Apologies for the notes’ absence these last few days. We’ve spoken to them, and they understand they did something wrong.
Catching up:
Congratulations, UTSA
The UTSA Roadrunners won Conference USA, or as we call it, the USA, which makes them national champions. Not sure why more football games are being played, but they’re the champs.
In other Conference USA news, I finally went and looked at what realignment did to that league, and…whoa. I think they’re keeping those great headquarters, though.
Bowl Season IgNITes
The debate rages as fiercely as ever over which bowl is college football’s NIT (really—it does), and our three contenders each made a strong case. I assume. I haven’t looked to see who’s in them yet. We’re doing this live.
Ok, scrolling, scrolling…are the TaxSlayer Bowl and the Gator Bowl the same thing again? Hmm. Let’s see here. Alright. That is a bowl game. That is an NIT-like bowl game. And it’s going by both names still.
TaxSlayer Gator Bowl: Wake Forest vs. Texas A&M
Two teams that had unrealistic playoff aspirations but are still ranked? Sign us up. This is going to be hard to beat.
Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl: Washington State vs. Miami
Ehh…both have the new-coach-excitement thing going for them, but neither was good enough this year to really be in the NIT window. Sorry, Sun Bowl. Not your year.
Vrbo (or is it VRBO?) Citrus Bowl: Iowa vs. Kentucky
Man! Another great one. Wow. I don’t know, guys. Gator Bowl vs. Citrus Bowl might have to be settled on the field. The Gator Bowl starting at 8:00 AM in some places in the contiguous U.S. is a vibe. I’ll say that. More to come on this (please remind me come New Year’s Eve Eve).
College Football Breakups
Full post here on seven coaching breakups and who’s winning each, but USC made Lincoln Riley sit through an enormously awkward pep rally the other day, and I still feel uncomfortable from having watched a clip from it.
College Football Trophies
Was talking with a few readers (and more importantly, friends) on Saturday and we made the following realizations about college football trophies:
1. The SEC’s is a little provocative (this one was me, I saw it, the others did not volunteer this).
2. The MAC’s is perfect, and I wish I had a clip of it on the peaceful snowy ice rink in Detroit where it popped up on ESPN immediately after Gameday (quite the transition from packed stadium bowels to scenic urban Michigan).
3. The Big 12’s looks like Oklahoma’s alternate uniforms.
4. All football trophies should be shaped like footballs, and each bowl’s trophy should be a whatever-the-sponsor/title’s-thing-is shaped into a football (so the Orange Bowl would have a football-shaped orange, the Cheez-It Bowl would have a football-shaped Cheez-It, the Goodyear Cotton Bowl could go with cotton or rubber, etc.). If the sponsor can’t be shaped into a football, the trophy should be a football-shaped snow globe with a figurine of the sponsor’s CEO waving out from the inside.
5. The Las Vegas Bowl’s trophy is named after a former tourism chief who reportedly got a great plea deal on a pair of felony charges last summer.
Do Unranked Basketball Teams Belong to Us?
Iowa played Illinois on Monday, and with neither team ranked but both kind of noteworthy, it felt like an NIT-adjacent game. It wasn’t—those teams are too good—but it felt that way. Lot of “each team could really use this win” sorts of comments, which got me wondering if we hold the first rights to each unranked team in America. I’m not sure we do, but I wondered it, and I thought I should share it with the room.
I Wish Tennessee Was Worse
Tennessee and Texas Tech played a basketball game on Tuesday in Madison Square Garden highlighted by this in which neither team topped sixty points even though the game went to overtime. Unfortunately, each is pretty safely not making the NIT. A guy can dream, though.
Bring Back the Old Mountain West?
You hear a lot about the Old Big East. You don’t hear a lot about the Old Mountain West. TCU played Utah last night, though (no, I won’t tell you who won, it doesn’t matter who won) and it brought back some vibes.
Is Washington State Too Good?
Wazzu, who famously held Arizona State to negative points last week, put up 94 on a not-bad Weber State team last night (Go Beekeepers, now and always). They can do it in every way. They’re probably going to miss the NIT. And not in the direction we expected.
NIT Statement of the Weekend
There are a lot of strong contenders for this prestigious award. Notre Dame got smoked by Boston College in Massachusetts on Friday. Virginia needed legitimate heroics to beat Pitt. Defending champion Memphis lost again, this time to Mississippi. Wichita State lost to Kansas State at home. Oregon lost to that Arizona State team that just scored negative points against Wazzu, and it was in overtime, which I feel like makes more people notice it? You know, the “OT” thing sticks out on the scoreboard? Mississippi State lost to Minnesota (we’ve spent a lot of time with the lower Mississippi River valley over the last few years, I’m realizing). St. John’s tricked me into thinking they were playing on ice when it was definitely not ice. Florida got wrecked by Texas Southern, but that was Monday night, and Monday night was not the weekend (again, we’ve spoken with the notes about their absence).
The winner? It’s Oregon. Taking a team that’s been widely made fun of for being terrible and losing your opening conference game to them? At home? I’m drooling.
If you’re a Virginia fan, take heart. Because…
NIT Statement of the Week
Might be getting ahead of ourselves here, with another night left in the week, but losing at James Madison (who may have chess-not-checkersed the CAA by getting themselves banned from the tournament in the name of pettiness, opening up a clearer NIT auto-bid route, should the rules permit it) was a statement, and Virginia made it. We’re calling this race. I don’t see anybody matching it tonight. Sorry to other contenders. Try again next week.
New Mexico/New Mexico State Could’ve Gone Malice in the Palace
New Mexico and New Mexico State play a home-and-home nonconference series in the regular season, which first of all is dope and second of all is dope. Making it even better, things got demonstrative after NMSU salvaged a series split on Monday on Nate Pryor’s overtime buzzer beater. Best rivalry in college basketball? We’re asking the question.
Shaka Smart Lost to Wisconsin
But winning would have been too impressive. People might have sniffed. Congratulations to Wisconsin. One of the best friends of the blog is a Wisconsin man (this is why we learned about the Rossi Ralenkotter scandal).
But He Beat Kansas State!
Hell yeah! Program-defining win for the Golden Eagles, who have built themselves a great nonconference résumé. KenPom’s projecting these guys to end up 18-15, which might not cut it out of the Big East, but they’re dominating the vibe wars, as our guy so often does.
Your Move, Texas
The Longhorns play at Seton Hall tonight, where they’re either underdogs or close to it. Second game against a competitive team so far. First one went horribly. Looks even worse in hindsight.
Does Formula 1 Have Rules? It Has Too Many Rules, Right? Not Enough? What’s Going On With Formula 1 and Rules?
Another bonkers F1 weekend that I’m not sure I understand, and not in a great way. I mean, yeah, it’s entertaining dysfunction, but you can either have the pitch be “our sport is entertainingly dysfunctional” or “we have an historic two-man race for the title going on,” F1’s trying to have both, and I don’t like it. Lewis Hamilton won on Sunday after Max Verstappen pulled a weird braking maneuver to get Hamilton to rear-end him, and that was after some qualifying drama (there was a yellow flag Hamilton should have obeyed, but it was accidentally displayed so Hamilton didn’t see it?) and more qualifying drama (Verstappen crashed) and the F2 race ending in a terrible accident where thankfully both drivers were ok. Also, the actual race on Sunday featured F1 negotiating penalties with the teams, which doesn’t seem like a thing that should be a thing? Wacky stuff all around. Wacky, wacky stuff.
Anyway, Verstappen and Hamilton are tied going into the final race on Sunday morning (American time) in Abu Dhabi. Red Bull’s 28 points behind Mercedes, which I think they could technically overcome but sounds pretty tough to overcome. Hopefully it’s just a good race and there isn’t any of the nonsense. That, or hopefully everyone’s willing to call it nonsense if it’s nonsense. Nothing in between.
Chandler Smith: Snowballer
NASCAR’s minor league drivers took the headlines at the Snowball Derby, with Chandler Smith named the victor after moving Derek Thorn late in the race (and after quite the inspection session post-race—good God are those guys thorough) and Noah Gragson causing a wreck on Saturday that earned him even more haters. Even in the offseason, Gragson keeps grinding.
Return of Petty Relevance?
Richard Petty Motorsports was largely bought out by GMS Racing, forming Petty GMS Motorsports, which will field the number 42 and 43 this year in NASCAR’s Cup Series, driven by Ty Dillon and Erik Jones, respectively. It’s a solid pair of drivers in a not-that-competitive-recently pair of cars, with the hope being, if I’m reading the situation correctly, that the team can grow in the long term and steal a win or two in the short term. This would be a nice thing to happen for NASCAR. NASCAR needs Richard Petty to actively be a big deal.
Bad Weekend for Burnley
Burnley managed to lose to Newcastle on Saturday, playing fine but not well and missing a great opportunity to move up out of the relegation zone. It’s early in the year, but they’re hurting, and I know I became a Burnley fan because they were the most irrelevant Premier League team I could find in August 2019 but I’m legitimately a little upset about this one and it happened five days ago. They’ve broken me.
In happier news, the club announced a partnership with Papa John’s this week, and if Papa John’s works the same overseas as it does in the states, this means Burnley’s going to start bending all sorts of rules and EPL fans will one day all know the name of one specific sex worker involved in legal proceedings stemming from the team’s success.
Good Week for the Sens
After beating the Hurricanes on Thursday (lol get rekt Hurricanes), the Sens came home and beat the Avalanche on Saturday in a mess of a game (lol get rekt Avalanche), then stayed home and beat the Devils in a shootout on Monday (lol get rekt Devils) before losing to the Islanders Tuesday night away from St. John’s basketball’s third home court. There are a number of things we should talk about with this team, and we’ll get to those over the days ahead, but for today, I want to focus on two things: First, the darling Tim Stützle (we say that with entirely legitimate affection, we love this young foreign man) got in a fight on Tuesday, and while it didn’t go down in the books as a fight, I’d say our guy did great. Proud of him. Second, let’s do a quick hit on who’s good and who’s bad on this team, because we’re overdue for that (these are all just my impressions—if you know something about hockey and more specifically about the Ottawa Senators, please correct any and all of my mistakes):
Goalies
- Matt Murray – Bad. Overpaid, which makes him worse. Currently in Belleville.
- Filip Gustavsson – In a tough situation, and young, but bad numbers, which is to say bad but forgiven either through Stockholm syndrome or a desire to fix the other issues first. Could be a good full-time goalie down the line, but not there right now.
- Anton Forsberg – In a tough situation, but has shown flashes of brilliance, but has bad numbers overall. Also, like Gustavsson, not getting paid a lot, so no one seems that mad at him if I’m reading the situation correctly.
Forwards
- Brady Tkachuk – Good.
- Drake Batherson – Good.
- Josh Norris – Good.
- Connor Brown – Good, right? I don’t hear as much about him but I think he’s good.
- Tim Stützle – Good, but having a rough year. Sophomore slump.
- Colin White – Hurt, and people seem mixed about him, maybe because he’s getting paid highly?
- Shane Pinto – Hurt, supposed to be a big part of the future but is a prospect so no sure things.
- Alex Formenton – People seem happy with this man. I’ll say good.
- Nick Paul – Fine, I think, with potential to be good again, as he once was.
- Chris Tierney – Bad, but maybe necessary? I don’t know. Don’t fully get this guy.
- Tyler Ennis – Fine, or such is my impression.
- Zach Sanford – Bad, or such is my impression.
- Dylan Gambrell – Bad, or such is my impression.
- Austin Watson – Plays a role in theory but isn’t playing that role right now and kind of stinks other than that role (enforcer is the role).
- Adam Gaudette – I don’t think this guy is good, but his wife does the rituals and I’m firmly in favor of rituals with this team, so let’s roll with him.
- Parker Kelly – My impression on Kelly is that he’s a good organization guy and possibly a future role player in a positive role.
- Ridly Greig – Great future, but I think he’s a real long way from debuting.
- Egor Sokolov – Zub’s sidekick, could have a pretty solid future.
Defensemen
- Thomas Chabot – Good.
- Artyom Zub – Good! And a cult hero, which we need.
- Nikita Zaitsev – Bad.
- Nick Holden – Fine, I think, but that might be a relative statement because this team’s defense is terrible.
- Michael Del Zotto – Bad. Unclear why he was signed. Does go by Uncle Delly or Uncle Deli, though, so good vibes if the team turns into one that can just outscore everyone.
- Josh Brown – Hurt, but bad.
- Victor Mete – Bad.
- Erik Brännströmm – Bad, but people still think he might be good one day. He’s very small. Hurt right now. Possibly as a result of being so small.
- Lassi Thomson – Good! Just got sent down, but good. Bright spot for sure. Looks like a Harry Potter character, which I don’t love but can deal with.
- Jacob Bernard-Docker – Not great, but real young. Could be serviceable soon, but probably not this year?
- Jake Sanderson – Still in college, but great. Sounds like he might be the third-best defender in the organization? Not saying a ton, but saying something.
- Dillon Heatherington – Who is this man? I’m assuming bad, because he’s been playing defense for the Senators.
I left some people out, but that’s the general crew, as long as I didn’t miss anyone. Thank you for indulging my attempt to remind myself who the Senators are right now.
Coyote Lockout
In other hockey news, the Arizona Coyotes have not been paying their stadium bills, the stadium is threatening to lock them out, and why do we have an NHL team in Arizona, again? And why did we care enough about that team to rebrand them from the Phoenix Coyotes to the Arizona Coyotes? Put them in Hartford. Put them in Quebec City. Put them in Fargo. Give Toronto a second team.
***
Ok, I think we’re caught up now. Again, we’ve spoken to these notes and will try to avoid similar future truancy, but what are you going to do? Rec volleyball team tries to get to 1-1 tonight. I’m wearing number 17 in honor of Joe Kelly. We’re underdogs, I assume. Prior to the game, I’ll be keeping eyes on the Longhorns, with extreme emotional confusion. After the game, probably the Iowa/Iowa State finish. Then maybe some Tik Toks my buddy Ryan sent me. I have a big backlog on Tik Toks. Also have a few from Stewie, it appears.
