Doing my part for the D

It’s not often we as fans get the chance to directly affect a player or a game (bleacher seat heckling notwithstanding).

Now is one of those times, and for my favorite MLB player no less.

Go VOTE INGE into the All Star Game.

Now, probie!

Goodbye, Mike Brown

Mike Brown, who is a thief, may be leaving Cleveland

According to Pro Basketball News, the Cavaliers’ front office is thinking about getting rid of NBA Coach of the Year, Mike Brown. Apparently, getting to the Conference Finals was not good enough and Cleveland is pondering who to bring in to replace Brown. This is obviously a strategic move to make LeBron James (a free agent next summer) think that the Cavs are trying to make moves to make the team better so that he doesn’t bolt after next season. Pat Riley is rumored to be at the top of Cleveland’s wish list to replace Brown if he were to be replaced. Riley would be a mediocre (at best) replacement, but an obvious upgrade over thief (you know, because he stole the Coach of the Year award), Mike Brown. Here’s a list of other possible replacements.

• Jeff Van Gundy: Can you imagine the networks getting to hype  LeBron vs. Howard and Van Gundy vs. Van Gundy in the Eastern Conference Finals for the next decade? We would also get to see the Van Gundy’s dad wearing one of those half-and-half shirts, one side would be a white button-down and the other would be a ribbed t-shirt. It would also lead to a new joke in the lines of, “Did you know Jerome Bettis is from Detroit?” and “Brady Quinn’s sister is dating AJ Hawk.” “Did you guys ever hear that Jeff and Stan Van Gundy are brothers?”
• Mike Fratello: I, for one, would love to see The Czar of the Telestrator back in the league. He has coached in Cleveland before and would hopefully allow TV crews in all his huddles so that he could draw up his plays for the audience at home. Marv Albert would also probably bite some hooker in the back he would be so excited to call a game that Fratello was coaching.
• Isiah Thomas: Well, you know, if the Cavs were trying to run LeBron out of town. Did you know Zeke’s middle name is Lord? No, seriously. You can see it right here on his Wiki page. Sometimes, you just can’t make this shit up.
• Bill Walton: How great would LeBron feel every day coming out of practice. “LeBron, your moves were absolutely magnificent today. Watching you play is like touring with The Grateful Dead in ’78. Your dribbling reminds me of watching Jerry play “Terrapin Station” to the moon in San Francisco. Your dunk at the end was as powerful as a Bob Dylan lyric!” If LeBron is a jamband fan, Walton is the obvious choice.
• Tim Floyd: He could give away envelopes of cash to these guys every two weeks and there would be no repercussions! His win totals in the NBA: 13, 17, 15 and 4. Those numbers are absolutely staggering, but if Paul Westphal can get another gig in the league, who can’t?
• John Calipari: If he wants to dodge all these Memphis allegations, the NBA would be a perfect place to go. We would just have to make sure there were no Mexican reporters in Cleveland.
• Rick Pitino: Speaking of wanting to get out of the spotlight, Pitino could finally get out of Louisville. It would be really funny to hear Pitino’s opening speech to the Cleveland faithful, “Craig Ehlo isn’t walking through that door… Danny Ferry isn’t walking through that door…!” Danny Ferry (standing next to him) would then remind Pitino that he is the team’s GM.
• Blake Lively: If the Cavs really want King James to stick around, why not hire a smoking hot girl to keep LeBron entertained. Surely, she could learn Mike Brown’s offense (“Give LeBron the ball, stand around and don’t get in his way.”) and would be a PR success immediately. Hell, I would pool some cash together just to watch her walk up and down the sidelines.
• Gene Hackman: Did you see Hoosiers? He was magnificent as Coach Norman Dale. If LBJ can’t get excited about running the picket fence (Just don’t get caught watching the paint dry), I’m not sure if he has a pulse. Plus, the Cavs could play that cheesy ’80’s music during games just to keep the feel from the movie going.
• Smoothron:  I am a valid candidate. I would be cheaper than most other options. I have won two AAU State Championships in the last three years. I would be a great wingman for LeBron at the club after the game. I am pretty sure I am more competent than Mike Brown.
• Billy Gillispie: Can you imagine? This would be absolutely perfect. BCG wouldn’t have to be a role model like he was supposed to be when he was coaching college kids. His weird smirk would fit right in in the NBA. I have heard there is a TON of Dr. Pepper in Cleveland. I do worry about what would happen if he were to sleep with a player’s girlfriend, though.

Breakfast Wagon 27: ping ping ping ping ping ping ping

 

3rd fastest ever. (Reuters)

Danica Patrick apparently has no problem with cheating… winning on the other hand… [USA Today]

Columnist Dan Patrick asked Danica Patrick if she would take a performance-enhancing drug that she could get away with, if it allowed her to win Indy.

Danica: Well, then it’s not cheating, is it? If nobody finds out?

Dan: So you would do it?

Danica: Yeah, it would be like finding a gray area. In motorsports we work in the gray areas a lot. You’re trying to find where the holes are in the rule book.

Fox rates NFL Franchises by arbitrary criteria.  Raiders, Lions, Browns still bring up the ass end.  [Fox]

Gay comes in behind Bolt’s and Johnson’s.  [Reuters]

Ohio State ends baseball season… um… emphatically?  [Yahoo!]

Jason Stidham, the regional’s most outstanding player, hit a two-run double as the Seminoles scored eight times in the first and cruised past the pitching-depleted Buckeyes (42-19), who trailed 32-0 in the fifth.

Think about it… it makes sense

Get used to this--and the gutter--vol fans

Take a big step with me here.  Let’s make plenty of assumptions.  Let’s assume Bruce Pearl isn’t as loyal as he’d want the Big Orange to think and just evaluate the purported offer on the table.  Let’s assume he got his audience with Memphis higher-ups and the FedEx CEO.  Let’s assume somewhere in East Memphis is a nice country club.  You still with me?

WMC in Memphis is reporting U-Mem has offered BP a $21 Million dollar, 7-year deal. 

How could he not take it?

You get to take a step down in competition.  The SEC East sure as hell didn’t get any easier with the 2 highest-paid coaches in the game currently planning for the ’09-’10 tourney. 

Memphis just won about 145 straight conference games, en route to consecutive top 2 seeds (read, a much easier path to a Final Four).  And as my bud Smooth points out, Memphis is a basketball school.  While UT is toiling in the land of never-been-past-the-sweet-16, Memphis just played for a National Championship 2 seasons ago.

And that was far from their first taste of success.  The Tigers have banners for 3 Final Four appearances and 2 National Runners-up.

Hell, if not for having to live in or around Memphis, even I’d take that job, and I hate Tiger Blue.

So it’s settled then.  Pearl to Memphis.

Now who’s his replacement on Rocky Top?  Usually, I’d let 2SL take this one, but it’s my alma mater, and I want to take a first guess.  Follow me to freedom.

SEC-ret no more! Cats’ foes crying wolf… again

I tried to told ya!

Lookout Tampa! The Cats are on the loose, doing what they do better than anyone (to the tune of more than triple the number of championships as the next highest school).  Not to mention that the Lexington crew has the best setup of all (1pm games all week, and UF, UT, and Auburn all in the other bracket). 

Mississippi State is steadily dismantling the leftovers of the Felton crew, which will put this Cowboy 2-for-2 in the tourney.  Tonight’s winners will be Alabama and Florida, if you want to get your bets in.

But overall… I’m saying Lookout Central-Westernish Florida!  Billy’s on the hunt!

Somebody’s mixing some kool-aid and I know who it is and what color it is. 

Don’t be left out in the rain, holding the bag, with egg on something.

John Wall Can’t Catch a Break

Rivals.com has John Wall as its #1 player in America.  Many would have assumed he was a lock for the McDonald’s All-American game, but since he’s a fifth year senior, he is ineligible (although, he will be playing in the Jordan Brand Classic).  He was also going for a third straight state championship in the state of North Carolina, then this happened.

Yes, that is John Wall’s Word of God Christian Academy getting absolutely hosed by the refs, in the state championship game nonetheless.  Something tells me that ref will be getting scratched by WOGCA next year.  Don’t worry about it though, John; in 15 months you’ll be rich enough to start a Word of John Wall Academy.

Geriatric hoopster ruled ineligible

Photo credit: News-Sentinel

An NJCAA school in East Tennessee must forfeit its last game due to the use of an ineligible player.  I’m not sure which is more troubling, that a JuCo has eligibility rules, or that the player in question is 73 years old.

Ken Mink has been on the Roane State Community College team for just this one season, but his career spans over a half-century when he was kicked off the Lees Junior College team in 1956 for (allegedly) shaving-creaming the coach’s office.

The latest bout of controversy is due to a failing grade in Spanish and the attempt to make up the credits at online Strayer University.  But alas, his exploits were revealed, and thus endeth his dream of trading sweat with young African-American males everyday at 3pm.

Just goes to show you, once a trouble-maker, always a trouble-maker.

By the way, did anyone know JuCo’s had academic review boards? 

Learn something every day.

[Knoxville News-Sentinel]

Nu’Keese Richardson testing dual-school waters

In the slightly-creepy all-day infatuation of following and hassling 17 year old kids over their choice of higher education — according to Rivals.com this afternoon — Nu’Keese Richardson became, apparently, the first high school player to commit to 2 different schools on signing day.  The fact that he will be attending and playing for both SEC East division rivals Florida and Tennessee makes the soup a little stewier for the early season contest.

 

Some preliminary questions that come to mind:

Will he be required to use 2 years of eligibility per year?  And would that make him NFL eligible by week 6 of 2010?

Which school’s academic criteria must he follow?

If he receives a degree from UF will that dimish the stature of the same from UT?

Can he play for both teams in the annual matchup?

Upon getting arrested in Las Vegas/Knoxville/Tijuana/Jacksonville does he call Urban or Lane?

This should get interesting…

UPDATE: Apparently Nu’Keese settled on a school after all, as Rivals has taken down the Florida commitment.  Oh well, would have been interesting…

Lloyd Blows McMahon

FMCBCP: We’re Picking Big XII Winners

FMCBCP is a stupid acronym I just came up with.  When it’s not football season, we do a FWP (Fearless Weekend Predictions) post every Friday where one of us predicts what will transpire over the upcoming sports weekend.  Well, College Basketball is about to start so we needed to do FMCBCP (Fearless Men’s College Basketball Conference Predictions) to document all our picks for the 2008-09 season.  I wanted to do a post that would feature a comprehensive coverage of all the conferences together.  EDay then reminded me that might be a 25,000 word post.  Since most of our readers (and contributors for that matter) have the attention span of a three year-old monkey, we decided to break each down by conference.  We’re only doing major conferences, so don’t whine when you don’t see the MEAC being featured.  We’ll be picking conference winners, POYs, COYs, FOYs, biggest disappointments and number of tournament teams.  As always, this will be done in a way that only APIAS.net can.

Today, the Big XII…

Big XII Champion

Bru’s Pick: Oklahoma

TGC’s Pick: Oklahoma; this is the year the Sooners make it to the top with the likes of Texas and Kansas.  And destroy them.  Mwahhahaha.  Sorry.  Should be some good hoops on this year in the 10:00 time slot thanks to these 3 teams.  Which means good news for Winchell’s!

EDay’s Pick: Texas; I love teams that play 27 people.

Smoothron’s Pick: Oklahoma; Blake Griffin + Willie Warren + Jeff Capel – Kelvin Sampson’s taint stain on the program = Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Jump for more Big XII goodness.