News, news, news (not that much news).
The NCAA Is Playing Dirty
If you were trying to discourage the NIT’s Final Four teams (full NIT Final Four preview here, please read and share with friends) from winning the national championship this week, would you do it in any other way than leaking documents Saturday accusing last year’s champion of numerous Level I violations? The answer, of course, is no, and whether you’re a Penny Hardaway fan or not, if you’re painting this development as anything but a brazen attack on the NIT, you’re contributing to the occupation.
What did Hardaway do wrong? Well, allegedly, the James Wiseman stuff, basically. Also effectively wiped a hard drive, allegedly. Mike Miller’s hard drive. Allegedly.
Pat Chambers Is Back
In other recent NIT champion head coach news, Florida Gulf Coast hired Pat Chambers. This isn’t really that new, but Izaiah Brockington, who played under Chambers at Penn State, did an interview with Zach Schumaker about Chambers’s firing, and friend-of-the-NIT Evan Smith has the writeup over at Victory Bell Rings. In the interview, Brockington accused the Penn State administration of delaying Chambers’s dismissal so that players wouldn’t transfer. Brockington also said that the players wanted Chambers to be kept on.
For those who don’t remember, Chambers was fired for telling Rasir Bolton he “wanted to remove the noose around (Bolton’s) neck,” seemingly referring to wanting to reduce some of the pressure on Bolton but in the process using imagery that’s, uh, pretty understandably upsetting for Bolton, who is Black. Bolton transferred away from Chambers.
Shaka Smart Remains Wonderful
No news here, just hitting the other one of the last three NIT champions. Great guy.
That NASCAR Finish
Man! What a race.
To be honest, it wasn’t the greatest race for most of it. NASCAR still hasn’t figured out the best way to handle cautions on road courses, because even when they do a good job with choosing when to throw the yellow flag (as I felt they did yesterday), it just takes for-freaking-ever to get through the darn thing because of the pitting and them only doing restarts in one spot on the course and etc. etc. That said, it was a fun day, there was a lot of good racing, and the late restarts did build drama as Ross Chastain and A.J. Allmendinger duked it out. This final lap sequence was a good time, and the commentators’ comparison of Chastain’s move to croquet (bumping one ball into another), which didn’t make the clip, made me smile.
Chastain, as we expected, was a blast of a winner. It was his first career Cup Series win, and in addition to doing his watermelon smash, he picked his brother—one of his spotters—up from halfway across the course and drove him back to victory lane, which was a hilarious bit. Chastain gets some hate from the old guard, but he always races fun, and it was fun racing yesterday that brought him past Allmendinger (who, to his credit, took the croquet like a champ).
Red Bull Bounces Back
Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, everyone got out alive, including Red Bull’s hopes of staying out of a constructor standings hole. Max Verstappen got past Charles Leclerc late and held him off, while Sergio Pérez took fourth behind Carlos Sainz to bring Red Bull up within a point of Mercedes for second place in the constructor standings two weeks into the season (they are 40 and 41 points back of Ferrari, respectively, but it’s only been two races). Week off now, then Australia on Palm Sunday.
I Joined an IndyCar Twitter Community
Gonna lay low in there. Bide my time. Not a lot of people in it but maybe I can butter ‘em up with some of Joe’s probabilities if he ever has ‘em, and then maybe I can bring up some of those ideas from last summer, like the stinky car, the CaliCar false flag project, and running a race in a national park.
No Opening Day for Joe Kelly
We were curious about this, and we got our answer over the weekend. Joe Kelly doesn’t expect to make his White Sox debut until late April, per the Chicago Sun-Times. Still getting over that nerve issue from the end of last postseason.
Pujols to the Cardinals
The Cardinals signed Albert Pujols, and this should be great for the Cubs. You ever think someone’s invincible and then see that they’re not and you used to be scared of them so it’s the good kind of learning they’re not? This is what we’re about to get. No disrespect to Pujols, and might be a rough year for the Cubs anyway, but seeing famously reasonable Cardinals fans lose their minds at a .188 batting average should be fun.
Indiana Football
Today in Bevo’s Fake Nuts I was writing about how fun it is for Texas Tech to beat Texas (great baseball series this weekend, especially Friday night and Saturday night), and it got me wondering whether there’s another equivalent out there, specifically in college football, where one team in a rivalry has absolutely nothing to lose. The closest I could think of is Indiana when they play Purdue, which isn’t a great one but at the same time…Indiana is rarely playing for anything meaningful, and Purdue’s the one who’s supposed to be better at football here, which isn’t to say Purdue’s supposed to be good as much as it’s to say Indiana’s supposed to always be bad. There’s probably a better one out there, but this was the best I could come up with immediately, and we’re all looking for Indiana football content in March, so here we are. Let me know if there are others I missed, or if you’d prefer, discuss those amongst yourselves.
Don’t Forget How Good Milk and Cookies Are
Had some ginger snaps with milk last night. When’s the last time you had milk and cookies? Was it too long ago? I’m guessing it was too long ago.
