Tag Archives: oktc

Busy Monday

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It was a busy weekend, really, and mostly because it was twice as long as most ordinary weekends. Plenty of football, including another Lions Thanksgiving day defeat at the hands of the Packers, injuries, and Ndamukong Suh (more on him later), a dominant performance by LSU over then-number 3 Arkansas that left Razorbacks head coach Bobby Petrino less than happy with the Tigers’ Les Miles (Clay Travis (who else?) has the video here), Michigan State rolling over Northwestern in a classic trap game, Michigan beating Ohio State for the first time since 2003 (more on that exciting game later), and Vanderbilt destroying Wake Forest to finish the regular season with a bowl-eligible 6-6 record, tripling their win total from last year and besting their win total of the last two seasons combined. In an era when a new coach routinely gets three or four years to “get his guys in” before he has to show success, Vanderbilt’s James Franklin turned a 2-10 team into a 6-6 team in one year, playing in the toughest conference in America, and he’s mad because they were a couple plays away from being 9-3. The Commodores’ loss to UT still stings, but the Vols’ defeat at the hands of lifeless Kentucky will keep the Big Orange out of a bowl this year, and that definitely is a silver lining for Vandy fans.

In Sunday NFL action, I have to mention Tim Tebow, who continued his improbable winning ways, and the Indianapolis Colts, who continued their extremely probable losing ways.

Two pieces of basketball news sure to be disappointing to large segments of the population: first, throwback UNLV took down top-ranked UNC in decisive fashion at the Las Vegas Invitational on Saturday, and the NBA is back, games to start piously on Christmas Day (link to the entirety of Grantland.com pending) (UPDATE: here it is.). (More seriously, the situation in Syracuse seems to have entered a new phase.)

In hockey, the Red Wings took down the pesky Predators and the Capitals fired their coach 22 games into the season.

Oh, and despite their loss in Ann Arbor, Buckeye hearts are aflutter with news of the hiring of Urban Meyer as OSU’s next head football coach. (More on that later, too.)

The de facto national championship preview: The fans

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College football’s de facto national championship, #1 LSU vs. #2 Alabama, is tomorrow night. We’ve already previewed the coaches and players. That leaves the fans.

I am not a fan of either team, but I have seen both teams play a couple times and had a chance to observe their fans in person. I don’t remember much in particular about Alabama fans, except that I don’t care for their particular shade of redcrimson and there are some people who should not use houndstooth as a full-body-covering textile. I do remember LSU fans tailgating so hard it resulted in the permanent closing of the prime visitors’ tailgate area at Vanderbilt games.

Instead of extolling deep insights– of which I have none– about these two fan bases, and how they will affect the game atmosphere, which in turn will affect the game itself, I’ve collected (or are we supposed to say “curated” now, and what ever happened to mere “compiling”?) a few bullet-pointed items on the surely crazed fan bases of these two teams. I hereby reserve the right to add to this list without telling you I’ve done so. Reader submissions welcomed.

  • As of Monday of this week, ESPN reported that individual tickets to this game were going for $10,423.14. “Oh, and these aren’t even close to being the best seats out there. They are in the lower level of the end zone and in row 25. You can choose between seat 17 or 18. That doesn’t come with catered food or secure you from sitting behind someone who you might consider a giant.”
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  • Click to see the rest of this mess of fandom

The de facto national championship preview: The players

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Yesterday’s de facto national championship preview focused on the coaches. Today’s looks at the players.

Alabama and LSU players were in the news before the season even started, which, given each team’s potential for success isn’t surprising by itself. That both teams’ players were in the preseason news for off-field reasons is notable, though. It may seem like an age ago, but Alabama was one of the places hit very hard by the tornadoes that devastated parts of the lower Midwest and Southeast earlier this year. Tuscaloosa was a direct hit. A month later, Sports Illustrated ran a cover story by Lars Anderson that is one of the most powerful sports pieces I’ve read. Facing personal losses themselves, the Tide football players nevertheless had to stand tall in a community and a state that looked to them– as they always had in good times– for support in bad times. Terror, Tragedy And Hope in Tuscaloosa.

LSU players made their way into the preseason, non-sports news in a manner less worthy of an emotional SI cover and an earnest letter home. Keep reading…

The de facto national championship preview: The coaches

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In college football, players come and go, and it’s the coaches who are more likely to become the lasting face of a particular team. Adding to this is the common college football notion of coaching “systems.” Coaching in the NFL is more about coordinators and their “schemes”– the Wide Nine really isn’t a defensive “system,” and the Wildcat really isn’t an offensive one, though it may be offensive to some– although coaches have developed systems at that level, including Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense and Tony Dungy’s Tampa 2. Systems certainly are in play at the high school level, but they frequently are crazy and not at all viable even at the college level. Think Wing-T, A-11, and, of course, the Wishbone.

The major college level is the Goldilocks of coaching systems, however, and along with this comes coaching personalities and attitudes that can influence the on-field performance of the impressionable, yet quite capable yoots.  

This installment of our ongoing coverage of LSU vs. Alabama, the de facto national championship, therefore focuses on the two coaches …Keep reading…

Has Clay Travis outKicked his coverage?

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When I started writing this post, Clay’s new site, OutKick The Coverage (or Out Kick The Coverage, or Outkick the Coverage, or the OKTC depending on where you look), still was under construction, as it had been for what seemed like forever in Internet Years, despite voluminous promotion from Clay’s old site to Clay’s twitter account.

Clay is a co-host on Nashville’s FM afternoon sports talk show, a sports writer who’s been around the online block (I’ll let you guess why), and, because nobody thinks more highly of Clay Travis and lets you know it than Clay Travis, he can be tough to digest. A bit strident, perhaps. I’d spend more time telling you about this VULS-grad-who-married-an-NFL-cheerleader-and-wrote-two-popular-books, but I’d be taking away from Clay’s unrivaled coverage of Clay’s life. (If you really do want more, check here for a quick example.) Just know that nobody makes mountains out of molehills in the name of hard-hitting sports journalism like Clay. (Which now leads me to wonder whether he’s the Sean Hannity/Nancy Grace of sports media?)

Now that his new site is live, I’m starting to wonder whether Clay actually underkicked (under-kicked? inKicked?) his coverage. From my reading of his substantial explanations, justifications, and mission statements of and for the new site, he wanted to do something “different.” He didn’t want to be ESPN. (He probably does want to be Grantland– seemingly the only site for which he hasn’t written.) He’s the people’s voice in press conferences, and now he wants the people to be heard, so long as he thinks they’re funny and smart.

It doesn’t take a pro-banger web designer to notice that the new page looks remarkably similar to ESPN.com. Also, while it isn’t especially valuable to spend time nit-picking the writing on new, fancy sites, when a guy so frequently reminds folks that he was a lawyer, you’d hope there’d be fewer typos and a generally higher quality of writing. (Maybe he’s dictating?) Not so bad as other professional writers, but just hit a read-through before clicking “publish,” especially for opening day.

One thing I liked about Clay’s new project was that there were going to be multiple voices. In fact, I’m trying to do the same thing here. Clay had a big contest to find his writers, and, from his coverage of his own project, he took in what sounds like a Library of Congress’ worth of submissions. On opening day, his stable of contributors included him (yes, he made the cut), a gal who knows more about rare penguins than sports, an apparent attempt at a Mark Titus clone, and a U.S. Army officer. I’m just reading what it says.

(UPDATE: Clay has since added “a 20-year veteran sports writer” to provide some legitimacy.  David Wasson opened with this bit of innovative hilarity. FURTHER UPDATE: Wasson’s apparently out, replaced by a pregnant Alabama fan who likes macaroni. Again, just reading what it says.)

OKtC came online with five stories out of the blocks, including Clay’s latest autobiography, Clay’s “Manifesto,” and the breaking news that the NCAA’s investigation of Auburn football “continues.” Call Jeremy Shaap.

It definitely is tougher to drum up original content than cherry pick the work of others (why do you think I’m blogging about blogging?), but I hope that Clay will either a) dig deep and find the restraint and patience to develop original content rather than continuing to try to turn non-issues into matters for a congressional investigation, or b) go full-bore, year-round silly season and abandon all claims to legitimate journalism by curating the absurdest of humanity and clowning everything under the sun as the most ridiculous thing he’s ever seen. It has to be one or the other. The launch of o-Ktc is Clay Travis’ Byrnian Moment: an absolute choice between two distinct identity and career paths. Clay, like nearly all of us, lacks even a modicum of David Byrne’s creative talent, but like Byrne, Clay is skinny and thinks he’s got something to say that the whole world needs to hear. And just as Byrne had to decide whether to engage in the typical rock-star lifestyle, enjoying celebrity, groupies, and generally being understood or instead make sure that he always was the unquestionably weirdest person in the room, Clay needs to make a decision and never look back.