04/20/24
November 11, 2011
SportsFilter: The Friday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
Daly thinks he's got problems on the golf course. Check out Tom McAuliffe, a golfer with no arms. I love that in the true spirit of the times, he manages to do what he does AND smoke a cigarette at the same time.
posted by JJ at 06:52 AM on November 11, 2011
Urban Meyer gives a weak ass statement that he's not interested in returning to coaching.
posted by NoMich at 11:57 AM on November 11, 2011
No one really wants to coach after Tressel or Paterno. Even if you're Urban Meyer, it'll take two national titles in three years to be anything but "the guy after..." They'll both end up either leaving the interim guys in place for two or three seasons and then finding a real coach, or finding some mid-major sucker who will last two or three seasons before they can get a big name.
posted by Etrigan at 12:38 PM on November 11, 2011
When War Wasn't An Analogy: Remembering Conn Smythe
posted by tommybiden at 12:54 PM on November 11, 2011
For anyone who missed out on the regular-season CFL Pick 'Em, the Playoff Pick 'Em has started up!
posted by DrJohnEvans at 01:08 PM on November 11, 2011
No one really wants to coach after Tressel or Paterno.
I hope who ever takes over either of those programs full time gets better treatment from fans and alum than we Tide faithful treated Ray Perkins 1983-86 or Bill Curry 1987-89 post Bear Bryant.
posted by Folkways at 01:52 PM on November 11, 2011
Why would anyone want to take over the OSU program (probably heading into a bowl ban and/or some other probation more robust than the voluntary 5 scholarships they gave up, based on the NCAA's failure to monitor letter issued yesterday) or the PSU program (following a legend but also just the stench associated with that program right now)?
posted by holden at 03:02 PM on November 11, 2011
There's opportunity lurking among the smoldering embers at Penn State.
There is so much heartache and ambivalence among the faithful regarding Paterno at this point, that people will be preoccupied with reconciling their feelings about Paterno and not as focused on the comparative shortcomings of his successor.
The new coach will be given a unique opportunity to forge a bold, fresh start for the program, and is going to start with a clean slate and a housecleaned athletic department and administration.
Kids will still want to play for PSU. The image of the football team itself is not going to be cast into the same pit of shame with the coaches and school officials. If a highly regarded coach takes over, the question among recruits will be whether they are committing to a team that has a reasonable chance of being competitive during their 4 years there.
This is a different type of scandal than a SMU or OSU or USC scandal. This is primarily a civil and criminal complaint situation. No one knows what the NCAA's outlook is going to be as yet.
I wouldn't be in a rush to bring in Urban Meyer, though. They should read through the Gainesville police log before making that phone call.
An interim dose of Tony Dungy might be a better idea.
posted by beaverboard at 05:55 PM on November 11, 2011
This is a different type of scandal than a SMU or OSU or USC scandal.
I agree with this. As I've hinted, I think the era of Perpetual Coach (Bryant, Hayes, Osborne, Schembechler, Bowden, and lastly Paterno) helped create a kind of time bubble where the echo of an earlier era survived beyond the point at which it is gone elsewhere -- in good and bad ways. I think it's clear that multi-decade coaches in the upper FBS echelons are now the exception, with greater movement between the college game and the NFL, and that fluidity is the new norm.
This doesn't remove the broad institutional problems, but it means that the conspiracies of silence are more likely to follow the usual pattern of NCAA shamateurism.
(Speaking of Bowden, this kind of trollish shit really doesn't deserve to be appear in an actual newspaper.)
posted by etagloh at 12:28 AM on November 12, 2011
Tiger prowls into the lead in Australia. Not sure he sees the cognitive dissonance inherent in saying "I felt like I really didn't miss a shot. Even though I shot five under today, it felt like it easily could have been eight or nine deep", but then his success was always built on self-delusion, so maybe it's a good sign for golf that he's doing it again.
In the same tournament, John Daly walked off the course yesterday. On the 10th, he was given a penalty for playing the wrong ball from a bunker. Then on the 11th he put six or seven balls officials were not sure of the exact number in the water before grabbing his young son and heading for the exit after telling his playing partners "I'm off".
Tiger once almost ran out of balls too, towards the end of the second round of his huge US Open win in 2000. He hit what turned out to be his penultimate ball into the sea on the 18th before unleashing a volley of swearing [YouTube] that seemed to shock Johnny Miller a bit. Steve Williams handed him the last ball in his bag, but didn't tell him that until he'd completed the hole with it.
Daly perhaps assumed what Tiger assumed (when Williams told him what had almost happened) - that running out of balls means disqualification in the professional game. In fact, it doesn't, as long as you can borrow or "acquire without undue delay" another ball of the same brand and type as the one you were using previously.