“Where Wings Take Dream”

 

“No more neon-piss-colored helmets?  We might actually make it to a BCS bowl!”

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, the Oregon Ducks Football team has done it again.  Their fourth major uniform redesign this decade.  Honestly, I really liked the diamond plating look of the previous rotation of jerseys, but I would definitely say that of all of the schemes they’ve worn over the past ten years, this is probably the best all around uniform package.  Why?  Because they minimize the use of yellow, and the yellow that they are going with is a much softer, less visually abrasive tone.  They got rid of those atrocious yellow helmets from the last two seasons, you remember, the ones that look kind of like your pee looks after you drink a triple shot RockStar?  Those things were awful, and I think we had a losing record while wearing them, including a terrible showing in the Las Vegas bowl a few years back.  The current helmet options are much better, featuring the classic shiny green, the white-out look, a new matte black helmet and a super cool-looking carbon fiber finish helmet with a steel “O” logo (photo at top).  They have eliminated the yellow pants from the rotation (great idea) and have changed the font a bit to make the numbers more readable.  The only other major change is the new wing design that was featured on their “Lights Out” uniform, which they wore last year during the Arizona game.  That design has replaced the diamond plating on the shoulder pads, and is apparently more durable than the older jerseys in the shoulder area specifically.

Now that we have eliminated some of the ugliest combinations from the rotation, we might actually be poised to win a conference title and advance to a BCS bowl.  Some of you are probably laughing, thinking that having cool looking jerseys isn’t going to make a difference, especially if you are a Virginia Tech or Clemson fan.  But you know what they say.  You gotta dress for success, baby.

Here are some pictures…

 

And a link to a video from the Register Guard…

For more in depth information about the new uni’s, check out KATU or GoDucks.com…

MOST LIKELY TO:

Redesign in another 2-3 years – Oregon Ducks
Finally win the conference again – Oregon Ducks
Bitch and moan about new jerseys – Beaver fans, Husky fans, Cal fans
Pull high profile recruits due to non-stagnant unis and nice facilities – Oregon Ducks
Get thumped at Autzen regardless of uniforms – Daaaaaa Beavs

Shabbat Shalom

Saturday’s action is far from over, but already a number of interesting stories have developed.  Ohio State barely survived a rough game against Ohio.  Michigan nearly lost to Miami of Ohio.  Ole Miss made it a nail biter with Wake Forest, and East Carolina proved that they deserved to be ranked after totally dominating No. 8 West Virginia and that “potent offense” led by “Heisman Candidate” Pat White.  Washington’s Jake Locker was inappropriately flagged for excessive celebration and the referees handed BYU a close game in Husky Stadium.  And despite what many writers said might be a close game after a number of Penn State suspensions and dismissals, the Nittany Lions handed the Oregon State Beavers their own asses, wrapped up in cellophane in a carefully arranged gift basket of shame.

 

While that Big Ten victory was rather impressive (and it came over a Pac-10 team which makes my heart hurt just a little), the Big Ten was looking marshmallow soft until it happened.  Yes, Wisconsin and Purdue also got the job done today in convincing fashion, but let’s be honest, they were playing cupcakes.  When Michigan and Ohio State both trail for quite a while and barely hang on to win games that they scheduled as for-sure victories, I said to myself and out loud to my father, “Dude, the Big Ten sucks.”  All I know is, Ohio State needs a complete renovation if they don’t want to be totally embarrassed in the Coliseum next week.  Yeah, USC had the week off, and could look at the Ohio State game and think, “Wow, we are gonna punk these fools,” but you had better believe that regardless of how either team starts the game, USC is going to do Arizona proud and “bear down” in a serious way at home against the perennially overrated Buckeyes.  Boeckman is seriously at risk of being injured, and OSU’s young QB Terrelle Pryor didn’t show nearly enough promise to even challenge USC’s defense at all.  I can’t wait for the Big Ten’s best team to get trounced by the Pac-10’s best, a USC team that ends up coughing up a couple games most years regardless of being the conference champion.  Says something about the strength of the conference versus the Big Ten, does it not?

 

Staying within the Pac-10, my very own Oregon Ducks put up 66 points at home against a ridiculously weak Utah State team, so I can’t get too excited about the point total.  However, I can get excited about a couple of things.  One being the fact that LaGarrette Blount was able to get enough touches to break 100 yards on the ground, another being that a number of other bench players got a chance to gain some experience, and probably one of the best things about this game being that the Ducks were able to get a win wearing those ridiculous yellow helmets that everyone hates so much.  Not only did we break the curse that those helmets have thus far brought, but we were also able to get our one game a year to wear them out of the way safely, leaving the rest of the season potentially yellow-helmet-free.  Good idea, Ducks.

 

Now that I have gotten these few things off of my chest, I’m going to continue to watch this Miami vs. Florida game and root for a Hurricanes upset.

 

MOST LIKELY TO:

 

Never hear the end of it from the fans for those stupid yellow helmets – Oregon Ducks

Continue to struggle next week – Big Ten

Somehow turn it around and spoil some Pac-10 hopes – Oregon State Beavers

Suddenly realize being the head coach is more pressure than you thought – Bill Stewart

Make it to the BCS from a non-BCS conference – East Carolina Pirates (yaaarrrrrgh)

Be bored until next Saturday – me

 

 

 

 

 

Pot-Pourri

As I struggled to decide which story from the world of sports I wanted to touch on today, I found that there may not be a clear-cut candidate that is worthy of an entire post to itself, and this being the case I will combine a few stories that I feel are particularly noteworthy.

 

A Championship Pair (of Violations)

 

Former Kansas Jayhawks teammates Mario Chalmers and Darrell Arthur were sent home from an NBA rookie symposium recently because they were caught in their hotel room with girls (a violation of the symposium’s “no visitors” rule) and probably more importantly with marijuana (a violation of the “no drugs” rule and, well, the law).  While the media has been pretty rough on these two for making poor decisions, especially before they have even made their regular season NBA debut, I would like to point out how stupid we would all be to imagine that this kind of thing is rare.  Young men like smoking weed.  Young men like sneaking women into their rooms.  Young men like combining things they like, like weed and women, for instance.  But typically, a lot of young men can’t scrape together the finances to both a) purchase marijuana and b) buy dinner/drinks/etc for women in order to get them to sneak into their rooms.  But once you sign a multi-million dollar contract, suddenly both of those things are really easy to pull off.  I’m not perfect either.  I’ve smoked weed.  I’ve snuck women around.  Hell, I’ve even combined the two, so I can’t really dog these two for those things.  But I can really seriously question their timing.  Why not take a four day break from weed and women while the NBA is trying to teach you how to handle things just like this?  Once your symposium is over and you aren’t under the direct supervision and regulation of the NBA, you can do what you will in your own house on your own time, whether or not your decisions are intelligent.  A lot of people who are less educated about marijuana would insist that bad timing is not the issue but instead it would be a moral issue or perhaps just as serious of a substance abuse policy violation as the steroid scandal.  To those people, I would like to suggest that unless these two were competing in the National Artists League or the Competitive Music Creation Association, the only thing that marijuana is going to enhance is their capacity for eating Fun-yuns.

 

Sloppy Execution

 

On the same topic, four Penn State football players have been suspended for Saturday’s game against perennial Pac-10 spoiler Oregon State after police officers entered their apartment and seized a small amount of marijuana.  This seems even less surprising to me than the Chalmers/Arthur situation.  College kids smoking weed?  YOU ARE KIDDING ME!  What is happening in our society?  Oh yeah, the same thing that has been going on for years.  I’m sure this also happens literally all the time everywhere around the country.  College athletes smoke weed just as any regular college students smoke weed; surprisingly often.  I’m not saying that it’s a great idea or that they should be excused from their suspension, but I would contend that the real story here is the surprising laziness that getting caught by the police indicates.  Most college kids that smoke weed never get caught, either by their parents, their deans, campus security, and certainly not the actual police.  But one would assume that college athletes, who have something to lose, would be a little more careful about their illegitimate operations.  Again, this sounds like I am condoning this behavior, but basically my feelings about the whole thing center around the fact that I am not at all removed from the college environment so the most surprising thing to me is the sloppy execution, regardless of how pro-marijuana I am coming across in this post.

 

An Arrogant Bastard By Any Other Name

 

Last, and probably also least, is the “Ocho Cinco.”  Former Oregon State WR and current Cincinnati Bengals star Chad Johnson (or should I say the athlete formerly known as Chad Johnson) has successfully changed his legal name to “Chad Ocho Cinco,” and by doing so he officially claims the top spot on both the Stupidest Athletes and Cockiest Athletes lists.  Congratulations, Chad.  Now he can actually wear the “Ocho Cinco” name on the back of his jersey without ripping it off in the pre-game warm-ups.  Honestly, this is probably one of the most ridiculous things that has happened in the NFL in the past year, which hasn’t exactly been a smooth ride for the league, or for commissioner Goodell.  When I heard about it I thought it was a joke.  Now that I know it’s real, it’s even more of a joke than I thought it was to begin with.  This worries me about the coming generations of youth.  I never like to see athletes get injured, but wouldn’t it be ironic if 85 got hurt and for the rest of his career he could never get his health back up any higher than 85 percent?  Then the name would take on a whole new hilariously deserved meaning.

 

MOST LIKELY TO:

 

Smoke weed – college students

Win in Happy Valley on Saturday – Nittany Lions

“Fly High” in the NBA – Mario Chalmers                                         

Eat Fun-yuns – potheads

Have only begun his long list of shenanigans for this season – the athlete formerly known as Chad Johnson

Wait Just A SECond

Before I write a post in which I rattle off all kinds of stats from the 44-10 stomping of UW that the Ducks issued last Saturday night (which I promise I will), I am going to add to the never-ending argument about college football conference strength.  I hit on this argument in a previous post, and given a recent blog posting by my main man Ted Miller, who writes the Pac-10 blog for ESPN’s website, I decided it was important to reiterate.  But don’t go thinking I just feed off of other people’s blogs for my own material (although I often reference Ted Miller), I was also inspired to write about this after watching UCLA knock of Tennessee in overtime Monday night.

 

Every season, we hear about how strong the SEC is and just how much in front of the other BCS conferences they are.  They have “incredible depth” and “extremely tough schedules” which allows the pundits to forgive multiple losses and let them play in major bowl games while teams from the other “weaker” conferences get left out.  Yes, the SEC has long been successful, and it has much to do with their geographic locale and the culture that exists there.

 

The Big 12 and the Big Ten have also been lauded throughout history as being football powerhouses, and it cannot be denied that in the past, they indeed have produced much success.  Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Penn State (among others), are all tremendous programs that have perennially been competitors.  Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Nebraska have been great in the past, although lately the latter two have been replaced in the marquee by Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Tech.  This speaks to the verifiable strength of the Big 12.  Now, while the Big 12 will make a lot of noise this year and should be rewarded for it, the Big Ten is more a less a joke.  Ohio State is going to get beat soundly by USC, Michigan is going to struggle again, and we all know what Oregon is going to do to Purdue.  I’ll give the Big Ten Penn State, they will probably have a solid year.

 

The beef that I have (again, reiterating) is with the SEC’s insistence that they are so much stronger than the Pac-10.  Since 1998, when the BCS era began, the Pac-10 is 10-6 vs. the SEC.  Ten wins, six losses.  Sure, its not total domination or anything, but it is a comfortable margin, and given the fact that the SEC seems to think they dominate other conferences, it’s an interesting contradiction.

 

A highlight in this argument as of late was Monday night’s shocker in Pasadena.  UCLA, a team picked by many to finish in the middle of the bottom half of the Pac-10, knocked off an 18^th ranked Tennessee team that many pundits said was flying under the radar in the SEC and was poised to challenge for the conference title.  Sure, it wasn’t a blowout, and in the first half it was totally ugly.  But they bottom line is that UCLA gave Tennessee the ball FOUR TIMES in the first half on interceptions, and even with those turnovers the Vols were unable to get it done against a team they were supposed to easily dispose of.  That’s two years in a row that Tennessee has come out west and been beaten by a Pac-10 team at the beginning of the season (last year they were beaten by Cal at Memorial Stadium).

 

We’ll see what the Sun Devils can do when Georgia rolls into the desert in a few weeks.  Honestly I think that will bump the count to 10-7 overall, but it would really strengthen my argument if they pull the upset in Tempe.

 

And to reiterate yet again, USC is going to beat Ohio State, but that is hardly going out on a limb.

 

MOST LIKELY TO:

 

Win in Tempe – Georgia Bulldogs

Beat SEC opponents in major bowl games – Pac-10 teams

Still refer to the depth of the SEC even after Tenn and MSU got upset in Week 1 – sports writers from anywhere other than West Coast

Do hundreds and hundreds of pushups on Saturdays this season – me (Oregon points)

Suffer a letdown after a great victory in their opener – UCLA

Start reading this blog – millions of people

Danelove, Back in the Metaphorical Building

Through the Looking Glass

Well I’ll be.  Turns out I finally decided to keep this blog going.  If you have paid any attention whatsoever to my posts in the past, or if you have taken a moment to read my about page, my primary focus is college sports.  However, now that this blog exists solely as a venue for me to express myself and publish the many random ponderings that I undertake as I make my way through life instead of as an assignment for one of my classes (the reason I ever started this in the first place), all those lucky enough to stumble upon this page will have their lives enriched in more areas that just collegiate athletic knowledge.  Who knows, perhaps through my endless ranting about things I love, hate, find peculiar or particularly important, someone’s life will be changed for the better, and I will have ultimately succeeded in doing what it was that I set out to do; earn readers.

It is probably pretty obvious to anyone who actually knows me what the motivation for getting back into the blogosphere was.  College Football season kicked off this weekend, and lots of unexpected things happened, along with some very expected and highly regular things.  But there is much to say about the first few days, and I will be posting my thoughts and observations later this evening.

I hope everyone’s summer has been at least as fun and interesting as mine, which was filled with periods of nomadic wandering amongst long, boring stretches of nothing but waiting for the football season and staying up late watching Planet Earth eating ramen.  Can’t wait to get back to the LSU campus for fall term!

MOST LIKELY TO:

Allow this blog to fall off again somewhere mid-season – me
Watch football every Saturday and not give a rat’s ass on Sunday – me again
Have a barbeque when Cal hosts Oregon – JReezy and me
Never read this post – Anybody
Not care if anyone reads it – Still me

Multiplicity

A lot of hubbub has resulted from the University of Oregon’s tendency to rock all different kinds of crazy uniforms lately.  They have a pretty huge deal with Nike, whose president, Phil Knight, founded the company along with former track coach Bill Bowerman on the campus of the U of O back in the glory days of TrackTown, USA, Eugene, Oregon.  They started out with a waffle iron and a sewing machine, making shoes for Oregon’s track athletes and scheming up business plans.  Now they’ve become one of the most profitable apparel companies in the world.

 

One of the side effects of that whole progression is that the Ducks get special attention when it comes to uniform design.  Many of you have probably seen their lineup of football jerseys, but just in case, here is a link to what they look like.

 

They have gone through some transitions over the past decade or so, switching from the old school varsity style lettering and basic solid colors and tubing accents of the nineties into the Roboduck look of the Joey Harrington/Maurice Morris/Onterrio Smith years, dabbling with some funny rounded shapes of green and yellow during the Jason Fife/Kellen Clemens era, and have finally arrived where they are today.

 

A lot of people can’t stand their uni’s, suggesting that they are too busy, too diverse, or downright ugly.  I for one love the look.  They have 48 different combinations, featuring three different helmet colors (green, yellow, which should never be worn again, and white) and also a bunch of jersey and pant variations from all black to all white and including various combinations of green and yellow.  Plus, on the shoulder and knee pads, they have that diamond plating pattern that makes them look as though they were built from steel like a truckbed or a running board.  They look tough, and I absolutely love when they play home games in all black and green.  The best phrase to describe their all-dark look is “smooth criminals.”

 

I already wrote about one of the newest additions to the football roster, LaGarrette Blount, and mentioned that the combo of uniforms was appealing to him.  The coolest part was that he mentioned that he loved the multiple uni’s because he didn’t want to play for a team that seems stagnant, and with a new look every game, it’s hard to look anything other than fresh.

 

People can whine about the deal with Nike all they want, but they are probably just jealous that their school’s deal with Nike is worth a lot less money.

 

MOST LIKELY TO:

 

Whine some more – Beaver and Husky fans

Look like pimps – Oregon Ducks

Make bank for years to come – Nike

Be able to live off the money he already has forever – Phil Knight

Lose if they wear the yellow helmets again – Oregon Ducks

Buy a jersey – me

Super Silly

One of the most fascinating things on the periphery of the sporting world is superstition.  Superstitions range from the expected to the absolutely absurd.  And they aren’t just left for the players.  They are in fact probably more fun to talk about in regards to the fans.  Sure, there have been some documented superstitions from major athletes, like eating chicken in the dugout, drawing crosses on the pitcher’s mound, wearing one’s old school shorts underneath their jersey, even wearing the opposing team’s uniform the night before.  But surely one would expect to find much more variation and aforementioned absurdity amongst the millions of sports fans.

 

We all saw that Coke commercial with that guy from Virginia Tech drinking enough cans of Coke while watching the game to spell out the VT logo, and as much as I love the excitement and pageantry in that ritual, my heart goes out to his pancreas.  Good luck with diabetes, VT guy.

 

You may have also seen that commercial with the Texas Longhorns fan freaking out after his team loses a game.  He runs to the closet, rips off the jersey his is wearing, and pulls out one of the many other identical jerseys he has in his closet.  Surely winning and losing is all in the threads.

 

I have my own rituals.  Being a ridiculously passionate Oregon Ducks fan, I must wear Oregon gear on game day.  That seems simple enough right?  Well it doesn’t stop there.  After every touchdown or field goal, I have to crank out pushups equivalent to the score.  Pssssh, oh please Denby, any major college football fan cranks out some pushups.  I’ll keep going.  I have a lucky keychain with a squishy Oregon helmet on it, and when I really need them to do well, I press on that thing with my right thumb.  If I realize at some point during the game we are not doing well, I analyze the position in which I am sitting, and the number of Oregon themed articles I am wearing.  If I come to find out that I am wearing an even number of articles, I rectify the situation immediately by adding one and making the total number odd.  Sometimes, I even pray, but I’m not sure that counts as superstition.

 

When I was younger, I had crazy rituals for the night before a basketball game.  I used to eat three bowls of Trix, followed by one in the morning, and I had a specific shower routine.  I would first wash my hair, what little of it I may have had, and then I would scrub myself all over and then scrub only in places where I felt an itchy sensation.  Then, once nothing itched, I would wash my face.  If for some reason, I was distracted and did these things out of order, I would start over and do it all again.

 

The day of the game, I would kiss the roadrunner logo in the middle of our court three times, usually during our pre-game warm-up.  I would sit cross-legged in the middle of it, eyes closed, meditating on an awesome athletic performance, and if anybody bothered me, I’d start again until I mentally spoke myself all the way through this sequence of positive thoughts.

 

Am I the only one who does a bunch of weird stuff like this?

 

MOST LIKELY TO:

 

Think I’m crazy – you

Win because I’m such a good fan – Oregon Ducks

Know from the get-go that I’m wearing three articles – me

Get diabetes – VT guy

Hook ‘em – Texas Guy

Not make any difference whatsoever – fan rituals

O’er the Green Hills o’ Ireland

I am going to take this opportunity to deviate from my typical routine of writing strictly about college sports and give some attention to something that I think deserves it.  The NBA Finals.

 

As many of you are well aware, the Boston Celtics have assembled a squad of All Stars this season in hopes of returning to NBA prominence.  They finished the season with the best record in the league and have thus far made it all the way to the finals, despite their apparent affinity for going to seven games in a series.  There they have met the Los Angeles Lakers, the team that Boston consistently struggled against back in the glory days of both franchises when Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabar were lighting up scoreboards and highlight reels.  This was probably the match-up that the majority of people wanted to see this season, and is probably also the only match up that I would have really felt like paying attention to.

 

Since the Celtics had the best record in the league, they took homecourt advantage into this series, and clearly it was an advantage.  They won the first two games at home rather comfortably, but then they succumbed to the Lakers in game three in Los Angeles.  Kobe Bryant had a ridiculous game, putting on crazy displays of athleticism and convincing some of my friends that he is either an alien or a robot.  Game four is scheduled for tonight at 6:00, and this is a massively pivotal game.  Here’s why.

 

If the Lakers win this game, they will likely maintain their momentum, win their next game at home, and go back to Boston only needing one more game to win the series.  I have to think that after taking a 3-2 lead that Kobe could fulfill his destiny as the MVP and win the title in the same season.  Phil Jackson is a great coach, boasting nine rings, and Kobe and Derek Fisher are seasoned vets with three rings each.  If they win this game, they may just win the series.

 

If the Celtics win this game, it is over for the Lakers.  They would have a 3-1 lead and then every game from then on out would be a must win for the Lakers, and the final two will be back in Beantown.  There is no way that if they go down 3-1 they will win even two of the next games, because Kevin Garnett’s killer instincts will kick in and he will make Pau Gasol his bitch.  He’s already been working on it, but it’s going to become more readily noticeable.

 

I honestly think that the Lakers will probably win this game, after the display Kobe put on in game three and factoring in the home court advantage.  But as far as the overall series goes, I have a different intuition.

 

My money is on the luck of the Irish.  KG needs a ring, Ray Allen needs a ring, and Paul Pierce probably deserves one for sticking around in Boston so long while they totally sucked.  I’ll be watching, rooting for Boston, but actually hoping for some drama to unfold and make it even more interesting.

 

MOST LIKELY TO:

 

Win tonight – Lakers

Win the series – Celtics

Pahhk thayuh cahhs crooked after the Celtics take the title – Bostonians

Win next year’s MVP – Kevin Garnett

Look like an alien/horse – Sam Cassell

Turn out to be an alien or a robot – Kobe Bryant

College Sports Reign Supreme

It occurs to me that I haven’t dedicated a post to my popular rant about why college sports are way better than professional sports.  Many apologies; it’s long overdue.  To avoid getting into a random, fragmented stream of ideas, I’ll go ahead and lay them out in list form.

 

Pageantry vs. Marketing

Professional sports franchises are for-profit entities.  The bottom line is that teams create excitement about themselves in an effort to sell tickets, jerseys, posters and other merchandise in an effort to make money.  Now to be fair, they do this in a number of ways, including bringing talented players to their town and by giving the fans a product that they want.  While earning money for a program by getting into bowl games and other post-season matches is part of the college sports world, the reason that fans love watching their teams play, buy their jerseys, and travel to see their games isn’t due to that school’s marketing efforts (which are certainly also present and visible; just look at my Ducks).  It is because they love the program.  It is their alma mater, their hometown team, or their dream school.  They’ve been with the same institution through thick and thin, they’ve painted their bodies, they’ve performed superstitious rituals, they’ve learned to play the fight song on their instrument of choice, and they’ve shed tears over losses and injuries.  They’ve burned replicas of their rival’s mascot.  Many of them have even been involved in brawls with opposing fans outside the stadium.  It’s that level of passion, that deep commitment and pageantry that gives collegiate sports its soul.

 

Canned Music vs. Marching Bands

The NBA, NFL, MLB and probably all those other leagues I don’t watch play pop songs and cheesy old-school stuff like “dun nuh nuh NUH nuh NUH, CHARGE” as the athletes are performing.  That seems almost degrading, as if we are placing the athletes on a level with today’s pop and rap stars, or are looking at them like circus acts.  In collegiate sports, marching bands and other big band arrangements perform some arrangements of popular songs (which sound MUCH cooler coming from a multi-section ensemble) during timeouts, halftime, and pre-game, and they blast their fight songs with passion when their teams come out to the court, field, what have you, when they are successful in play, and when they are victorious.  They feature stimulating drum-lines, horns blasts, bass lines, and even synchronized movements to add to the flare.  Plus they are performing live, which is always way cooler to experience than something recorded and played over stadium PA’s.

 

Scholarships vs. Salaries

Professional athletes sign mega-contracts before they ever play one minute for their teams.  They play day in and day out, knowing that regardless of whether they win or lose, they are going to make the same amount of money and are going to drive home in their nice cars to their nice houses with nice furniture and whatever other nice stuff I can’t even imagine.  Sure, they want to win, and they know if they play well their next contract could be worth even more.  But there still has to be some element of a “whatever, I still get paid” mentality that is probably pretty prevalent.  College athletes also get some financial support out of the bargain, but theirs is in the form of scholarships (at least usually, I’m not sure what all goes on at USC).  They don’t play for the money.  They play for the chance to take their team to a national championship in a much broader field of teams.  They play for passion.  They play for respect.  True, they also play for the chance to be noticed and one day play in professional leagues, but even that aspect involves deeper passion and a firmer commitment to hard work than playing for a salary.

 

This is hardly a complete list.  Maybe I’ll slap some more up here as they come to me.

 

MOST LIKELY TO:

Disagree with me – Lakers fans, Yankees fans, Packers fans

Agree with me – people from college towns

Beat up another mascot – The Duck

Beat up another person or coach – a professional athlete

Never play professionally – most college athletes

Remember those years as one of the best, most meaningful and exciting times of their lives – those same college athletes

Best in Basketball: pt 2

(CONTINUED FROM LAST POST)

It’s a little surprising that the Pac-10 didn’t make it into the first section of this blog, but maybe I was just waiting to cover them so that they would appear chronologically above the other conferences in the discussion on the homepage of this site.  Or maybe I just wanted to save the best for last.  That said, let’s talk about the Big 10, the Big East and the SEC before we get to the Conference of Champions.

 

SEC fans live and die with their college football season.  But they have also been known to make things interesting in 94 feet.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that is the length of an official NCAA basketball court, and if you didn’t know that, you probably don’t give a rat’s ass about much that I have to say.  The Florida Gators won back to back titles the last two seasons before Kansas took the title last year, and teams like Kentucky, Tennessee and Vanderbilt are always competitive.  Obviously there is more to the SEC than football.

 

The Big-10, traditionally known for their football programs, also tends to make statements in the basketball world.  Michigan used to be consistently good, Michigan State still is consistently good, and Ohio State is always a contender.  Teams like Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana are all strong, and have established great traditions, helping to make their conference remain nationally relevant.  Illinois won a championship a few years back, as did Michigan State (further back).  However, over the past few seasons their effectiveness has waned.

 

The Big East is currently near the top in my mind with the Pac-10 and the ACC.  Look at this impressive list of schools; Cincinnati, Georgetown, Connecticut, Pitt, Syracuse, Villanova, West Virginia.  Wow.  That is a long list of strong programs, year in and year out.  While Pitt and West Virginia are more recent phenomena, they still weigh in to this debate.  Rather heavily.

 

Then, of course, you can’t leave out the Pac-10.  Over the last couple decades, UCLA has been a major national competitor and has reached the Final Four on many occasions.  I don’t even have to mention their ridiculous streak of national championships under John Wooden, although I guess I just did, but perhaps that is antiquity now and is probably less important in this debate than their recent successes.  Stanford and USC are consistently relevant within the conference and in the NCAA Tournament, and my beloved Oregon Ducks have been getting better and better as Ernie Kent continues to bring in effective recruiting classes.  This year’s class may prove to be one of the best of his tenure, ranking 15^th nationally in a recent ESPN assessment (check out No. 1, 9, and 21 as well, all Pac-10 teams).  Washington State has stepped into the national spotlight recently as a legitimate presence, and Arizona is always in the conversation for Pac-10 and national relevance.  With Oregon winning the first ever NCAA Tournament, UCLA running off 11 championships under John Wooden, and Arizona winning the title back in the Gilbert Arenas and Miles Simon days, I think it is safe to say that the Pac-10 is right up there with the ACC as the most important and exciting conferences in the sport.

 

MOST LIKELY TO:

Follow up last year’s strong showing – Pac-10

Feature some young talent and relieve Tajuan Porter by putting him back at the 2-guard position – Oregon Ducks

Keep kicking ass in general – ACC and Big East

Keep checking ESPN.com daily for news about college basketball – me

Still suck for a few years – Oregon State

Send a record number of teams to the NCAA Tourney – Pac-10

Be ridiculed as a Pac-10 fan with blinders on – me again