall and conference records. (It also probably would result in the firing of yet another SEC coach predicated on a loss to Vanderbilt.)  A good thing for a program that really looks like it’s on a legitimate upward climb even within one of the deepest conference divisions in the country.

ALDLAND college football weekend update, part 1

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As announced, Brendan will be attending and (has already begun) live-tweeting The Game. If you want to follow along, make sure you’re following ALDLAND on Twitter (@ALDLANDia), something you probably should be doing anyway.

Although I am indeed in the midst of a relocation project, I’m taking a break to attend senior day in Ann Arbor, where the Wolverines will be hosting the Iowa Hawkeyes. Key questions include: 1) Will Michigan senior QB Denard Robinson play a meaningful snap, and if so, at what position? 2) Will the mobile reception situation be as bad as it was last time? and 3) Without my charger, will my phone battery even last long enough to make the answer to question (2) relevant? Strategic packing during a move is difficult.

For live coverage of both games, follow @ALDLANDia on Twitter.

The Good Old Hockey Game (via Grantland)

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What I miss most about hockey are the different ways things look, and the different ways things sound. There is nothing in sports like walking out into an arena in which everything is dark except for the gleaming sheet of ice below. Nothing sounds quite like the hiss of the blades, and the different sounds of the different tiny detonations — a puck onto a stick, a puck onto the glass, a puck onto the boards, a body into the boards — that make up the action. They are all sharp and varied, like the argumentative calls of exotic crows. What I miss most about hockey are the many ways it is so different from everything else. Everything is so damned vivid. This is, of course, only part of the reason that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman needs to be rendered naked, smeared with honey and jam, and dragged behind a Zamboni across an endless field of anthills.

Or something.

I am not even the greatest of hockey fans, but I know this one thing: Outside of NASCAR fans — who are outliers in so many ways, including, alas, which way many of them would have been rooting at Gettysburg — hockey fans have a more intimate relationship with their sport than do any other fans. Their devotion to the game as a game is more enduring than that of most football fans, and it is far less insufferable than that of most baseball fans, the latter of which, I believe, would be content if the games were contested on spreadsheets by columns of inhuman figures. (A large percentage of football fans also prefers to look on the games as columns of figures, most of which end, oddly enough, with “-10,” or “O/U 65.”) In certain parts of the country, like, say, the Boston area, in which I grew up and I live right now, hockey fans follow the collegiate and professional levels with equal fervor — as opposed to basketball fans with their endless, stupid arguments about whether or not the college game is superior to the NBA version — because, in both cases, you’re simply watching hockey, which is all that matters. … Read More

(via Grantland)

Do they Lov[i]e him badly?

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The Chicago Bears are off to a great start this season with a 7-1 record, good enough for first place atop the difficult NFC North division. Their offensive attack has become much more balanced, and some younger players are rising up to keep their stalwart defense sharp. Players like Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall, and Charles Tillman rightly are receiving lots of attention and credit for success.

There’s one name I haven’t heard or seen mentioned even once across the media spectrum, though, and it belongs to the Bears’ head coach, Lovie Smith. I don’t know whether Smith deserves any credit for the Bears success this season, but as the head coach, it would seem like he does. As far as I can tell, though, no one is talking about him at all.

People sure were talking about Smith when things went south for the Bears during the last couple seasons, though, and the image we were given of him was that of a quiet coach who maybe didn’t have that strong a grasp of the game or that much control over his team. Someone had to be blamed for the losses, though, and after everybody was done ripping Cutler and his perceived attitude, they turned the spotlight on Smith.

I don’t have WGN on 24/7, but I have heard more in the national media about all of the former Vanderbilt Commodores who now play for the Bears than I have about Smith, which, again, is nothing. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with this. I’m just making a note of it.

Silent Film Series: Halloween Edition

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Over the weekend, I decided it was time to start transitioning my music listening into the autumnal mode, and rather than go straight to Harvest on the vinyl, I decided to ease into things with Jerry Garcia’s second solo album, a 1974 release known as Garcia (Compliments). The version I have comes from a Garcia boxed set, which means it has a number of bonus tracks appended to those songs that comprised the original release. Like a lot of Garcia’s solo work, there are plenty of cover tunes on this album, and while I generally like the release more than the two-star rating it received from AllMusic, there’s one song in particular that’s stuck out to me since my first listen.

The tune is one of the bonus tracks, an R&B-type cover entitled “(I’m a) Road Runner,” written by the hit-making Holland-Dozier-Holland Motown songwriting team, and first recorded by Junior Walker and the All-Stars in 1965. Of the versions I’ve heard, I like Garcia’s the best– it’s the most complete, to my ear– but Bo Diddley got ahold of it too, and it’s his version that prompted this post.

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Two things you might think would happen in this space are not going to happen. First, this being the continuation of our Silent Film Series, you might expect discussion of a video clip best viewed without sound, since that’s the premise of the Series. Second, this being a post about Halloween, videos, and music, you might expect me to go with this, which, if this was a Friday, is what I would’ve done.

Instead and in light of the above, I’m appealing to the common notion that, on Halloween, things that were dead take on an impressively lifelike quality (e.g., ghosts, mummies, zombies, vampires, etc.), and applying that concept to the notion of “silent” films as I’ve conceived it here. In other words, when a “silent” film takes on lifelike qualities on Halloween, you can hear it as well as see it. In other words, I was watching the selection, below, with the sound on, quickly reached the definite conclusion were the visuals of the sort that would make the clip a good feature in this spot, and then reached the probable conclusion that everyone would like watching it better with the music playing too. In still other words, turn up your volume, and enjoy a minor spectacle of live-action sight and sound: