This was a rough weekend for most of ALDLAND’s teams, with Michigan State pulling another no-show, this time against extremely beatable Nebraska, and Vanderbilt blowing two opportunities to beat #8 Arkansas. Clemson’s offense forgot to show up and remind Georgia Tech that the Tigers don’t have a defense, and our own Magalan and commodawg went head to head for Georgia’s come-from-behind victory over the heavily penalized Florida Gators at the annual Cocktail Party game in Jacksonville.
The Florida-Georgia rivalry played out on Sunday, too, when the Lions met the Broncos in Denver. Georgia grad Matthew Stafford, along with Georgia Tech grad Calvin Johnson, led Detroit in a dominant victory over Florida grad Timothy Richard Tebow’s Denver team, the only bright spot of which was Knowshon Moreno, running back and Georgia alum.
Elsewhere in the NFL, the Rams got their first win, shocking New Orleans with Sam Bradford on the bench, the Dolphins came from ahead to stay winless, and the Colts lost to an underperforming Titans team. Watching Chris Johnson this year, one understands why he held out for a big payday at the start of this season.
As usual, I swore at the beginning of the football season that I wouldn’t travel to The Game Formerly Known As The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party (“TGFKATWLOCP”). The many reasons for my apathy about this game included: recently Georgia has refused to put up much of a fight, Jacksonville is so overrated, coordinating getting to the game is always a royal pain, and the stadium, while neat to look at when its split blue and red 50/50, doesn’t provide anywhere near the joy of being in The Swamp. Et cetera.
But just like in years past, here we are about 24 hours to kick-off, and my willpower has faded. So I’ll be leaving in a couple hours for TGFKATWLOCP, and I’m actually pretty excited about it. We’re allegedly including a bourbon fountain in our tailgate this year, which is the good kind of bad idea that makes you scared for your life, and more importantly, your bar license. It’s a bright spot on a weekend that otherwise features grown men dressing like vampires, or drag queens, or the ultimate: vampire drag queens.
One other bright spot is that The Black Keys (Dan Auerbach – vocals/guitar and Patrick Carney – drums) dropped their first single from forthcoming album, El Camino (the cover of which inexplicably [to me] has a photo of a 90s vintage minivan on it). The new song, Lonely Boy, already has a funny video up on their Youtube channel. While you’re there, check out the videos for Tighten Up and Howlin for You. They’ll all make you laugh.
This new album was recorded at Dan’s new studio in Music City, USA. In the past, they’ve recorded all over the place, including Pat’s basement, an old rubber factory (for an album titled…wait for it…Rubber Factory), and Muscle Shoals Sound Studios (founded by a group that defected from FAME, including David Hood, father of Drive By Truckers front man Patterson Hood). AD tells me their experience recording in Alabama was suboptimal, which is sad to hear. All the same, they’ve put out consistently strong bluesy rock over a series of records, no small feat for a couple of white dudes in a power duo. Though to be fair, if a white dude is trying to sing the blues with any kind of authenticity, coming of age in post-industrial Ohio can’t hurt. If the new single is any indication, they’re close to the mark again.
When I heard the Spartan Marching Band playing this song in the fourth quarter of Michigan State’s thrilling victory over Wisconsin last week, I knew two things: 1) MSU would win the game, and 2) that song had to be this week’s Friday Jam. My knowledge proved factual, so here it is, from Detroit to the Midnight Special:
Some of you might not know who Mario Balotelli is and what he is about. Heck, it’s likely that most of you don’t know him. Rest assured, however, that your children, and your children’s children will know his name. There will undoubtedly be philosophy classes in future years focused solely on the wisdom imparted on us by Mario Balotelli. In a mere 21 years on this planet Mario Balotelli has done and said enough to fill volumes upon volumes of books. Balotelli’s achievements have not been confined to the soccer pitch, although he has had success there with European giants Internazionale and Manchester City. Here is just a sampling of what makes him not just the greatest athlete of all time, but the greatest mind of all time:
Balotelli became the face of a fireworks safety campaign in Britain after one of his friends set off fireworks in the bathroom of Balotelli’s mansion during a party, thereby setting fire to the mansion.
After scoring a brace in the Manchester Derby against crosstown rivals Manchester United, rolled around Manchester in his Bentley convertible, blaring music and high fiving City fans.
When asked about his post-match joyride, responded by saying about City’s fans, “Even when I have had bad moments they have supported me. But I don’t care what people say about me. I am focused on my football, my manager, girlfriends and my family.” Yeah, he just said girlfriends. Mario Balotelli is playing the field and he doesn’t care if you, his manager, or even his multiple girlfriends know
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that all happened in one weekend. In one weekend, Mario Balotelli has done more crazy stuff than most athletes do in their entire life. Even Terrell Owens would be shocked at what Balotelli was able to accomplish in just three short days.
You might say, ”well, none of that sounds too crazy or awesome,” to which I would reply “hmmm,” because that is how I reply to most things people say to me. In case you aren’t convinced that Balotelli is the craziest, most awesome thing to happen to sports since Wade Boggs drank 64 beers on a cross country flight, here is some other awesome stuff that Super Mario has done: Keep reading…
So much has happened in the world of college athletic conference realignment that ALDLAND’s coverage of the fluid, polycentric topic has all but fallen off, and it’s easy to forget what started all of this. Yes, last year, TCU had planned to jump to the Big East next year in order to secure that faltering conference‘s automatic BCS bid, and yes, Conference USA, the Big East, and the ACC had adjusted their jocks in recent years resulting in inconsequential shifts between Boston College, Miami, Louisville, and Cincinnati, and the Big Ten and Pacific 10 each had made minor additions, but it was Texas A & M’s move that represented the first falling domino on this American Fall that saw the Aggies loosed from the oppressive, yet apparently failing, bonds of the Big XII, the tumbling of the Big East‘s old basketball regime, TCU’s reversal of course, and about a billion other related stories. And the hand that pushed that first domino belonged to ESPN’s Longhorn Network.
As Deadspin reports, however, the catalytic network is fairly impotent when it comes to actual television broadcasting as, after launching two months ago, LHN still isn’t on anybody’s tv set:
It was two months ago today that we ran a sky-is-falling story on ESPN’s Longhorn Network going live without having lined up cable companies to actually broadcast the channel. We thought that was just last-minute posturing and ESPN’s muscle would get the deals done before long. But here we are, halfway through the season, and it’s still a channel without a home.
“The most glaring issue is outside of the Texas fan-base, there just isn’t a lot of interest in the channel and in fact the mere existence of the network has more than likely hurt the brand of Texas nationally more than it’s helped it. The idea that an entire network can be propped up by two shitty football games has cable providers holding the line knowing the implications of giving in.
“Also working against LHN is the fact that ESPN is their distribution partner. You’d think that this would only help adoption of the channel but my take is that ESPN has bullied the entire industry for quite awhile. This is really the only time where operators actually have leverage and can potentially keep it as an ace up their sleeve for future negotiations on other ESPN/Disney talks.”
This situation can’t continue indefinitely. The Big Ten Network suffered through the same growing pains, with most cable companies only agreeing to carry it in its second year of existence, but that was amid public demand. With no one clamoring for the Longhorn Network in their home, it’s still likely that by next year the network’s footprint will be national: but not at the price ESPN wants to charge to carry it.
From the beginning, it felt like the Worldwide Leader had bit off a bigger bite of Texas rawhide than it could chew, but LHN is starting to look like a Tejas-sized broadcast failure that no one will notice because no one’s ever seen it and ESPN won’t report on it.
Today really isn’t a big day, and most of the weekend’s football games were duds, but there were a couple notable exceptions.
Saturday day was pretty slow around the college football world, but things picked up Saturday night, when two unbeaten teams, Wisconsin and Oklahoma, put their perfect records to the test and failed to preserve them. In East Lansing, Michigan State made it two in a row against the Badgers. Wisconsin dominated early, but the Spartans seized the momentum and the lead, which they held for most of the game. In typical MSU fashion, though, their attention lapsed and Wisconsin was able to tie the game at 31. With no time on the clock, QB Kirk Cousins threw a Hail Mary (or “Rocket” pass in Dantonio terminology– we always seem to learn the names of his game-winning plays) to the endzone that bounced off B.J. Cunningham’s face and into the waiting hands of Keith Nichol, who muscled it across the goal line for the walk-off score:
That game finished in time to watch Texas Tech complete its victory over Oklahoma, a game the Red Raiders mostly dominated, although the Sooners threatened to make it interesting late, after most of their fans had left. (Vanderbilt wrapped up a homecoming win against Army before both of these games.)
On Sunday, the Lions dropped their second straight game and looked a lot like their old selves. Speaking of which, I saw former Lion QB Dan Orlovsky on the sidelines in Indianapolis during their loss in New Orleans, which made me think that, of the three defeated NFL teams– Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Miami– the Colts may actually be trying to lose all their games. Orlovsky has to be a better option than Curtis Painter. He certainly was a serviceable player for the Lions last year, and Painter is not that. The Rams are suffering from critical injuries at QB and RB, and the Dolphins, who need Andrew Luck most of these three, really just are that bad. But Jim Caldwell’s decision to go with Painter over Orlovsky supports the notion that Indy is tanking this, although they really are pretty bad all on their own too. On the topic of rookie quarterbacks, Cam Newton turned his record-breaking stat parade into a win for Carolina, and Tim Tebow did what Tim Tebow now does, apparently, in his first start for Denver, coming from behind to beat the aforementioned and still hapless Dolphins in Miami.
In hockey, the Washington Capitals dealt the Detroit Red Wings their first loss of the year in a 7-1 Capitals home win.
And there used to be three men known as Marcus Lattimore, Steve Spurrier, and Stephen Garcia.
Within the last week or so, though, all that has changed. First, quarterback Garcia, who’d shown flashes of brilliance on and off the field, but not nearly as much of the former as the latter, got himself kicked of the team for failing a drug test.
In their first game without Garcia, young backup Connor Shaw helped lead the team to a gutty two-point victory over Mississippi State last Saturday, but the Gamecocks lost Heisman-caliber running back Lattimore to a season-ending knee injury. For many, this team was the favorite to win a weak SEC East, but without Lattimore, it’s tough to see much success left for SC this season.
And that brings us to the OBC. In seven years in Columbia, Spurrier has a 50-34 record, which stands in marked contrast to his overall NCAA coaching record (186-73-2), to say nothing of his record at Florida (122-27-1). Known as a quarterback specialist (due in no small part to winning a Heisman Trophy himself as a Gator QB), he’s struggled to develop quarterback talent for SC, where he’s given his starters (and some reporters) very short leashes.
But the Ol’ Ball Coach, bowling his headset like a dilapidated yo-yo seemingly with even greater frequency of late, definitely has looked ol'(d). A coach only is as good as his players. With an inexperienced quarterback and without his star running back, things very suddenly are looking very bleak in Columbia.
Friday day has arrived, although here in the Upper Midwest at this time of year, Friday day already looks like Friday night, so here comes your Friday jam, with a video that features a woman who looks like Mick Jagger, doppelgänger Carrie Fisher and Bobby Weir, a woman who looks like Sly Stone, and someone who may or may not be me:
I am happy to welcome new writer exexpatriate to the site. Check out the first substantive post from this self-described “anti-fan” with “an increasing interest in the politics and violence and social movements around organized sports” on the ongoing fallout from this summer’s Vancouver hockey riots.
Elsewhere in the NFL, the Rams got their first win, shocking New Orleans with Sam Bradford on the bench, the Dolphins came from ahead to stay winless, and the Colts lost to an underperforming Titans team. Watching Chris Johnson this year, one understands why he held out for a big payday at the start of this season.
ALDLAND 