Author Archives: AD

Predicting Boise State vs. Michigan State

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In less than three hours, Boise State will take on Michigan State in a Top-25 battle in East Lansing. Playing a ranked opponent in the first game is a risky proposition, especially when it’s Boise State. Just ask Georgia. Still, the Michigan State team that won a share of the Big Ten championship last season (and should have gone to the Rose Bowl as a result) is without quarterback Kirk Cousins and offensive coordinator Don Treadwell, and their strengths– defense and the running game– are somewhat diminished. This isn’t the same Boise Broncos team either, though, especially in the absence of quarterback Kellen Moore, which is why I think MSU will handle their visiting opponents tonight. (Field color may also be a factor.)

As my favorite ESPN.com feature illustrates, the rest of the nation, and indeed the world, agrees with me. By now your eyes have been drawn to a few exceptions, of which there are two kinds. The first is less interesting for sports purposes. These are usually low-population states, and their apparent bucking of the trend usually is the result of a near-even split of a very small number of participants. Here, those states are Alaska (23), Vermont (20), and Rhode Island (45). Social scientists probably have something to say about this interactive map as a tool to measure things like local awareness of broader issues and the availability of internet access.

The second sort is more interesting for sports purposes. These are the states where participants reject rational objectivity and choose the team they want to win the game, rather than the team they think will win the game. Their team could be a 7.5-point dog on the road and they’d still pick them. The overall vote could be two-to-one against them, and they’ll swing even harder in the opposite direction. (Yes, there are some remote reasons why people in Idaho, Montana, and Utah might rationally believe Boise State will win tonight, but please be quiet Mister Social Scientist.)

The truth, of course, is that all voters are of the second type. Or, at least, we all approach the extreme of the second type in positive correlation with the strength of our emotional connection to at least one of the teams involved, and I’m really ok with that. In fact, I love it.

The DET Offensive: Everybody knows this is nowhere

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It seems I spoke too soon. I didn’t say it explicitly, but I thought losing a Justin Verlander start to the Royals while treading water in second place in all the relevant standings in late August was pretty much rock bottom for a team with the preseason expectations and on-paper (both white and greenbacked) potential of the 2012 Detroit Tigers. No, I see now that getting swept by the Royals to end the month of August three games out of both the division lead and the second wild card spot is rock bottom. Although I’ve begun the process of emotionally untangling myself from this team, they aren’t dead in the water and their closing schedule allows them to control their own destiny. If that destiny is to include a playoff berth, though, they’re going to have to string together some winning streaks against critical opponents, something they largely have avoided this entire season. If there are to be no playoffs for this team, though, then I think we can all look back on the above-captured moment when Mike Moustakas grapple-tackled Prince Fielder as the Tigers’ point of know return.

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Previously
Now it’s just offensive – 8/29
Explode! – 7/23
Halfway at the Half-way – 7/9
Interleague Play – 6/26
Call the Experts! – 5/26
Recipe for a Slumpbuster – 5/2
Delmon Young Swings and Misses – 4/30
Brennan Boesch’s Birthday – 4/12
Tigers open 2012 season with Sawks sweep – 4/9

Instant reaction: South Carolina 17, Vanderbilt 13

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As football season regularizes our schedule, ALDLAND’s regular Monday recaps will return in short order, but given the hype of last night’s CFB season-opener, some instant reaction seems appropriate.

We go now to the most reactionary of instant reactors. Clay Travis writes:

Every time I see SEC commissioner Mike Slive at big games, he tells me the same thing, he’s not rooting for either team, he’s just rooting for the officials.

On Thursday night en route to a South Carolina 17-13 victory, Slive’s team lost.

SEC officials missed a crucial and clear pass interference call that would have given Vanderbilt a first down at the South Carolina 47. Would the Commodores have scored a touchdown to win? Maybe not, but we’ll never know.

Instead fans left fuming over the latest, greatest near miss Vanderbilt Commodore upset victory.

Read the rest here.

College football preview: The season starts in Nashville

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College football starts tonight, when Vanderbilt hosts South Carolina in the first game of the season. With the national spotlight on Nashville, I’ve decided I’m allowed to make this preview collection extremely Commodore-heavy.

There are a number of reasons this game is a great season opener. First, it pits two division rivals against each other. In an era in which teams don’t play non-cupcakes until October to boost their BCS rankings, the value of an in-conference, in-division game to lead off opening day cannot be overstated. Second, that conference just happens to be the Southeastern Conference, the top one in the country. Third, these teams actually are somewhat competitive with each other, at least recently. While the overall series isn’t pretty for the black & gold, the Gamecocks are just 3-2 over the last five meetings, and one of those losses came in Columbia. Fourth, SC coach Steve Spurrier has a history of Vanderbilt hatred, which is showing no signs of cooling off. Fifth, the game should be an excellent showcase for the run game, with the visitors’ Heisman candidate competing against the home team’s RB corps, which is top in the conference. Sixth, SC is ranked #9 in the preseason rankings, which is a high ranking.

I’m on record predicting a Vandy win, but did you really expect anything else? Other games of note this weekend include Boise State at Michigan State on Friday and Alabama and Michigan playing in Dallas on Saturday.

The rest of this 2012 college football preview goes like this:

I realize this is likely the least useful preview aggregation I’ve put forth to date, but our sponsorship agreement with Gongshow Hockey hasn’t come through yet, and the site just doesn’t pay like it used to. Also and far more importantly, this week’s podcast took a very thorough look at the national college football scene, so listen to that on your way home from work, and if you’ve got other links that belong in the collection above, let me know, and I’d be happy to add them.

Enjoy the games!

The DET Offensive: Now it’s just offensive

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Last night’s Tiger loss on the road in Kansas City felt pretty crippling.

The Free Press story starts like this:

In a span of 11 batters over the first and second innings Tuesday night, the Royals got more hits off Justin Verlander than they’d ever gotten off him in a game.

In that same span, they scored seven runs — more than they’d ever gotten off Verlander in a game.

Detroit rallied, tying the game on a Jhonny Peralta home run in the eighth, but Phil Coke, who has been ineffective on the road, gave the lead right back in the bottom half of that inning. The game effectively ended in the ninth, when officials ruled that a Delmon Young drive to the right-field seats wasn’t a homer. It would’ve scored three for the visitors. (Watch the video here, second clip on the right.) That’s Young, pictured above, as he stood on first awaiting the review. He has a mustache now, which I did not know/remember until this morning.

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After the way last night’s game and the month of August has gone for them, there’s little more I can add about this team right now, except to present some numerological reality and then get out.     Keep reading…

How excited are we, Americans, for football season?

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In engaging in this process of writing for a sports blog, I’ve taken the approach of fully immersing myself in the sports media world– starting my days with ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike, reading all of the websites that are linked in the left-hand column of our homepage, following athletes and sports media personalities on twitter, listening to podcasts, and taking in as many games as possible– for better and worse. I know more about sports and the issues surrounding sports than at any point in my life. Just like any other area of interest, though, immersion in the context of today’s myriad media offerings also can lead to a lack of perspective.

One of the steadiest mantras in all of sports chatter is that football is king. I’m not here to question that tenet– wondering, for example, whether it’s most popular because it is in fact more amenable to Americans’ true love, television, than other sports, or whether that amenability is a convenient coincidental characteristic of the inherently popular game– but to confirm it, which I did last night at the grocery store, where I happily was adding to my Fat Tire new state label collection.     Keep reading…

And then there were four: Joe Posnanski’s Sports on Earth joins the fray

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Yesterday marked the first day for a new online sports site, Sports on Earth. Helmed by Joe Posnanski, who left Sports Illustrated this spring after just three years there, the site’s “senior columnist” has assembled a supporting cast of twelve other writers, only two of whom, Deadspin founding editor Will Leitch and Patrick Hruby (who wrote the Dock Ellis feature I highlighted last week), are immediately recognizable to me. That appears to be farm more an indictment of me than Posnanski, though, as a review of the bio pages of the other ten writers discloses a diverse group of talented writers with online and offline experience in national and noted regional newspapers, blogs, and book-writing, representing a range of ages, geographic localities, sporting interests, and, thankfully if barely, genders. On first blush, this appears to be an accomplished and professional staff that, at least based on two days of operation, is up to the call to post regularly and on current topics.     Keep reading…

Goin Phishin

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Annual Phish summer pilgrimage starts today. After seeing the band in New York, Indiana, and Michigan, it’s time to add Georgia to the list. According to at least one expert, the group has been on a real tear during this second leg of their summer tour, so I have very high hopes.

For live setlist updates and high-quality photos, follow @Phish_FTR. For weakly insightful observations and low-quality photos, you know where to find me.

ESPN: Outside the Lines delivers the definitive Dock Ellis experience

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Commodawg sent me a quick email containing only a url link and a note: “I’m guessing this is in your wheelhouse.” The link led to an ESPN/Outside the Lines feature, “The Long, Strange Trip of Dock Ellis.” Commodawg was right: I am never not on drugs when working on this website, an admission that likely comes as no surprise to ALDLAND’s reader(s), so this piece is pretty squarely in my wheelhouse.

I’ve read all the stories about Ellis. I’ve seen all the videos, including the one everybody considers high art (no pun intended, seriously; it’s way overrated, its only redeeming aspect being the employment of actual audio of Ellis) and the one of former Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio’s less entertaining stunts, in which he attempts to pitch a no-hitter in a video game while under the influence of LSD. Save yourself some time and watch neither.

The only real rub in the Ellis story at this point is whether Ellis really was on acid when he pitched that no hitter. Some recent writers (again, I’m sparing you the links) have advanced a view of Dock that suggests he was good at making up and perpetuating stories to fuel a love of the spotlight, implying that the most famous story about him was such a fabrication. Obviously that’s a boring road to go down.

This ESPN/OTL piece by Patrick Hruby and Joe Ciardiello blows right by all of that, though. It’s transcendent not because it’s about drugs, but because it transcends the debates and localized tropes that bring people to Ellis and tells a real story that answers all of these lightweight questions without even asking them because it starts with little baggage. It just tells the story of the man. Don’t feel bad if you found your way to Ellis, even to this post, because you kinda want to find out what it’s like to take LSD– that’s the reason anybody who didn’t know him or isn’t a weirdo fan of the Pirates finds their way to him– but know that your preconceived inquiries will be both resolved and shown to be irrelevant. The digital design features of the piece play no small part in contributing to this article and deserve separate comment from someone authorized to make such comments, but they extremely appropriately add to the experience, both visually and substantively.

Rereading what I just sputtered, maybe this one does convey what it’s like to be on acid after all.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=Dock-Ellis

(HT: Commodawg)

B-List Band of the Week: Dave Mason

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The B-List Band of the Week feature returns today after an extensive hiatus. Again, the point here is not to present second-rate writing about second-rate musicians, but rather to briefly highlight artists existing out of the spotlight, perhaps in an attempt to identify why they are so located. Last time, the focus was on The Outlaws, a group that, on paper, had all the makings of one Lynyrd Skynyrd but failed to materialize as such. Today, it’s on Dave Mason, a guitarist and singer frequently on the fringe of rock and roll’s main scene, particularly in the 1970s, and who continues to perform today.

In recanting Mason’s story, it should first be acknowledged that he’s unlikely to have gained the notoriety that he has without his association with the band Traffic. As it were, Mason actually came to work with Jim Capaldi before either became involved with Steve Winwood, when Mason and Capaldi became members of the same band in the mid-1960s. Mason would meet Winwood when the former became road manager for the latter’s Spencer Davis Group, eventually joining him, Capaldi, and Chris Wood as founding members of Traffic. Mason’s first hit would be the band’s second single, “Hole in My Shoe,” a Harrisonian-Indian pop-psychedelic bit that would eventually appear on the band’s self-titled release in 1968, its second album. Between Traffic’s first album, 1967’s Dear Mr. Fantasy, and Traffic, Mason would leave and rejoin the band, adding another Britpop-style song in “You Can All Join In” and his biggest hit, “Feelin’ Alright?”, to the ’68 effort.

Mason was out of Traffic for the second and final time in 1968, making his way to Los Angeles and into one of the greatest and most embryonically formative touring bands ever recorded, Delaney & Bonnie. Keep reading…