Phil is the Zen Master. He is not the English master.
A radio DJ in Florida just got a tattoo that may not have the longest shelf life.
Image by Naples Daily News, Scott McIntyre / AP
You think this is easy?!
Via: gifeye.com
Via: gifbin.com
Via: gifbin.com
Via: gifsoup.com
Rick Reilly is one of the most annoying people in the world. Here accuses someone else of being annoying. It's awkward.
Source: youtube.com
King gets battered.
Baseball blew past Tim McCarver years ago even as his old-school peers got on board with new ideas. Now the 71-year-old TV analyst will hang up his headset after calling his 24th World Series. It's about time.
Image by Heather Ainsworth, File / AP
The news that Tim McCarver was finally planning to step away from calling Major League Baseball games for Fox after the 2013 season — after he works his record 24th World Series, of course — was upsetting, but only in that it hadn't happened sooner. Though his mind "had been made up for two years" to retire, it's only now that his longtime play-by-play man, Joe Buck, will have to find a new sidekick — an odd thing to think about since Buck almost always played the Robin role alongside McCarver's wiser-mentor schtick. And though the Twitter Age has been unkind to the 71-year-old former catcher, the forgotten truth is that Tim McCarver used to be an excellent broadcaster.
Back in the late '80s and early '90s, he called New York Mets games locally, and his promotion to working nationally televised games was wholly warranted. But a sad thing has happened the last few years. McCarver morphed from one of the most reliable color analysts in the business — few were better when he and Buck were in sync — to something resembling more of a rambling loon than sage ex-ballplayer. For a web culture that gave rise to things like Shit My Dad Says, he became perfect fodder with proclamations like "It's a five-letter word. S-T-R-I-K-E," uttered during the 2011 World Series. Or there was the time he laid out his crackpot theory about "climactic changes" making our planet's air thinner and causing more home runs to be hit. But funny and weird as those asides were, it was McCarver's complete inability to adapt to changes, even those that were good for the game, that cemented this present-day dinosaur status. McCarver has called 23, soon to be 24, World Series: a record that will likely stand for decades. But at 71, he easily missed his peak exit moment by five years or more.
It's not an ageist thing. Baseball, despite its sepia reputation, has never been static for long, and the game has evolved dramatically enough to see McCarver look positively stone-aged even when compared with his old-man peers. If anything, his shortcomings have only been magnified by his contemporaries. Baseball-minded broadcasters like Vin Scully, Marty Brennaman, Jack Buck, Ernie Harwell, Bob Murphy, Curt Gowdy, and Dick Enberg have, over the years, proved being old didn't equate to being out of touch, especially regarding a sport that's undergone significant transformations over the last 10 years. Advanced metrics and new terminology are receding from the fringe and becoming more mainstream every season. Today's fans are more well-informed than ever before, thanks to, say, in-app pitch tracking. Sabermetrics, meanwhile, has made everyone smarter — the reasoned and passionate MVP debate regarding Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera may be eventually looked back on as some kind of breakthrough — and social media helps spread that awareness faster and farther than we could have possibly imagined a decade back.
Back in 2001, McCarver didn't have to be concerned with any of this. He was a sharp-color man who practically described Luis Gonzalez's World Series–winning hit in 2001 before it happened. If this is what people ultimately remember him for, he can be proud.
But lately he's just been playing the crotchety contrarian archetype. Last April, he derided the impact of Twitter, which drives so much of MLB's popularity today, declaring, "nothing in my view more disturbing than social networking — nothing." That's not the sort of diatribe you hear from someone like Scully, who will be calling his 64th season for the Dodgers this year and remains beloved for making his age into an asset. McCarver complains about computers; Scully tells stories about ice-skating with Jackie Robinson.
This isn't all McCarver's fault, for sure. Two months after the S-T-R-I-K-E line, he was announced as the Baseball Hall of Fame's latest honoree of the Ford C. Frick Award, given annually for "excellence in broadcasting." The sequence of events, from punchline to the peak of his professional in weeks, made it clear that three decades in the booth meant McCarver couldn't be touched — MLB's press box version of a made man. However long he wanted to work the sport's most prestigious moments would be up to him, and we'd not see him quit a day sooner. Fox, and the baseball establishment, were enablers for his crankiness.
Over time, McCarver's gainful employment came to represent the worst kind of institutional legacy, but now Fox has a chance for a course correction. Someone younger and more current, such as Ron Darling, who does Mets games for SNY and moonlights on Turner broadcasts during the postseason, or Orel Hershiser, who does excellent work on ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, would make an excellent accompaniment to Joe Buck's sobering, grounded style. (Although, Hershiser's lame remarks regarding WAR — that it's too math-y and confusing — were quite disheartening.)
Fox execs say they likely won't name a successor until after the season ends, so let's consider this 2013 season not as a ceremonial good-bye party to McCarver but as an open casting call to fill his shoes. A few years back, this would've been a taller order, but the timing now couldn't be better.
The average NFL career lasts less than four years. This program aims to give those players a cinematic option after retirement.
Source: youtube.com
At right, former fullback Terrelle Smith and former linebacker Corey Mays.
Via: nfl.com
Just normal, totally not gay football scouting talk.
These people take school spirit to new extremes.
Apparently Marquette's fan base doesn't have the balls or school spirit to put a picture of their embarrassing tattoo on the internet. Prove me wrong, guys!!!
The small catholic school from Philly came through in the clutch! Kevin Brady proudly tweeted his La Salle tattoo at us last night.
While I'm sure there are some embarrassing tattoos floating around the greater Tucson area, the only two we were able to find on the internet were the Arizona "A" symbol and this pretty darn cool wildcat logo. So congrats! You win by default.
Source: checkoutmyink.com
Don't you just want to run your hands through that incredible wheat hair? No? Little creepy? Okay, but bonus points for having the Shocker mascot give the "shocker" symbol — because butts.
Source: collegehumor.com
Would I lie to you?
You probably feel like you've watched dozens and dozens of hours of NCAA basketball over the last week. Maybe you have! I literally watched a full 40-hour work-week of 18-22 year-olds (I myself was born in 1923) throwing orange balls at a metal orange circle, and it felt GREAT.
As good as the first few four days are, things really get down to business with the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight, when the underdogs either turn into beautiful butterflies or remain awkward flustered tadpoles, and the favorites either justify their kingpin status or get cast to the curb like a leather skirt worn once by Kanye West. (Never mix your metaphors.)
Of course, when we're talking basketball teams, we're really talking basketball players. And these are the 11 players you must know before watching the Sweet 16, or else you might — will — die.
"Shout out to my cousin Vern. Shout out to my mom. All y'all, man. We out here!" With those words, LaSalle's Tyrone Garland immediately ascended into the pantheon of great post-game interviews, where he now sits alongside a statue of Kevin Garnett and a collection of Craig Sager's blazers. Garland isn't all bluster and smiles, though. He hit the game-winning layup against Ole Miss to send LaSalle to the Sweet 16, and he has really tremendous hair. Plus, he named his shot that beat Ole Miss the "Southwest Philly Floater," and having a shot with a name is totally rad. It's the basketball equivalent of christening your fists.
Florida Gulf Coast may be the Cinderella, but the Explorers actually have a chance.
Known as human kinetics or the scientific study of human movement.
Image by Jamie Squire / Getty Images
They lost the 1955 national championship game to the University of San Francisco, led by Bill Russell.
Source: media.kansascity.com
Image by Jamie Squire / Getty Images
“A COLD-BLOODED THREE.” Indeed, Kevin Harlan.
Image by Jonathan Zizzo /Buzzfeed
Brandon McCarthy has some ideas for how a profile of himself should read. He knows the formula cold: a quirky intro that sets the tone and lays out the big idea; background info on a life-altering event that shapes or cements a cogent personality trait; if you're lucky, some fleeting trash talk that becomes the one thing in the piece everyone remembers, all leading up to a scene that ties everything up in a nice bow. Slumped on the living room couch in his downtown Dallas townhouse, he explains, as someone who likes to control his own narrative, that he'd prefer to go with a day-in-the-life structure. It could be based on yesterday, he says. The story would start out with him playing golf, sinking his fourth hole in one of the week, a little off his usual pace.
"Then he donated another million to a children's charity," he says in a booming omniscient narrator's voice. "He lifted more weight than he ever has, beating all the combine guys in bench press for the third year in a row." Now that he's rolling, he doesn't stop. "He finished writing a television show, pitched it, it got picked up, and they said it's going to be the greatest thing ever."
Without missing a beat, he switches to first person. "Time-wise, I couldn't commit, so I turned it down," he says. "Then I came home, made the best dinner anybody's ever had, pleasured my wife, went to bed, and got a perfect eight hours of sleep."
What percentage of that is true?
"Well," he says. "I did work out yesterday. I came home and went to Fuel City and ate tacos." He's referring to a popular Dallas taco joint that's inside a gas station. "They were really, really good. Then I came back to get my golf clubs to go to the range, but ended up falling asleep on the floor for two and a half hours." He says he woke up with heartburn, then met some friends for drinks, and did, in fact, get a lot of sleep.
He nods. "And that was a productive day."
(The Big Idea)
In the world of sports, Brandon McCarthy is something of an anomaly. So many successful athletes are guarded and consumed solely by the sport they play, or by the profit-driven hero-making machine of sports media. But the Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher, who will begin his eighth season with his fourth different organization when he takes the ball Opening Day, comes across as genuine and unaffected, whether it's to his 100,000+ Twitter followers or in his living room. It's helped him maintain control of his own story, his image. More than nearly everyone else in sports — with the possible exception of Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe — McCarthy seems to understand the nuances of modern mythmaking, the calculated randomness, the subtlety, the cultural value. And while Kluwe is, well, a punter, McCarthy is among the better pitchers in baseball.
Last September, after getting hit in the head with a line drive that fractured his skull, he was rushed to the hospital, where he endured two hours of brain surgery to relieve the cranial pressure. He spent nearly a week in and out of consciousness, his wife, Amanda, worrying at the edge of his hospital bed. When he finally got to go home, his first tweet to the world was: "WELL IF BEING DISCHARGED FROM THE HOSPITAL ISNT THE BEST TIME TO ASK ABOUT A THREESOME THEN IM FRESH OUT OF IDEAS."
McCarthy's humor is part of a particularly neoteric skill set that includes, by his own listing, the ability to weave in and out of highway traffic efficiently, being able to get through a crowded mall quickly (he tells people he has the moves of a world-class running back), finding spelling errors and typos, and doing a spot-on British accent. And there's another thing he says he excels at: doing nothing.
"I can sleep 'til 1, and do nothing, and finally brush my teeth at 5," he says. "Basically what today would be like if you weren't here."
It's his last Saturday at his offseason home before he reports to spring training in Arizona. In December, McCarthy signed a two-year contract with the Diamondbacks worth a reported $15.5 million. Two days from now, he'll be meeting his new teammates, learning all about another new city, another new organization.
McCarthy lives with Amanda and their fluffy West Highland white terrier, Hobbes, in a small gated community a few hundred feet from the American Airlines Center, where the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars play. His posh, modern townhouse once belonged to Brett Hull, and there are stories of old legendary rooftop parties. He's got his own small weight room, a large bedroom, and one of his prized possessions, an expensive toilet Amanda ordered from Japan. Downstairs he has an entire room dedicated to Ping-Pong and shuffleboard, and a framed picture of Nolan Ryan punching Robin Ventura in the head.
McCarthy watches golf with his laptop open on the cushion next to him, his phone buzzing on the other side. He's a slender, 6-foot-7-inch 29 year-old with dark hair that's prematurely turning silver in flecks. Today he's wearing jeans, a blue Superman T-shirt, black socks, and no shoes.
"When you procrastinate, it's a chemical reaction," he says. "There's a release of dopamine the longer you procrastinate, and then when you're forced into action. So it becomes like a little hit to you. Anyone who's a procrastinator knows that exact feeling of, Oh yeah, I got this. So you enjoy that. And it drives people who are with you who aren't that way nuts."
To McCarthy, it's about optimum efficiency — he can focus when he has to, and not waste a bit of energy when it isn't necessary. And the way he analyzes how he relaxes, that's the same way he analyzes everything, from the pitches he throws to the tweets he sends out to the new sitcom script he's been trying to write with the help of some admirers, who just happen to be among the most successful comedy writers in Hollywood.
He's maybe working a little harder than he'd care to admit.
He studied statistics. "I became addicted to Fangraphs," he says, referring to a popular stat-head website. "If I wanted to stop sucking, I knew I needed to change something." He looked at which pitches lead to more runs. At the end of his stretch with the Rangers, he made the conscious decision to remake himself as a pitcher. He had always thrown a lot of fastballs high in the strike zone — pitches that for him resulted in more strikeouts, but also more fly balls and more home runs allowed.
"I had to evolve," he says. "I had to figure out a way to apply this kind of knowledge." Now there would be more movement on his pitches. There would be less focus on trying to strike batters out and more on maintaining his control and getting them to ground out. In his second year in the league, with the White Sox in 2006, McCarthy averaged three and a half walks and almost two home runs allowed for every nine innings he pitched. In 2011, with the A's, those numbers dropped to 1.3 walks and 0.6 home runs. McCarthy led the American League in fielding-independent pitching (what real stat-heads prefer to ERA). These days, he's often compared to future Hall of Famer control specialist Greg Maddux.
McCarthy's transformation landed him on the cover of ESPN the Magazine for last spring's "Analytics" issue. Amanda posed next to him, brunette hair flowing, shirt unbuttoned just enough to barely titillate the bloggers who had already enshrined her into the Hot Baseball Wives Hall of Fame. The cover line: "Chicks Dig the Ground Ball."
Image by Jonathan Zizzo /Buzzfeed
He was on the A's, playing in Anaheim, when he watched as it was time for yet another session of the cringe-worthy Kiss Cam. "I cannot stand the Kiss Cam," he says. "It's so, so awkward already. Then they always end it with two guys that they show. And then everybody laughs and they giggle and the guys are embarrassed. I just started thinking about how this is homophobic at its base." He can imagine how it might look to gay people. "What if I'm there with my partner — what are you all laughing at?"
He had thought about it a few times before the night last April when he finally decided to tweet something about it: "They put two guys on the 'Kiss Cam' tonight. What hilarity!! (by hilarity I mean offensive homophobia). Enough with this stupid trend."
His message was retweeted hundreds of times within only a few hours. Then CNN picked it up. Then dozens of other news outlets. Even NPR, hardly a bastion for sports debate, did a segment on McCarthy's remarks. The San Francisco Chronicle interviewed him about the topic and called his comments the dawn of "the age of enlightenment" in sports.
McCarthy saw how it sparked discussions across the country. He saw the potential good Twitter could do. He says a lot of pro sports organizations "get it" too, and they encourage the players to engage with fans. But some — he doesn't want to name names — are just scared. "It's a missed opportunity."
When you hear him talk, he seems more like the kind of person you'd find working in the office of a start-up than in a locker room. He knows which times of day will get the most action, which subjects will generate more negative response, which people he's better off not retweeting. But the point isn't just that he's funny or laid-back: McCarthy is the model of what we were told the modern, media-savvy athlete would be. His mere presence in the world of sports means something. He, of course, does not see it that way.
Between his irreverence and his laid-back social activism, he also uses Twitter to flirt with his wife. Amanda has more than 25,000 followers herself, and the husband and wife aren't afraid to tease each other in public. Not long ago, he tweeted that he had found something in her ass. When reminded now, she just laughs and shakes her head. "Neither one of us gets too bothered about things," she says.
Of the two of them, he is actually slightly more likely to be upset. "I'm an over-sharer," she says. At one point, Amanda had posted a photo of an expensive bottle of wine they were drinking.
"I don't like showy-ness," he says. "It's understood who makes money and there's nice things and all that. But right now, when people are looking for jobs, tweeting about a $2,000 bottle of wine probably isn't a wise move." He says it's a little like Phil Mickelson complaining about his taxes. After seeing something like that, some people might not think his next joke is quite as funny.
By the way, since we're at that point, is there anyone he wants to talk shit about?
"Nancy Grace," he says. "She's the absolute worst." He remembers a game last year in Seattle. He started the game off cruising, but at some point he gave up a home run. "I was sitting in the dugout after the inning," he says. "And I was like, What the fuck was that? How did my brain just turn off for a second? What the hell could have caused that?"
After thinking about it for a while, he says he realized what it was. "That was the day that Nancy Grace's nipple popped out on TV," he says. "Her nipple popping out was what caused that home run."
The hit spun him around. His eyes were dazed and vacant, and his jaw dangled open slightly. His right arm reached to his head out of instinct, but because of the head trauma, it looked like a signal wasn't connecting. His wrist locked awkwardly next to his cheek as he fell to the ground. For a split second, it looked like he was taking a relaxing nap right there on the mound. (The image would later turn into a meme, and McCarthy would make it his Twitter avatar.)
His teammates, manager, and the trainers were at his side immediately. McCarthy rubbed his head, feeling for blood or brains or — he didn't even know what. But his hair seemed dry. Within a minute or two, they had him up, walking to the dugout. He passed the concussion tests they gave him — similar to the tests NFL trainers use on the sidelines — but the organization still sent him to the hospital for a CT scan. The scan revealed an epidural hemorrhage, a brain contusion, and a skull fracture. After a second examination and a second scan, he was prepped for brain surgery.
Amanda had been at the game. She sat nervously at the hospital during the two-hour operation. There were no tweets. No jokes. "I assumed at the time baseball was over," she says. "We were worried about more important things."
He spent six days in the hospital, mostly sleeping. It was worse for her, awake, watching, wondering, feeling helpless. But he was back to joking around by the time of his release. That's when he put out the threesome tweet. He'd actually typed it up a few hours earlier — "I'd just been thinking that a lot and thought it was funny," he says now — and shown it to her before he posted it. She laughed, but suggested he at least wait until the team put out the official statement saying he'd been released from the hospital.
When he did finally post it, there were more than 6,000 retweets. Amanda responded to him on her own account: "I WILL strike someone with a brain injury."
To be clear, he tells me he feels totally, 100% better now. He has a little nervousness about going out there, but nothing he won't be able to deal with. He knows the video was all over SportsCenter. He knows that despite all the analysis and thought he puts into so many aspects of life, he'll probably always be associated with this one random event. For all his forthrightness, he doesn't want to become some sort of spokesperson for head injuries or have to answer questions about this forever. (He's already been asked dozens of times about things like helmets for pitchers. He thinks the technology is still way off, and that pro athletes all assume a certain level of risk every time they step on the field.) But he also knows there are some things he can't control, and he's good at not worrying about what he can't control. "What's the point if you can't do anything about it," he says.
We talk about watching football, and how it's become so much harder now that the public knows more about head injuries. The worst part, we agree, is when you see a player has been knocked unconscious but his fists are still clenched in balls.
Within a few weeks of the injury, he felt well enough to join his team in the dugout for the playoff run. But he couldn't play. The first time he got on an exercise bike, he felt miserable. "Once you exert yourself, you have a bad headache," he says. "You just feel completely out of sorts. I felt like I was on a tape delay, like everything was happening a second before I was registering it."
He was told that the best thing he could do was rest and let his brain heal. He was told he should sit on the couch and do nothing. It was like he'd been preparing for this his whole life. When he went back to a concussion specialist a few weeks after the season ended, the doctor was astonished at how well McCarthy had healed. "He couldn't believe it," McCarthy says. "Everything was just normal. I didn't have one issue." It meant his baseball career wasn't over after all.
Throughout the day that I spend at his place, we talk about fodder for comic material: the swingers that live a few doors down; the fact that some straight-edge Christians like to throw parties where they stay sober, but their friends all get trashed — McCarthy has played with a few guys like that over the years. "I've never understood that," he says. "But how do you even ask someone about that and not kind of sound like a dick?"
It's getting late and Amanda reminds him that they have dinner reservations. It will be their last dinner with their Dallas friends before heading to Arizona.
"I hate the idea of dinner reservations," he says. He's thought about this. Any reservations are bad, he says. He'd rather walk around and look for places anyway. "I especially hate the advanced ones, like a week out. Dinner at 7 p.m. a week from now? I don't know if I'll be hungry then! And if I'm eating dinner at 7, that means I have to have lunch at a certain time and now my whole day is based around this."
Amanda disagrees. She doesn't get the procrastination lifestyle. "Sometimes I feel like I'm going to pop a blood vessel in my eyeball," she says. Just this morning she had to go to UPS, she says, to ship her husband's golf clubs and his baseball bag. "Because he waited so long, I'm lugging around this stuff, clunking in there, mailing it last second. And he was just OK letting them sit in the garage."
McCarthy points out that, technically, waiting didn't bring him any negative consequences. "Actually," he says with a smile, "it all worked out great."
(The Tidy Ending)
The next day, he invites me to watch a Liverpool game with him at a British pub he loves. I can't go, but we agree to touch base in a few weeks, when he's situated in Arizona, for a short follow-up.
Once spring training starts, he doesn't have nearly as much time to sit around. (One fan on Twitter gets annoyed at him when McCarthy misses an Egraphs appointment.) On Feb. 27, he takes the mound for the first time since his injury. Amanda is more anxious than he is, telling reporters that while she isn't usually a nervous person, this time, "I was so nervous, I'm still shaking."
He strikes out four in two innings, throwing 22 strikes in 31 pitches. He tells reporters after the game that his rhythm, his game pace felt good. "I'm glad this one is out of the way so I don't have to hear about it anymore," he tells the cameras.
I reach out to him in mid-March to hear how spring training's been going. I wonder what it says about our expectations of modern athletes when it seems so strange to see a star pitcher, someone with a $15 million contract, interacting so naturally with everyday people — being thoughtful and composed during long interviews and interested in things like studies about procrastination and dopamine. I want to ask him if he thinks it says more about him or the state of sports in general, about how phony and self-obsessed so many sports figures seem, about the way our culture worships celebrity and opulence. I feel like he might appreciate the fact that I've procrastinated until right before my deadline to get back in touch, hoping to wrap it all up nicely at the last possible second.
We had texted a few times, so first I send him a text message. When I don't hear back from him in a day or two, I send him an email. When I don't get a response in a few more days, I send another email, just asking if they were getting through. He sends back a quick note saying they are, that he's sorry, and that he's been a little backed up recently. The next day I send him a note asking if he has a few minutes to talk on the phone. At around 2 a.m. that night, I get a reply saying sure, asking what time works for me. I don't hear back until the next night, when an email comes in just before 3 a.m.
"Sorry man," he writes. "My schedule has been all over the map so I've had to put everything like this off. But if you can tell me what works for you beginning of next week, I'll try to make it work."
We get on the phone, but only to talk about better times to talk, but it never works out. It's not that he doesn't want to talk. He's just too busy.
McCarthy, moments after getting a line drive off the noggin, September 5, 2012.
Image by Doug Duran/Contra Costa Times/MCT
Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Kate Upton, is particular about her men.
Source: youtube.com
Not super happy.
Image by Julian H. Gonzalez/Detroit Free Press/MCT
Image by Charlie Neibergall / AP
If you ever screw up, call Chuck.
Quote via the AP.
This is classic public relations brand-protection outside-the-box crisis management. Don't try to make excuses for the mistake, or get wrapped up in rehashing its unsavory details. Do minimize its importance while defending the basic integrity of your client (Doug Gottlieb) and taking the attack to another front (lame Twitter losers who have no life). (That's a funny diss for Barkley to go with, by the way, because his mouth is basically a human Twitter stream. It's not like he's known for the careful research and deliberation he puts into his statements.)
Next time YOU say something stupid, consider getting Chuck on your side.
Introducing the Rootability Curve.
Graphic by Chris Ritter for BuzzFeed
We're pretty sure we nailed every one of these exactly on the nose, so there's no reason to critique our choices on Twitter or in the comments. Carry on!
Did you do better?
Source: Wikipedia
Image by Ezra Shaw / Getty Images
Source: The Sporting News
Image by Dustin Bradford / Getty Images
Source: Seattle Times
Image by Al Bello / Getty Images
Source: The Sporting News
Image by Joel Auerbach / Getty Images
Perennial powers on the one hand, bloodthirsty underdogs on the other. Let's go.
Image by Chuck Liddy/Raleigh News & Observer/MCT
1. The Sweet 16 is the most objectively perfect part of the college basketball season. If you disagree with this, then you do not appreciate what makes college basketball college basketball; you may enjoy the sport as much as anyone, you might be cheering harder for your team than is medically advisable, but you dont truly understand why the sport captivates so many people.
2. Because of the nature of playing eight games in two days, one night is bound to be better than the other. Last night's slate had some appeal — Arizona and Ohio State, Syracuse and Indiana, elite programs all, plus Marquette and Miami, major-conference strivers. The night was hampered, however, by having Wichita State and La Salle, two quality underdogs, play each other. Tonight's schedule is clearly the superior of the two.
3. Duke vs. Michigan State is the basketball equivalent of Rip Torn striking Norman Mailer with a hammer. There's a real kinship between these schools, born of being constant presences in the deepest reaches of the tournament. And, despite or because of this kinship, there is also a hatred both vicious and cerebral, the kind of dislike that can only come from immense respect. Mike Krzyzewski and Tom Izzo know Mike Krzyzewskis and Tom Izzos when they see them, and the recognition of themselves in each other just makes the killer instinct even fiercer.
Image by Nhat V. Meyer/San Jose Mercury News/MCT
4. Human beings thrive on the sense of feeling underrated. It motivates them to correct what appears a cosmic imbalance in the world; it creates a vacuum of space that must be filled either by the underrated party proving its worth or by the underrating becoming the rule. In the NCAA tournament, every good team has to feel like it's underrated, except for the No. 1 overall seed, i.e., Louisville, which has to believe that no alternative reality is even possible. But some squads achieve this reality more poignantly than others. This year, it's Oregon, a team that won the Pac-12 tournament — in name, if not in respect, one of the major conference-postseason contests — yet was given a mid-major at-large-esque No. 12 seed. So far, Oregon has played like the legitimate team it is and not the cast-off it was branded by the selection committee, and, running up against Louisville, the question of motivation vs. ability will be answered in very concrete terms: one of these teams will move, one of them will not.
5. College basketball teams are often filled with players you've never heard of, because there are approximately 95,000 Division I teams in the country. Michigan is not this kind of team. Michigan has a national player of the year candidate in Trey Burke, two NBA sons in Tim Hardaway Jr. and Glenn Robinson III, and a vaunted recruit in Mitch McGary. Michigan has name-brand players, who you'd be interested to hear about even if they didn't make the tournament. It's a miracle one of the Jordan kids isn't on this team.
Tony Romo is getting the second-most guaranteed money in NFL history. And McNabb is not impressed.
