Crystal Blue

From my favorite twittering coach:


It was EDSBS that turned me on to Stewart, so HT to them. And I don't plan on rebroadcasting coach tweets here.

But as it happens, this particular entry - besides being gloriously un-coachlike - reminds me a few weeks ago when M and I heard Crystal Blue Persuasion in the car and both immediatly assumed that it was a drug song. And if you listen to it - drippy 70s keyboard, horn-infused 3-part psychedleic vocals, Willy-Wonka tripout lyrics - I stand by that assumption. Coming from the same time, meter and culture of 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,' how could it not be?

And, obvioulsy, "Crystal" is today (though perhaps wasn't when this song was written) the go-to euphamism for Meth. Everyone knows, that, right?

Well, according to enough Tube sources that I have to believe there's something to it, Crystal Blue is about any of that:

From Wiki (which echoes other sources):

The title of the song came to James while he was reading The Bible's Book of Revelation, according to James in a 1985 interview in Hitch magazine:

I took the title from the Book of Revelations[sic] in the Bible, reading about the New Jerusalem. The words jumped out at me, and they're not together; they're spread out over three or four verses. But it seemed to go together, it's my favorite of all my songs and one of our most requested.^[1]

However, according to James's manager, James was actually inspired by his reading of the Book of Ezekiel where it speaks of the Blue Shekinah Light which represented the presence of the Almighty God and the Books of Isaiah and Revelation where it speaks of a bright future of a brotherhood of mankind living in peace and harmony.^[2]

Blue Shekina Light?

So let's return to Coach Stewart's twitter.

At this year's Mieneke Bowl, after a breathless, vampire-battle of a win over UNC, Coach Stewart took to an ESPN microphone and basicly became a Joy Balloon that someone suddenly stopped pinching the end of. Screaming into Rob Stone's microphone he said:

On Pat White: "Every mom and daddy in the country want their son to be like Pat White. My wife and I want our sons to be like Pat White."

"Our kids may not be the best players, I know that, but they're the best citizens, they're going to be great husbands, great daddys, great men of faith, I bygawd guarantee that!"

(and then, he turns to Rob Stone):

"Thank you Rob Stone for all you do, thank you ESPN, we love you, ESPN made us, any night you need us, you just ask!"

So that's Bill Stewart, and God Bless. And if nothing else, his twitter feeds reinforces the all-heart, country-roads-take-me-persona he let loose on Stone.

So now we're back to 4am in Stewart's car on the way to practice. What did he hear in that song - and know about it - that makes for "Crystal practice?"

Did he think it was Meth? Amphetimines? Alice? Blue Moons? Hillbilly Heroine? WMD? I mean, this IS West Virgina? Was he planning on a practice, at 6am in the mountains of WV in March, that was akin to really good drug use?

Or.

Did he know all or some of the above, and wanted his team to play like the leviathon of Revelations, beaming with Blue Shenika Light?

Or was he just groovin' on Tommy and the Shondells and accidently skimmed across the top of it all with a twitter post?

Probably that last one. But how is that song not about drugs?

Kellen The Page

Maybe I enjoyed the Bobby Jindal (JINDAAAALLLLLL!) eruption too much. But YahooCF popped up this morning with Boise State's Kellen Moore on the front page. He's on the left.

*

A Cultprit Emerges!

A commenter on EDSBS points out that in 2001, Texas* was in the exact situation which UT seems to think it SHOULD have been in this time, namely: playing in the title game, having beaten top rivals in both divisions. That year it was OU and Colorado, who UT* had beaten earlier.

Texas* lost to CU in the title game, still another 'why they play the game' lesson, which you can record just below "to name champions."

April 1st

Happy April 1st, the first day of 2009's second quarter, and also the day for pranks and tricks. With perfect symmetry of structure, then, is this first play of this second quarter, glorious in both trickeration and in name, dubbed the McCluster Fluster for Ole' Miss wide receiver and speed bandit Dexter McCluster.

Know Your Buzzer Beaters

SUCCESS!!!!!

CLICK ON GRAPHIC TO GO TO FULLY DYNAMIC VERSION, with click-thru links to video

What is it About Division II?

That Findlay shot in OT was great today. Just brilliant.

But let's not forget - LET'S NOT FORGET - that two years ago Barton College from Wilson, NC did this:

Know Your Canon Fodder

UNC-Radford: From this Radford-NCAA-party, pick the "hey we're on TV!" bench guys and the "Dang- Carolina?"-starter:

so Radford's domain is runet.edu, huh? Well, if you look up RU.edu, you don't get rutgers or rice or regent or anywhere in russia. You get Rogers State, which is in Oklahoma. Rogers State also has RSU.edu locked up, which really seems greedy.
(radford also owns Radford.edu).

So Radford is in - wait for it! - Radford VA, which is, err, in Virginia, nearer mountains than a beach, to judge from the aeriel pics.


Morgan State-OU:

All you need to know about Morgan State.

The favorite with 5 to go to finish the summer as my favorite Alphabet clip.

Memphis-Cal State Northridge: I'm fairly certain CSUN ("C-sun", or alternately "Cal State-Northridge" or as Bill Simmons says with hilarious cluelessness, "C-S-Northridge") is the most famous bad school in America. CSUN is the state U that serves the San Fernando Valley, miles below the academic mastiffs of nearby LA and the state's UC campuses. It has long been the go-to punchline school for Los Angeles, which means that over the years that status has proliferated nationally thanks to jokes on TV and movies and just-often-enough peripheral appearances from its baseball and bball team.

The town of Northridge is a ridge-less valley city squeezed between the more-famous Reseda (Tom Petty), Granada Hills (better sports) and Chatsworth (you know why), and is distinctive in absolutely no way at all except for being the epicenter, and popular name, of the worst LA earthquake of the TV era.

Perhaps ironically, on the same day CSUN makes its Memphis curtain call (March 19), China Sunergy (CSUN-nasdaq) willl announce is full year 2008 earnings. Not sure what to expect on the call, but consider: CSUN Dec 28, 2007 - 17.07; last Friday: 1.65. So 2008 didn't have the pop for CSUN LLC it did for the CSUN Matadors.

Somebody should offer a parly of spreads of CSUN vs. Memphis against CSUN vs. FY08.

Binghamton-Duke: It either is or was SUNY-Binghamton, after beginning life as a branch of Syracuse after its founding by The Guy behind IBM. But henceforth, in deference to its upstate NY lineage, we'll call it "the Bing". The Bing may not have the basketball pedigree - or any pedigree - of Duke, but that that doesn't mean they won't give Duke all the entitled smugness they can handle. From the top of the Bing's About Page:

The best public university in the northeast. Period.

Oh my.

On the same terribly self-impressed page, the Bing reports this at-first-blush impressive stat -
Students in top 25% of their HS class: 84%

Let's break that down just a bit... what percent of any HS class goes to ANY 4-year school? Less than 50% right? 25-30 go to work, 20-25 go to JC or less? So about 50? So 3 out of every 20 Bing students were NOT in the top half of their college-bound peers?
Period.

However, if the Bing is not quite the Harvard-on-the-Susquehanna it likes to think it is, it's no CSUN. First of all, the campus has a really terrific housing/dorm naming system. Each block of dorms - "college" - has a theme, and the names of the buildings follow the theme. So for the College-in-the-Woods, your building is named after an Iriquios Tribe. In the Hienman College, your dorm is named for former NY Govs (no word on the Spitzer Quad). The buildings in Hillside college are all named after NY state parks, and those in Susquehanna college are all named after - get this - tributaries to the Susquehanna, which flows through campus.

I ain't gonna lie: that's all cool as hell.

Another way in which the Bing differs from CSUN: it's shaped like a brain.

from wiki:

A unique feature of the main campus is that it is shaped like a brain. The primary road on campus creates a closed loop to form the cerebrum and cerebellum, and the main entrance road creates the spinal cord which leads up to a traffic circle (representing the medulla). The main road is thus frequently referred to as The Brain.

and, well, here it is:

Homer and the Heels Index

Or How Losing to FSU was the Perfect Plan!


I have a friend nicknamed Homer who is a looooong-time Duke fan because he went to geek-camp there when he was 12 or something. He emailed after the Heels lost to FSU:

"Buddy of mine has always sensibly insisted that it's best to lose no later than Saturday in the acc tournament, better even than winning the whole thing."

UPDATE: The Homer Theory Rolls On

Wisco 61, FSU 59;
UNC 101, Radford 58

Really? Cuz as of yesterday, that's me! Let's do an Index!

The first NCAA tourney that allowed 'at large' teams (ie, more than one team per conference) was 1974. We'll use that era to look at "Homer Teams", which is the why-not name we'll use for teams that "lost "no later than Saturday in the acc tournament" ie, non ACC-tourney finalist.

Homer Teams Vs ACC Runner-Ups

22: NCAA tourneys since 1974 (35 years) in which an ACC Homer Team advanced farther than the ACC runner-up.
6: NCAA tourney in which an ACC Homer Team tied the Runner-up's performance.
7: Number of times that the ACC Runner-up had a better tourney run than any ACC Homer Team.

Or...

60: Percent of NCAA tourneys in which a Homer Team outperformed the ACC runner-up.
80: Percent including 'ties', i.e. years that an ACC Homer Team advanced at least as far as the ACC runner-up.

And more recently...

81.25: Percent of years since 1992 that Homer team out-performed ACC Runner-up (no ties).

Lesson - 4 out of 5 times in the modern NCAA era, at least one ACC team that lost "no later than Saturday in the ACC tournament" has performed as well or better than the team that lost on Sunday. And since 1992, a Homer team has almost always performed better.

That's abjectly bad news for today's runner-up (please Duke please Duke please Duke!), because only one team is the RU each year. Those numbers are YOURS.

It's a bit trickier for would-be Homer team, since ever tourney (since expansion) produces 10 Homer-candidates that lose "no later than Saturday," and at least two or three of them generally make the tourney.
The trick is to be the right one.

Homer Teams vs. ACC Champions

9: NCAA tourney's since 1974 when an ACC "Homer Team" has been the best performing ACC entry (ie, advanced farther than both the ACC Champ and runner-up)
12: Same stat, including "ties" (Homer team equals performance of ACC Champ and runner-up)
6: Those occurances since 1990 (meaning that 2/3s of the best Homer runs have occured in less than half of the tourneys).
7: Same stat, with ties

Homer Lesson#2 - Since 1990, a Homer team has outperformed the ACC finalists in the NCAAs slightly more than 1/3 of the time... about what you'd expect if the two finalists and the next best team were all taken as 'equals.'

Technically, this fails the Homer Theory, but only the part about it being "better than winning the whole thing".


Runner-up: First loser. Again.

5: NCAA tourney since 1974 when the ACC runner-up was the top performing ACC team in the NCAA tournament, or 1/7 years.
0: Same stat, since 1996.
5: Homer teams that had the best NCAA run since 1996.

Homer Lesson #3 - Don't be the Runner-up

Final Championship Index

9: NCAA Championships won by ACC teams since 1974

5: NCAA Titles won by ACC Champs
2: NCAA Titles won by ACC Runner-ups
2: NCAA TItles won by ACC Homer Teams... including the last two (UMD 02, UNC 05)

So Cheer up, Heels - we got'em right where we want'em!

ACC's NCAA CHAMPS (ACC tourney result)
- 1974 NC State (Champ)
- 1982 UNC (Champ)
- 1983 NC State (Champ)
- 1991 Duke (RU)
- 1992 Duke (Champ)
- 1993 UNC (RU)
- 2001 Duke (Champ)
- 2002 Maryland (Homer Team)
- 2005 UNC (Homer Team)

Chick-fil-a Index

We'll be back to the CFB Alphabet tomorrow (anybody wild guesses at V? Anybody want odds?). All this video is missing is a reference to Polynesian Sauce and a lock against playing it on Sunday.





11: Years the Chick-fil-a Peach Bowl was sponsored by the Atlanta Marathon, ie The Atlanta Marathon bowl.
2: by ratings, Chick-fil-a Peach Bowls in all-time top six ESPN bowl broadcasts, including 2009 Auburn Clemson game, ESPN's top broadcast of the bowl season (Auburn 23, Clemson 20 OT)
4: Consecutive wins by the SEC.
4: Consecutive SEC losses prior to current streak.
36: Average LSU winning margin (37, 35) in two last four games.
410: Calories in a chicken sandwich
400: 12 nuggets
370: Medium waffle fries
660: Vanilla shakes. God bless.

HIGH SCHOOL-ATHLETE-TRIVIA BONUS:

40-4: High school wrestling record (jr and sr years), including Ga state champion, of Dan Cathy, current Sr. VP and son of Truett Cathy, CFA founder.

UPDATE:

Mostly for the music track, highlughts of 2007 CFA Bowl, Auburn-Clemson. Whoever Au.Tiger.96 is, he knows how to use an over-inflated Michael Bay-ish soundtrack.

Alliteration Index

"Come and sit by me side if you love me,
Do not hasten to bid me Adieu /
Just remember the Red River's Val Varley
And that guy who played for TCU"

10: Years in prison for Lonta Hobbs, former TCU RB and one of the stars of the legendary TCU-Boise State Ft. Worth Bowl.

Hobbs was rung up for selling drugs near his old HS stadium by the exquisitely named Red River DA, Val Varley.

U is for Unneccesary, Unsportsmanlike and Ultramarine Turf

(yip: starts with "U," means blue. I pulled it off)

Like orphans and sundresses, Boise State's secondary will hitchee.

Oh, they'll draw a flag. You'll get your first down. But you won't try that shit again, and by that shit we mean, 'advancing the ball.'

No. 1 - Jeron Johnson marking his territory against San Jose State on an overthrown ball to the sideline with a cheap shot to the back.



No. 2 and No. 3

First half of clip: Safety Ellis Powers with a two-steps late cheap-shot on Oregon QB Jeremiah Masoli, knocking him out of the game (they are announcing line-ups as the clip begins)
Second half of clip: Johnson again, getting tossed from the game for "targeting a defenseless player" no less on an overthrown ball. Indeed, the reciever leaps for the ball while Johnson is 2 steps away, and the receiver tracks the ball with his head as it passes out of reach - and then Johnson levels him.




These aren't penalties or even that cheap, but more of Johnson blowing up Right-Angle-State teams:

Utah... (at the first down mark - instinctual!)



Idaho...



and Wyoming.... And this is not actuallyJohnson, but a big Samoan. Terrific big-boy hit, and even better Bad Announcing.

Crazy basketball Index

It's not college and its not football, but Alaska has no college football and an overabundance of Crazy in its basketball legacy, so it will always have a place on the Index.

To recap some of Crazy's high school basketball accomplishments that have been chronicled here:

1 - a few years back (04?), the Barrow high school girls played for and won the State championship against a team from Juneau. THe game was played the same day as 16 games in the NCAA tournament's first-round. Of those 16 games, only 3 matched opponents from campuses farther apart than the Barrow-Juneau title game.

2 - Mario Chalmers, NCAA Final Four MVP and now NBA player, balled at Service High in Alaska, which you may have known. You may not have known that, from Chalmer's sophomore-year team at Service, Chalmers was the third guy to play in the Show. Two players who were seniors that year went on to make NFL rosters.

3 - UAA, my alma mater dear, made the DII Final Four last year and in '06 scored 8 points in the final 12 seconds to beat somebody at home.

Which brings us to...

http://www.adn.com/sports/prep/basketball/boys/story/702900.html

so this story features:

Tok - if not the heart of Crazy, then at least the Gateway to Crazy.
Central players named Skylar and Cronk.
THe two highest point totals ever recorded by a single player in a game in Alaska - 20 years apart, from adjacent fly-speck towns on the Canadian border, with the previous record holder sitting in the stands as the new guy broke his record.

74: Points scored by Skylar Webb for Tok High this year, breaking a 20+ year old Alaska state record, against a team from Whitehorse, which is in Canada and 400 miles from Tok.

View Larger Map
400: Miles - roughly

• Boston to Baltimore
• Palo Alto to Laguna Beach
  
• Dallas to Austin to Houston
• the total distance traveled by UNC's basketball team to play Duke since 1988.***
  View Larger Map
  

By reputation, Tok is the first "town" you hit inside Alaska after crossing over from Canada.

62: Previous record, held by Mike Cronk, of Northway High, a school actually closer to Canada, but without the big city glam of Tok.
1: Rows behind Webb's family that Cronk, now a teacher at Tok, was sitting for the game.
1:30: Total minutes Webb played in the fourth quarter after picking up his 4th foul late in the 3rd.
59: Webb point total at end of regulation.
15: Points in overtime.
38: Winning margin in Northway game when Cronk set the record.
1: Winning margin in Tok game, 83-82 - for Whitehorse.

So Webb scored the most points ever by a high schooler in Alaska, 74, and lost.

*** - regular season

T is for Tom Osborne's Face

"Hello?"

- Orange Bowl Guy

Hand it to OU fans - they treat their program's YouTube memories like a season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. The more akward, the more embarrassing, the more pathetic and debasing, the better.

There are at least three videos available on the 1985 Orange Bowl (including a recent Sunday Sermon here) where the Sooners lost to UW after thier horse-and-wagon cost them a field goal.

And here, preserved by Lucky4OU / Jim's Oklahoma Sports Page, is another great moment in football akwardness.

In 1978, the Tom Osborne-led Husker upset #1 OU, with Hiesman winner Billy Sims, in their annual showdown, handing the Huskers the automatic Orange bid for the Big 8, and a showdown for the national title with Penn State. However, NU fell asleep at the wheel the next week losing to Missouri. This sent Penn State to the Sugar Bowl to Face Alabama for #1.

The Orange Bowl then turned around and offered the 'at-large' bid to... OU, setting up a rematch.

The Orange Bowl commissioner - just as General-Buck-Turgeson-straight as a 1978 Orange Bowl Committee chair could possibly be - called OU first to extend the bid and then Nebraska to break the news.

For some reason, and somehow, both ends of both calls were captured on video.

Watch Tom Osborne - every inch as young, dapper and shiny as RFK - react to the news.

OU beat the Husker in the 1979 Orange Bowl, 31-24.

S is for Stanford and the SEC. The other ones

As Sheen said to Biehn, "T rust me with your life but not your money or your wife," and there's indeed no one I'd more gladly hand over the keys to my terrestrial days and nights than Sir Allen Stanford, Brigand Lord of The West Indi es!

Sir Stanford, before the fall.

Equally, there's no one I'd trus t less with anything I actually owned or held dear, as the SEC (subpeonas-and-jail-SEC, not beer-and-sundresses-SEC) is currently discovering, though apparently they could have just asked the English national cricket team.

Here's Uncle Allen with their WAGs (wives and girlfriends, one of them pregnant), as the players toiled below on both Uncle Allen's dime and private Antigua cricket field. Better still, the game in question is the finals of the Stanford 20/20 tournament last November, in which the "Stanford Super sta rs" of Caribbean players beat the English team in a game for a $20 mi llion purse, which is approxi mately 458 zillion shilling-crumpets.

So his team beat them for $20 mil, made a mockery of their sport and generally played Good-to-be-The-King with their wives.






UPDATE: This came after Stanford announced the match by showing up at Lord's field in London in a helicopter, carrying a briefcase of American cash.

But once a Brigand Lord of the West Indies finds his taste for sponsored ladies, he soon aspires beyond churched-up cricket groupies.

And so it caem to be that Stanford Financial became the corporate sponsor of the cheerleading teams of the beer-and-sundresses-SEC's two most celebrated bella ambiente universitarios, LSU.... (check out the 'dismount' of the Tiger Cage, a minute or so in)





and Ole Miss, where the pool parties don't quit.



Sir Allen Stanford, Brigand Lord of the West Indies, most certainly not a descendent of Leland Stanford Jr., ne'er-do-well of SEC cheerleading pool parties and owner of a glorious P-bandit mustache, The Index salutes you!

"I said to my English colleagues that these Texan chaps are a bit different from the average person in Tunbridge Wells, Kent."

- Simon Dyson, executive chairman of the Cricket Foundation

R is for Rey'n'Erin

One part stalking sociopath wraith, one part chemise-sweatered kitten bait, together were 2008's Clearest-Metaphor Couple, their forbidden love a Karmic portrait of what SC would have done to Florida.